Fall 2024
Date: Thursday, November 7, 2024
Time: 3:00-4:30pm Eastern Time
Location: Tubman Resource Room (314 York Lanes), York University, Keele Campus
In-person Registration: https://research.apps01.yorku.ca/machform/view.php?id=237524
Zoom Registration: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUkfuyurjoiHNFB6tvN_6L7HBHjvehO6G6H
Title: Gendered Power Through Sprituality: The Case of Igbo West Africa
Abstract: Mainstreaming the mystic traces the utility and recovery of traditional modes of gendered spirituality in southeastern Igbo communities. It explores how contemporary Igbo women adjust to the simultaneous practice of traditional Igbo spirituality/Odinani and Christianity without conflict. This research also investigates the connections between the colonial encroachment of Igbo West African communities, and the subsequent and sustained decline of the status of Igbo women. It plots these connections by interrogating how unique modes of power, specifically spiritual power, utilized by Igbo women, were subsequently diminished through a three-pronged approach of colonization, western religion, and western education. Ultimately, this work problematizes the binary and rigid interpretation of Igbo culture as patriarchal, abusive to women, masculinist and “women hating”, by contextualizing the meanings and application of power particularly gendered power through spirituality. It posits that power exists in the quiet, the mysterious, the taken for granted, the hidden, the unorthodox, and the unexplained.
Bio: Ifeyinwa Okadigbo, widely known as Ify, is a dedicated Ph.D. Candidate within the esteemed School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at York University, Toronto, Canada. Her academic journey has been characterized by a profound commitment to unveiling the multifaceted dimensions of gender, coloniality, and African feminism. Ify holds an impressive academic record, boasting two master’s degrees in Gender and International Development from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, and Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies from York University, Canada.
Her research endeavors are anchored in a decolonial feminist perspective, reflecting her fervent desire to critically examine the ramifications of the colonial encounter and its enduring legacies on the lives, aspirations, and future trajectories of African women in the Igbo and Hausa communities of Nigeria. Ify’s scholarly pursuits encompass a rich tapestry of subjects, with a primary focus on coloniality, decolonization, African feminism, African personhood, traditional women’s movements, and gendered leadership.
In her recent work, Ify has expanded her research horizon to encompass the intricate discourses surrounding gendered power and its unique connections to Igbo spirituality. Her exploration delves into how African women continually disrupt the prevailing binary narratives that often oversimplify the interplay between Western religious influences and African spirituality.
Her multidisciplinary approach to complex issues in the realm of gendered power and its connections to spirituality promises to contribute significantly to the evolving discourse in these fields, ultimately paving the way for a more inclusive and equitable future.
Her work has been supported by many Grants and Fellowships.
Date: Thursday, November 14, 2024
Time: 3:00-4:30pm Eastern Time
Location: Tubman Resource Room (314 York Lanes), York University, Keele Campus
In-person Registration: https://research.apps01.yorku.ca/machform/view.php?id=239239
Zoom Registration: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0pdu6vqTItH9ckchd5qLNvUk_ZvyO-Hgjc
This Tubman Talks is co-sponsored by the Resource Centre for Public Sociology.
Title: Non-State Security Provision and Human Rights Abuses in Nigeria: Rethinking the influence of the Principals on the agents
Bio: Dr Ndubuisi N. Nwokolo is a Managing Partner at Nextier & the Chief Executive of Nextier SPD (Security, Peace and Development), a business unit under Nextier. Nextier is a multi-sectoral, multi-competency International development consulting firm with Offices in Nigeria, Liberia, the USA, and the UK.
He is an Honorary Fellow at the School of Government, University of Birmingham, UK, since 2017 and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime, and Security at York University Canada. He holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK, in the Political Economy of Natural Resource Conflicts and an advanced MA in Conflict and Sustainable Peace Studies from Katholieke University, Leuven, Belgium. He also has a Master’s Degree in Political Economy and Development Studies from the University of Jos and a B.Sc. in Political Science from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
Ndu is recognised as a Peacebuilding, Conflict, Security, governance, and International Development Specialist with significant experience and knowledge of Nigeria’s and Africa’s conflict, stabilisation, security, democratic and governance interventions. He consults for International organisations and Development agencies and has been published in academic journals, newspapers, and policy briefs.
