AHRC Translating Cultures Workshop12 July 2012

Rashin Sani Ya Fi Dare Duhu (Hausa proverb) – Ignorance is darker than the night

Graham FurnissSOAS, University of London

• Dynamics of cultural translation and debate• Encoding in evaluative processes• Values themselves and their interpretation

are constantly debated

• Equally relevant for the MDG world of development debate

• In northern Nigeria debate and contestation of values equally surrounds issues like polio vaccination and women’s education

• Not just the positive and negative evaluation of things

• Equally about understanding motivations, hopes and fears based upon experience

• Motivations, hopes and fears are always contested, alternative, growing or shrinking, within and between groups and sectors of society

• Different implications as they move from personal narrative to anecdote, to text, to performance, to radio, to video, to social media

Humanities and public policy concerns

• Boko Haram was at the far end of a spectrum of ongoing and widespread debate about

• What is enjoined and what forbidden in Islam• What is in line with or opposed to a concept

of ‘Hausa culture’

Hausa popular fiction

• Since 1987 an explosion of popular fiction writing in Hausa

• Mostly self-published, and cheap• Written increasingly by women• Devoured by the relatively young

• Subject of widespread public debate• In conferences, the press, on radio, and on TV• About its value or lack of value• Moral, economic, aesthetic and educational

value

Thank you