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Post-nationalism and Recollecting the Nigerian Civil War Memories through Hero Beer Brands Marketing in Igboland, Southeast Nigeria

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160 views

Obinna U. Muoh & Uche Uwaezuoke Okonkwo
History and International Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Emails: obinna.muoh@unn.edu.ng, ucheokonkwo2007@yahoo.com

Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s33n3

Abstract

Since the failed attempt at secession from Nigeria in 1970, after a 30-month civil war, the Igbo ethnic nationality—who constituted the majority of the defunct Biafra Republic, have sought avenues to (re)create the memories of the short-lived country.In the political space, they attempted establishing Ohaneze Ndigbo—as an umbrella socio-political organization for recreating and projecting the Igbo agenda. This, to a large extent, has not achieved the desired objectives. Not surprisingly, militia groups have sprung up since 1999 when an Igbo failed to secure Presidential race ticket to agitate the actualization of the sovereign state of Biafra. These groups include Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), and recently the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). However, pop circle provided the much needed social space for Biafra nostalgic displays. In 2012, Hero Beer advert better known as O Mpa, a coined greeting style by Onitsha people for great achievers with reference to Ojukwu father figure in the Biafran struggle was launched. This study examines the nexus between beer advertorials and ethnic identity using the Igbo example. It argues that the advertorials successfully permeated into the psychology of Igbo beer drinkers, who attached ethnic connections to them and appropriated them as theirs, using the brands to recreate the memories of Biafran struggle of Independence from 1967-1970.

 Keywords:  Nostalgia, Ethnic Identity, Appropriation, Branding and Advertorials.

Hegemony, Exclusion and Equivocal Identities: Reflections on Israel’s Arab Minority in Sayed Kashua’s Dancing Arabs

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245 views

Neha Soman

ICSSR Doctoral Fellow, Dept. English, Bharathiar University, neha.efl@buc.edu.in, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3900-3607O

Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s33n2

 Abstract

Social consciousness forms in allegiance with the moral and political hegemonic power structures. Gramsci’s organic ideology defines this condition of hegemonic system where societal leadership is practised by the dominant class. With the emergence of cultural studies the prevailing hegemonic discourses are challenged, but defining liminality in this spectrum is still an ongoing process. In this context, the essay aims to demarcate the problematic aspects of personal and national identities against the hegemonic power structures, specifically with the case of the Arab minority in the State of Israel. Apart from the fundamental facets of hegemony, the aberrant conflict between nationalism and citizenship emerging from Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish democratic State, places the Arab Israeli identity in question. These arguments are validated through the fictional life narrative of Israel’s prominent Arab writer Sayed Kashua. His novel Dancing Arabs (2002) recapitulates the reality of being an Arab in Israel. The impeccable representation of identities in question hinges the repercussions of hegemony and social exclusion on both subjective and national levels. Standing on the critical platforms of Gramsci’s political theory of “hegemony” and Stuart Hall’s cultural theory of “identity”, the text is closely read as an artefact of resistance with emphasis on personal, political and philosophical discourses on the identity of the Arab minority in Israel. The essay traverses through the ethnocentric status of Israel’s social structure which disorders the recognition of Arab identity and identifies the conflict as a potential hindrance to peaceful coexistence in Israel’s near future.

Keywords: Hegemony, Identity, Arab Minority, Israel, Social Exclusion

 

Two Oils, One Evil: an Appraisal of Contemporary Dilemma of the Indigenous Population of Nigeria’s Oil-Delta Communities, 1956-2019

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201 views

Victor O. Ukaogo1 & Nwakuya Cecilia Ogechi2

1Department of History & International Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria. Email: victor.ukaogo@unn.edu.ng

2Careers Unit (Registry Department), University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. Email: Ogenwakuyah@yahoo.com

Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s32n3

 Abstract

This study examines the processes of economic transition and the corresponding impact on the Niger-Delta communities. It argues that the region has witnessed several epochs of economic transition; all of which came with damning consequences. While the major focus of the study is the change from palm oil to crude oil (two oils), the study explores the curious linkage between economic transitions, contemporary poverty and environmental violence in the region (one evil). The integration of the region into the vortex of oil globalization has paradoxically and inversely increased the poverty amongst the rural poor. The study argues that while the ‘oily debacle’ yield endless violence against the indigenous population, issues of environmental governance exacerbates. This is evidenced in the government’s militarized mediation strategies that worsen the prospects of peace in the enclave. Typical of ‘resource curse’ philosophy, the wealth from crude oil that should improve the lot of the rural poor has directly shut them out of the expected benefits of oil extraction. The study investigates and avers that the unholy alliance between the State and global capital is a challenge and concludes that capitalist exploitation of the region on account of crude oil explains the contemporary dilemma of the indigenous population.

Keywords: Niger-Delta; Globalization; Foreign Interest; Environmental Governance; Resource curse; Environmental security; Capitalist exploitation

“An umbrella made of precious gems”: An Examination of Memory and Diasporic Identities in Kerala Jewish Songs and Literature

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340 views

Shiji Mariam Varghese & Avishek Parui

1Research Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras, Chennai 600036. shijimariam21@gmail.com.

2Assistant Professor of English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras , Associate Fellow, UK Higher Education Academy, Chennai 600036, avishekparui@iitm.ac.in, ORCID: 0000-0001-8008-9241

Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s32n1

Abstract

The Jews living in the state of Kerala enact their diasporic identities through a unique narrative network including songs, stories, and memoirs. Drawing on memory studies and affect theory, this article aims to examine selected Jewish folk songs as an example of entanglement of memory and culture, nostalgia and narrative.  We study Oh, Lovely Parrot (2004), which is a compilation of 43 typical Kerala “parrot songs” – devotional hymns and songs for special occasions – translated from Malayalam into English by Scaria Zacharia and Barbara C. Johnson. Performances of these songs constitute cultural as well as affective phenomena that bring together Jewish identities, especially female rituals, in a collective effort to preserve their ethnic memory and its associated social identity. The music unique to this community illustrates the ancestry and tradition of the Kerala Jews which held them together even after ‘aliyah’ (a Hebrew word referring to the migration to the nation state of Israel post-1948). Using selected songs from the book, the article aims to examine the community’s cultural identity markers related to experiential and discursive diasporic memory. It also draws on the memoir Ruby of Cochin: An Indian Jewish Woman Remembers (2001) by Ruby Daniel and Barbara C. Johnson to analyse the affective quality of songs which unites the community in collective imagination and in complex nostalgia narratives.

 Keywords: Kerala-Jews, Israel, Affect, Identity, Migration, Memory

The Global Precariat: Refugees and COVID-19

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200 views

Srinita Bhattacharjee

University of Hyderabad. ORCID: 0000-0003-4773-7045. Email: srinitabhattacharjee@gmail.com

Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s30n7

 Abstract

Are refugees welcomed by nation-states? Receiving a hospitable environment to resow the seeds of survival is a fundamental right of any human individual especially for refugees who have been rendered stateless and rightless. They require magnanimous hospitality in the form of social solidarity but what they acquire are disdainful attacks from neoliberal nation-states.  Often their traumatic voyages towards a secured mode of living meet with dejection and despair when nation-states violate their obligations by refusing to grant them asylum.  The few, who are accepted, are also compelled to hover around nation-state peripheries with ruthless indifference awaiting them. I shall critically consider Derridean ‘hostipitality’ as the premise to problematize refugee identity as the locus of precarity ensued by radical alterities.

 Keywords: refugee, COVID, precarity, hostipitality, neoliberalism

Living on the Edge: Interrogating Migrant Labourer Lives of Bengaluru/Bangalore

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161 views

Navami T. S.

