The Concepts of Tradition and Modernity in the Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta.

Women have always been partly equal to men in pre colonial Nigeria, having equal but separate roles politically and shared authority in the home. Colonialism changed this form of life of the Igbo culture by imposing Christianity and the idea of the man being the head of the village and the women inferior. Women were also stripped of their rights to have or not have children and forced to be in abusive arranged marriages. Colonialism then ended because the natives felt that self-determination had to replace colonialism and the colonizing nations were bankrupt from World War I resulting in small investment to the colonies. Decolonization was not an effortless trouble, but rather arduous and extensive, especially to women’s rights. Women’s roles in the Igbo culture changed drastically from equal, to less than men and to struggling to get by in each stage of colonialism within the work force, family and rights.

Preconceived ideas about one’s culture often arises from stereotypes passed down from generation to generation. It is those stereotypes which shape one’s way of thinking, without being educated properly. In the novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, misunderstood culture is what drives the story of a small African clan called the Umuofia and the life story of Okonkwo, a fearless warrior and farmer. An in-depth look into pre-colonial African culture helps the reader discover and understand an unbiased point of view of a world one may not understand. In doing so, Achebe uses imagery as well as strong narration to describe the cultural norms and activities that the Nigerian tribe undergoes in everyday life. Through this he offers a nonbiased point of view, and communicates and accurate picture of pre-colonial African culture to a western reader.

“Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa” by Charles Piot is a book based on the lives of the people of the remote village called Kabre located in Northern Togo. The author discusses the “vernacular modernity” of the people of Kabre village that has been influenced by a long tradition of encounters with outsiders that included the colonialists. The author provides an in-depth analysis with ethnographic details about the Kabre people as the author discusses a wide range of their culture and history that included houses and the structure of homestead, gender ideology, ritual like initiations, exchange system, and social relations (Piot 178).

In the Ibo culture, when a woman was to be married, the family of her suitor would come and inspect her to be sure she was beautiful and ripe enough to be a part of their family. A woman did not have any value other than her beauty and her abilities to cook and bear children. In a conversation between Okonkwo and his friend Obierika, they spoke of two other villages where their ''customs are all upside down'' and ''titled men climb trees and pound foo-foo for their wives'' (73).

Her dowry is more if she is an educated girl, but that education will not seem apparent anymore once she is abroad. “I was given away to this man who paid two white cows, four healthy goats, four lengths of cloth, beads, gold jeweler and two bottles of London Dry Gin to my family, and took me off as his wife from my little African village, Naka, to him in the city”. (Darko p3) “When those so-called traditional courts ask him what gives him the right, his self-righteous excuse is, ‘I bought her.’ Why, he can even quote the amount! That’s just too much. What is a woman worth, after all? And who has the right to make such audacious calculations?” (Maraire p34) She would only be known to work and provide for her family with no questions asked or help provided. Even the field of work is already picked without knowing or without consent. There is no equality in which she may know from her home. Traditions are left behind as a part of her adapting to the new life and ways even if she tries to follow them, they are considered wrong in that country because they do not understand. “You must not take the Western anthropologists’ view of our culture. They perceive our customs through their lens. There are terms and customs that cannot be translated adequately into their language and so become distorted”. (Maraire p32) When she arrives at this grand place of opportunity, she is thrown into a glum future.

Across the globe, women of all walks of life are constantly oppressed by their male counterparts, shamed for actions frowned upon simply because of the double standards they are assigned since birth. In many cultures, women are viewed below men, and as a result they are forced to cater to all of the unfair expectations that men demand from them. One of the most popular and universal expectations is the belief that a woman must retain her virginity until marriage. In Half The Sky, women who disobeyed these unwritten laws of society faced the most extreme and harsh consequences. In one instance, a girl named Du’a Aswad went out late with a boy, and didn’t return until the morning. It was immediately assumed that she had slept with him, despite

