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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:An archive of Yorùbá religious ephemera
Authors:Barber, KarinISNI
Moraes Farias, Paulo F. deISNI
Year:2000
Periodical:Africa Bibliography
Pages:VII-XIX
Language:English
Geographic term:Nigeria
Subjects:documents
Christianity
Islam
Yoruba
Abstract:The archive discussed here is an artifical creation for a specific purpose, a collection of print and media texts, which is the outcome of a project to investigate the role of the media in the constitution of new religious publics in Yorubaland, Nigeria. Focusing on the period 1996-1999, the authors collected newspapers, magazines, video tapes, audio tapes, television programmes, leaflets, tracts, pamphlets, car stickers, posters and any other medium used by religious groups - in English, Yoruba, or Arabic. The main area of the research was Agbowó, a suburb of Ibadan, but some material was collected in other parts of Ibadan, and in Ilorin and Lagos as well. The aim was to retrieve not just the material texts, but also their uses and their meanings to producers and consumers. A vital dimension of the project was the mapping of public space - marking places in which the texts were displayed, circulated and used. This article focuses on one component of the archive: a collection of 133 religious booklets and pamphlets. They show that the upsurge in religious print publication in the 1990s was not a sign of the growth of a formal publishing industry, but of the proliferation of individual ventures made possible by desk-top publishing facilities. The pamphlets reveal broad differences in the purpose and orientation of religious print publication. The Christian writers are offering personal messages to inspire and empower the individual worshipper, while the Muslim writers discuss public issues, disseminate Islamic scholarship, offer impersonal instruction on the universal tenets of Islam, and engage in argument with Christianity. Bibliogr.
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