PhD Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kharagpur. Email: navamiskumar@gmail.com

  Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s30n3

 Abstract

This paper proposes to create a discourse of migrant labourers in the city of Bengaluru/Bangalore, especially during the current period of crisis ensued by COVID-19 pandemic. Despite being an essential part of the informal sector economy these workers are often rendered invisible from the urban social, cultural and political spaces of this global city. The United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development (Habitat III), held in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016 declared the New Urban Agenda (NUA) — that was adopted as the guideline for urban development for the next twenty years — with the vision of ‘cities for all’. But in reality, for their regional, linguistic, cultural, class and caste differences, the migrant labourers in the city are marginalized from the mainstream urban scene. The paper investigates the historiography of the migrant labourers in the city to interrogate the space they occupy in Bengaluru/Bangalore. Some of the important questions the paper attempts to grapple with are also about their fight for survival amidst the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and the relief measure responses from the state. Evidences show, the immigrant labourers are perceived as the city’s necessary ‘Other’ who are needed to build the city but barely finds any representation in the planning grids of urban architects. Their direct experiences and negotiations with ‘the lived city’, available from news archives and other secondary sources, will be interrogated through the lens of ‘the Right to the City’, a concept introduced by Henri Lefebvre. The paper attempts to explore if they have any agency to assert their rights to the city and become a meaningful stakeholder in the democratic control over Bengaluru/Bangalore.

 Keywords: Migrant labourers, COVID-19, Space, the Right to the City

Documenting Migrant Lives of Sugarcane Harvesting Labourers in Maharashtra– Autoethnographic Reflections

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194 views

Mithunchandra Chaudhari1 & Ruchi Jaggi2

1Assistant Professor, Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-1833-3607. Email: mithunchandra.chaudhari@simc.edu

2Professor, Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, India. ORCID: 0000-0002-4118-7671. Email: ruchi.jaggi@simc.edu

  Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s30n2

Abstract

Physical labour is not respected in India. Farm labourers are one of the most exploited labourers in India, and the world. Every year more than one million unorganised contract labourers, most of them from lower castes, migrate to the sugar belt in Western Maharashtra for around six months where sugar factories are concentrated. With around 200 sugar factories, Maharashtra ranks number one in sugar production in India. The labourers work for twelve or more hours a day and get poor returns. On the other hand, the working and living conditions violate basic human rights (Deshingkar, Start, 2003). Cane cutting is the most laborious farm work where the labourers have to bend for hours, pick up very heavy cane bundles and mount them at risky heights even during the night time. While injuries are very common among these labourers, occasionally, deaths too take place. The most recent reports reveal that the contractors force women labourers to remove their wombs so that they do not menstruate while working and therefore miss work. The number of such women estimates to around 30%. “Networks working on health and women’s issues say unwarranted hysterectomies among poor women in Beed and other places are the result of work-related pressures imposed on women, plus a grossly unregulated private medical sector and exploitative contractors and sugar factory owners who hire migrant workers” (Chatterjee, 2019).  Along with such health hazards, activists claim that women labourers are exploited by the male contractors at the worksite where physical abuse and rapes happen quite often though they are not formally reported. Young children of the labourers also travel with them at the destination leaving their schools and education behind to help their parents in their work to get trapped into the vicious cycle of bonded labour like their parents (making it a generation after generation trap). Marginalised, alienated and vulnerable in the migrated socio-cultural environment, the sugarcane harvesting backward class labourers face livelihood insecurities. Pregnant women and children have to work. Exploitation is both obvious and subtle. Still this seasonal life is a better opportunity for them. The hardly shared realities, including, women’s critical health issues, sexual exploitation, rapes among other sensitive issues of their lives are beyond imagination. This paper studies the observations made while making a documentary film (which is an ethnographic exploration) on migrant labourers’ challenges. Using an autoethnographic framework on part of the authors, this research paper will attempt to capture their fears, insecurities, subtle voice as well as the silences.

Keywords: Migration, Migrant Labourers, Lower Caste People, Women, Removal of Wombs

Reconceiving the Ecological Wisdoms of Ved?nta in Anthropocene: An Eco-aesthetical Perspective

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217 views

Pankaj Kumar Verma1 & Prabha Shankar Dwivedi2

1Research Scholar, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, India. ORCID: 0000-0001-8952-7906. Email: hs18d002@iittp.ac.in

2Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-1620-2830. Email: prabhas.dwivedi@iittp.ac.in

  Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s29n2

Abstract

The paper aims to lay out a critical analysis of eco-aesthetical wisdom of pan-Indian society through the lens of ancient seers whose insights for environment and ecology were shaped in the form of the teachings of Vedas and Upani?ads. With the passage of time, the bond between humans and non-humans has largely weakened, and humans have increased exploiting the natural resources without caring for their regeneration. Consequent nature bred hostility is emerging as a bigger crisis in front of the 21st Century world that may sooner turn to be, if not taken seriously, an existential crisis for the whole human race. The Upani?ads enlighten us not only with the knowledge of maintaining the relationship between human beings and physical environment but also among various inhabitants of ecology. Therefore, as Deep Ecology proposes, there should be a shift from human at the centre (anthropocentricism) to ecology at the centre (ecocentrism) which very much was existing in Indian society. So, this paper attempts to deal with the global ecological crisis co-opting with the ecological/environmental ideas and attitude of the classical Indian treatises.

Keywords: Ecology, Eco-aesthetics, Ved?nta, Upani?ads, Anthropocene, Ecocentricism

Narratives of Epidemics: Topsy-turvy Conditions of Humans and Quest for Existence

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192 views

Abdel-Fattah M. Adel1, Mashhoor Abdu Al-Moghales2 & Suhail Ahmad3

1Department of English, College of Arts, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia. Email: aadeal@ub.edu.sa, ORCID: 0000-0001-7968-8167

2Department of English, College of Arts, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia and Taiz University, Yemen. Email: mamohammad@ub.edu.sa, ORCID: 0000-0001-7984-5388

3Department of English, College of Arts, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia. Email: suhailahmed@ub.edu.sa, ORCID: 0000-0001-6611-2484

  Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s28n1

Abstract

Corpus of literature is replete with works that feature pandemics as central themes. As a response to diseases outbreaks, fiction writers portray the human condition and the shifts in human behaviour at these crucial junctures of human history. Plot structure and characterization accounts for the void –both within and without—: prevailing chaos, crumbling social structures, undermining of religious values, and Government’s apathy. Based on such themes, this paper examines, from Deterministic and Existentialistic perspectives, three representative fictions written in the 21st century: Reina James’s This Time of Dying (2006) on the deadly influenza of 1918, Amir Taj Elsir’s Ebola ’76 (2012) on the outbreak of Ebola in 1976, and Karen Maitland’s The Plague Charmer (2016) on the plague of 1361. The findings include: (a) the novels predict the contemporary society with their resonance of apocalyptic images and preventive measures, (b) they manifest ontological shifts as the orthodox worldviews are jolted, and (c) fictional and personal narratives are not less important than historical records on health in quest for existence.

 Keywords: Epidemic Novels, Human Conditions, Determinism, Freewill.

 

Contagion and Human Behavior: Examining “12 Monkeys and Contagion through the Pandemic”

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159 views

Manoj Kumar Behera

Ph.D. Scholar, Utkal University, ORCID ID/P ID: 344912331. Email: behera.manoj8@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s26n7

Abstract

A pandemic always teaches the value of life on earth. It also brings the real or primordial nature of humanity to the forefront. In this paper, I will examine the attitude of humans towards the virus, infected humans, and towards other humans in general. While examining these attitudes of humans I will move from specific to general. In order to support my ideas, I will discuss two films i.e. 12 Monkeys and Contagion in particular. Disability studies will be used as a theory to support my arguments.  Everyone in this world has experienced disability directly or indirectly. At present, the ongoing Corona virus pandemic has changed our perception regarding the meaning of our life. We are all vulnerable in this world and we can become the reason for making somebody vulnerable. The problem is that to whom we consider disable. Is it based on appearance or moral outlook?  How shall we respond or how shall we deal with such a situation?  Humanities closely observe world affairs. It predicts futuristic scenarios based on facts. It raises essential questions for the sake of humanity. Now an infected person is considered untouchable. It’s extremely sad to experience such an awful feeling. But in our society untouchability based on caste and disease is a common thing. A virus helps everyone to experience what Dalit humans had once experienced. Now strangers and our relatives are equally suspicious. Separation and inclusion both are associated with the infection. Social hierarchy has changed. Everyone is now untouchable.

Keywords- Pandemic, Disability, Untouchability, Isolation, Vulnerable

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