Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Changing Solidarities of Identity, Ethnicity, Nationality and the Search for Democracy and Development in Africa |
Author: | Prah, Kwesi Kwaa |
Year: | 1997 |
Periodical: | Eastern Africa Social Science Research Review (ISSN 1027-1775) |
Volume: | 13 |
Issue: | 2 |
Period: | June |
Pages: | 1-25 |
Language: | English |
Notes: | biblio. refs. |
Geographic term: | Africa |
Subjects: | nationalism ethnicity Ethnic and Race Relations Economics and Trade Development and Technology Politics and Government politics democracy Economic and social development Cultural identity |
Abstract: | The globalization of the world economy as a maturing capitalist process which has been under way for the past 500 years arrested autonomous sociostructural processes in African societies and created a relationship of dependency. While the process was primarily economic in character, it also affected religious, educational and kinship institutions impinging on the identity of African people. The social evolution from precolonial times through colonialism to post or neocolonialism has seen the alteration of the hierarchy of identities which orient the lives of Africans. During the era of precolonialism, ethnic identities enjoyed centrality. The foundations for the dominance of present State identities were laid during the colonial period. The anticolonial struggle promoted a populist nationalism at the expense of more primeval localist and more exclusivist ethnic values. It was left as an article of faith in the ideology of the African nation-State that all manifest societal expression of 'tribal' or ethnic interest was pernicious. The question of identity in contemporary Africa constitutes one of the most challenging subjective preconditions for a viable social development premised on respect for the African cultural and historical heritage. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. |