Abstract: Security and Policing provisions in Nigeria remain a huge challenge. Today, the country faces security challenges such as terrorism, farmer-herder conflicts, banditry and armed robbery, secession struggles, kidnapping, cult clashes, and group violence across its six geopolitical zones. The multiplicity of these challenges seems to be overwhelming the capacity and ability of state security forces to deal with them. Based on the existing situation, several non-state security outfits have emerged to complement the efforts of state security forces in security and policing provisioning, especially at the local community level.
In many societies, non-state security and policing platforms often emerge when people perceive political authorities and law enforcement institutions as biased, illegitimate or ineffective. In some situations, such a notion leads to the emergence of self-help security actors who apply their kind of justice (Asif & Weenink, 2019). In Nigeria, they consist of vigilante groups, neighbourhood watch, hunter-guard groups, night watch groups, etc. Based on the need for self-help, they function within platforms that perform security and policing-related responsibilities even when such tasks were not designated to them by the country’s constitution. However, some states in Nigeria (federating units) that have established such security outfits on the grounds of augmenting the conventional national security provisions have such outfits backed by state assembly laws but not the constitution.
Narratives of non-state security outfits using on-the-spot corporal punishment such as beating, flogging, and even lynching of suspects are becoming frightening. As these non-state security actors grow in size and numbers due to security challenges, their human rights abuses increase, especially with the absence of national regulations. However, shared understanding and knowledge is that the collaborations between the state security actors/outfits as principals and the non-state security actors/outfits as agents means that the state security outfits oversight and regulate the non-state security outfits even though the constitution has not made such provisions. Based on the Principal-agent theory, it agitates the minds to wonder if a principal with an institutional problem of human rights violations could force its agent to desist from human rights abuse. Drawing on this theory, the current security situation and human rights abuses by state security outfits in the country, making non-state security outfits conform to human rights standards, needs more than constitutional provisions and regulatory processes.
Tubman Talks with Keisha Bell-Kovacs: Looking Back, Moving Forward: Archie Alleyne and Black Placemaking – Nov 21
This Tubman Talks is co-hosted with the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC).
Date: Thursday, November 21, 2024
Time: 3:00-4:30pm Eastern Time
Location: Tubman Resource Room (314 York Lanes), York University, Keele Campus
In-person Registration: https://research.apps01.yorku.ca/machform/view.php?id=211660
Zoom Registration: https://yorku.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAlfuGrpzMvGdJIT7kzd08X4vqCPZpoXhuO
Title: Looking Back, Moving Forward: Archie Alleyne and Black Placemaking
Abstract: Archie Alleyne (1933-2015) was a Toronto-born musician, entrepreneur, activist, and archivist who was active in the formative years of jazz in Canada. He was the first Black musician to “break the colour barrier” at the CBC in the early 1960s. Black Canadians had to navigate spaces in creative ways during the early 20th century when racial discrimination went largely unchallenged and was upheld by the judicial system. Two of Alleyne’s later projects speak to the musician’s complex relationship to place in his hometown. The first, a septet called Band 355, was founded by Alleyne and comprised of former members of the Toronto branch of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), also known as “The Hall,” was located at 355 College Street, and was one of the few spaces for Black social life in the city during the early 20th century. The second project was Toronto’s first soul food restaurant, aptly named ‘The Underground Railroad.’ Alleyne and three of his friends, Howard Matthew and two former Toronto Argonauts, John Henry Jackson and David Mann opened the venue on February 12, 1969.
Black geographies are located in fugitivity, a separate realm that refuses the choices of the established hierarchies. A black sense of place is multidimensional, produced not only by the social and material but also the temporal. Weaving together the Ghanaian-Akan concept of sankofa – ‘looking back while moving forward’ with ideas of fugitivity within black geographies, this research considers the relational nature of black placemaking. This work suggests that the Underground Railroad and Band 355 exemplify how Alleyne creatively remapped and reasserted Black presence in the city.
Bio: Keisha is a musician whose creative practice seeks to incorporate elements of Jamaican folk music with heritage Black American forms. She also enjoys performing repertoire that has roots in the wider Caribbean and South America. Her research interests include themes of identity, social justice, geographies, and Canadian jazz scholarship.