This essay deals with the nature of a cross cultural encounter between the Benin people and Portuguese traders in the 15th and 16th centuries, which resulted in the depiction of Portuguese figures in Benin brass plaques. It will propose that this contact between people with different cultures was on the basis of 'mutual regard' (Woods, K. 2008, p. 16), and although the Portuguese had qualms about idolatry in Benin it will show that assumptions by Europeans up to the 20th century of the primitive nature of tribal African societies was inaccurate with regard to the Benin people, who had a society based on the succession of the King or 'Oba', a Royal Family and Nobility. The essay will finally suggest that Benin’s increase in wealth following

A young man from an Igbo village meets a young Ibibio woman in the city of Lagos, Nigeria. They have fallen in love and intend to marry. The young woman wants the young man to send a letter to his father telling him of their engagement. The young man is hesitant because he knows his father has already arranged for him to marry a young Igbo woman from his village, in accordance with traditional customs. Instead, he goes home to the village to inform his father in person.

How would you feel if you were forced to marry someone you had met a week before just because your parents told you to? Arranged marriages are one of the most important traditions within the culture of the Igbo tribe. Even though this tradition has been sustained within few ethnic groups around the world, society has been evolving and changing over time, which may lead one to believe it’s only a matter of time before everyone has succumbed to the more modern lifestyle. The view that certain tribes have on marriage and how it has changed in certain places over time can be seen within the short story, “Marriage is a Private Affair.”

Before colonialism, family was important in the Igbo society. Numerous families were forced to give up their loved ones because of this new faith.

Virginity, the subject of never having sexual intercourse based on ideas of tradition, gender, and sexual politics. Many people especially women tend to treasure their virginity and are only willing to lose their virginity to the “right” person. Traditional values of virginity all tie in with marriage. In earlier times and still in today’s society, women will stay a virgin until they were married. In many cultures “Virginity” is often viewed from the perspective that being a virgin is being pure. Delaying sexual initiation until marriage is the norm in countries such as Ethiopia (BMC Public Health, 2008). Historically, woman’s virginity is protected by a father and then “given” to a husband. A woman’s sexuality was believed to belong to the men in her life and to her God (Vagianos, 2013), but in today’s society this idea is not viewed as strongly. Fathers normally tend to be more overprotective of their daughters than they are towards their sons. It traditional gender roles women are seen as the ones that are meant to only give birth to children and care for them. If an unmarried women was to get pregnant at a young age, she would be seen as a disgrace to her family. It would ruin the reputation of her and her family. Some women believe that having

In many of the cultures in these parts of the world honor is of vital importance. It is a great shame to one’s family for a girl to have sex outside of marriage, consensual or otherwise. Women who have sex outside of wedlock are ostracized from their communities and at times even killed in order to cleanse the family honor. Based on these beliefs, a father (as it is almost always the men of the family who arrange marriages) may marry his daughter off early in an effort to protect her and the family. In Yemen there is a proverb that says “To guarantee a happy marriage, marry a nine-year-old girl” (Ali 74), and in Nigeria it is “considered shameful for a girl to menstruate more than once while still residing in her parents’ home” (Haberland

This paper reflects the novel “Things Fall Apart” written by Chinua Achebe in 1958. Achebe gives an overview of pre-colonialism and post-colonialism on Igbo, detailing how local traditions and cultural practices can “fall apart” in some scenarios through some introduced, externally created hassles elevated because of colonization. The protagonist named Okonkwo mentioned in the story is a proof showing the lifestyle of the tribe. My main objective and focus is to lay emphasis on Africa specifically the Igbo society, before and after the arrival of the Europeans in Umuofia community; the results of their arrival concerning Igbo culture, thus leading to the clash of cultures between the two categories. I will also draw on post-colonialism with respect to globalization.

The book takes place in the Umuofia and Mbanta villages around the 1900s. During the 1900s the rise of European Imperialism in Africa becomes very much prevalent between 1881 and 1914.

In the patriarchal society of the Ibo, a woman must submit to an older man’s demands specifically of a husband or family member; she is rarely in full control of herself. Emecheta writes that “a girl belonged to you today as your daughter, and tomorrow, before your very eyes, would go to another man in marriage” to suggest the presence of a dominant male figure in all walks of life (17).