My experience in Nigeria, as well as early career experiences in community development efforts back in the United States, led to an interest in the ways in which academic anthropology could be applied to nonprofit sector issues and to the ethnographic research opportunities presented by the community development field. My next African study that underscored the importance of global cultural forces to African societies was ethnoaesthetic research on contemporary Yorùbá architecture in Ilé-Ifẹ̀. In my anthropology and urban planning master’s theses I presented an alternative conceptual model and research method for understanding how contemporary sociocultural, class, and identity issues were reflected in Yorùbá housing design. An important lesson in how transnational cultural flows influence local cultural production was the evolution of the “Brazilian” house, introduced to Nigeria by repatriated Brazilian slaves in the nineteenth century, as the prototype of the “modern” Yorùbá house (Vlach 1984, 1986). This Nigerian project further sensitized me to the limitations of conventional categories such as “traditional” and “modern,” as well as notions such as “ethnicity,” “history,” and even “culture” itself, for capturing the nuances of indigenous cultural dynamics.
My exploration of indigenous models for conceptualizing sociocultural complexity was enhanced by the emerging critical anthropology literature (Said 1978; Fabian 1983; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Marcus and Fisher 1999). In particular, Said’s notion of orientalism (1978); Cohn’s studies of the role of the British census on the construction of South Asian identities (1987a); Fabian’s analysis of the impact of conventional anthropology (1983); comparative studies of historicity; and various analyses of the limits of essentially Western models of nation, ethnicity, and culture (see Barth 1984 and 1989; Depres 1984; Worsley 1984; Harvey 1989; Fardon 1987; Moore 1987; Handler 1988; Appadurai 1990) were instrumental in my still evolving eclectic blend of conventional and critical perspectives in both academic and applied anthropology.
During this period, I became particularly interested in the Nupe of central Nigeria, who were key intermediaries in trans-Saharan trade with the medieval and late nineteenth-century West African forest kingdoms and who built an expansive empire lasting from about the sixteenth century until the British conquest. Additionally since Nadel’s (1942) classic work, there had been little anthropological attention paid to Nupe history and culture. It seemed to me that the study of indigenous Nupe models for organizing and managing cultural diversity would be a base from which to initiate an ongoing original contribution to the field. I decided to do an ethnohistorical study of Nupe identity formation focused on the medieval through early colonial period. In preparation for fieldwork I spent almost a year working with a Nupe immigrant living in Philadelphia who tutored me in the language, using a Nupe grammar guide and dictionary devised by an early twentieth-century British missionary (Banfield 1969). I defined my research problem as an effort to reconstruct indigenous models for the organization of cultural diversity and their transformation through the contemporary period. After completing my Ilé-Ifẹ̀ fieldwork for my master’s theses, I started preliminary fieldwork for this project and was based at the University of Ìllọrin in the summer and fall of 1988 for several months. During this period, I collected and reviewed primary historical records archived in Kaduna and conducted exploratory ethnohistorical interviews in several Nupe villages and towns. This fieldwork was a watershed in my understanding of ethnohistory and identity formation.
Alhaji Aliyu Idress, a scholar of Nupe history then at the University of Ìllọrin and a member of the Nupe royal family, was my guide and interpreter during this visit. Among the several Nupe towns, villages, and cities we visited was Patigi, which prior to the British conquest was an important, cosmopolitan trading center. In Patigi, I interviewed a group of chiefs about the process of a ze Nupe, that is, becoming Nupe. I was particularly interested in following up a notion raised in Nadel’s ethnography that there were “hyphenated” Nupe—people who had emigrated to the Nupe empire from other mostly western Africa polities and were described as Fulani-Nupe, Yorùbá-Nupe, Hausa-Nupe, and so on.
After an astonished and extended commentary on my physical appearance—the shadings of my skin color (which was described as “very black like Hausas”); my facial features, particularly my nose (which was described as “Fulani”); whether my original people were actually “real Nupe” or actually Yorùbá or Fulani; and promising me that “if I found out that my ancestors were Nupe I could return”—one chief explained the a ze Nupe process to me this way:
| NUPE CHIEF | Daughter, let me help you understand. You know in America, they call you “Negro.” |
| JCC | Yes, that is an old term, but that is a term that some people still use. |
| NUPE CHIEF | Now, Daughter, why do you think they call you Negro? |
[Uncomfortable silence.]
| NUPE CHIEF | Well let me tell you. Now you think that you are American. They think you are something else and the other people—the Europeans—are really American. That’s how it is with us. Those people that come from outside, they can become Nupe—speak the language and everything—but they are not real Nupe!! Just like you are not a real American!! |
I was too shocked by the chief’s unexpectedly insightful analysis of contemporary North American identity politics to present the various possible standard counterpoints to such arguments: America—except for native peoples—was a country of immigrants, so I was as American as anyone else, and so forth. However, for a relatively new initiate to ethnography, this encounter offered several critical and practical lessons that fundamentally influence this study’s orientation toward African diasporan identity formation.
Indigenous notions of identity are not easily disaggregated from the influence of contemporary sociopolitical issues, derived from both local and translocal sources. Instead of reconstructing the historical facts that contributed to the development of the a ze Nupe process, I was actually studying a component of Nupe historicity—the way in which Nupe people conceptualize and remember history based on the convergence of historical events, cultural, and sociopolitical factors. It was difficult to extract an indigenous Nupe model for conceptualizing diversity from the chief’s apparent exposure. I learned later that this exposure to North American notions of identity was largely gained from foreign newspapers, television, and reports of local people who had traveled and lived abroad. Nupe models developed within a transnational cultural flow.
It also became clear, through many incidents similar to the above encounter, that I—and people’s preconceptions and understanding of my own identity as a “Black” person or a person of some sort of African descent—was an unavoidable part of the research context. Whether the notions of the historical connections between Africa and African Americans were considered real, imagined, or invented, the issue was one of active debate whenever I entered a conversation, despite my earnest efforts to keep the group interview focused on “Nupe issues of identity.” Nupe perspectives on my identity and how it influenced the research context were also ethnographic facts that had to be addressed. If I approached this task self-consciously and explicitly (the move to reflexivity and critical analysis of native anthropology were just beginning in the field), the typical debates about my own identity in African diasporan research contexts could add important dimensions to the ethnographic data. On the other hand, if I hid this dimension through the various stylistic artifices possible in ethnographic writing (for example, assumption of the socially neutral, omniscient ethnographer role), I would be contorting the ethnographic data to screen out personally discomforting aspects of the contemporary sociopolitical environment and my perceived role in it.
Yet