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Africa Today 49.1 (2002) 115-118



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Trager, Lillian. 2001. Yoruba Hometowns: Community, Identity, and Development in Nigeria. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. 299 pp. $23.50 (cloth).

This book examines nongovernmental development efforts in selected Ijesha, Yoruba (southwest Nigeria) communities. By combining fieldwork with archival, life-history, and interview-research techniques, the author derives data from individuals and groups in Ijeshaland. She thoroughly and painstakingly scrutinizes the data, and relies on them to discuss and illustrate “development” as well as the unofficial and official efforts toward attaining it in Ijesha. This book is easy to read. I particularly like the author’s use of subtitles within each chapter to identify each issue examined. The book is reader-friendly, sound, and relevant to Nigeria’s continuing struggle to “develop.” It should make a strong contribution to the subject of development in Nigeria and elsewhere.

One issue in the book is how to define development. Many research subjects express different views on the meaning of the term. Some of the meanings offered differ from the Western professional social-science interpretation of the concept. While some of the subjects interpret development as “making progress,” others view the term as “helping one’s home community.” One consistent observation Trager offers in every definition of development is that the kind of development research subjects emphasize is that which enjoins individuals and groups to work to advance their own lives, mostly without official government assistance. Based on this understanding, Trager examines the efforts that the various Ijesha communities have made (and continue to make) to improve their lives. She finds that many developmental operations are conducted in the English language. This is discouraging because most Nigerians do not understand or speak English and cannot operate well in a system based on it. The Ijeshas and other Nigerians need to operate in their native languages rather than in English, which is alien and limiting for them.

An offshoot from the question “what is development?” is what do the Western social scientists and development practitioners mean when they discuss “local-level, grassroots, community-based development in the Third World” (p. 5)? I quarrel with this generalization because it is too broad to be applicable to all “Third World” societies. “Third World,” I presume, includes Nigeria, and at the other (progressive) extreme must be the “First World,” which, I presume again, includes the United States; hence the contrast the author mentions between Nigeria and the United States (p. 4). Development, reasonably defined, is continuing and relative. If a society is described as “developed,” the question ought to be asked “developed in what respect?” A society that is “developed” in some aspects of existence may be fundamentally lacking in others. For example, the U.S. may be a “developed, First World” country, but in many respects its criminal justice principles, processes, and modes of offender management are viewed abroad as backward and inconsistent with sophisticated thought and reasoning. [End Page 115] That is why, for example, the U.S. “War on Drugs,” the country’s insistence on the death penalty for some convicts, and its criminal justice system are frowned upon as backward, archaic, and unenlightened by many around the world.

By dumping Ijeshaland and all of Nigeria into the category of “Third World,” the author falls into the same error pit as other persons and groups writing about Africa with condescension. The truth is that even among rural Ijesha communities, there are major differences in developmental levels, and these differences are similar to the differences among rural U.S. or rural British communities, even though the United States and Britain are “First World” countries, whereas Nigeria is of the “Third World.” The author recognizes that “despite the shared commitment to development, complex local realities must be taken into account” (p. 5). If the realities are so complex among small communities in Ijeshaland, imagine how many times more complex they would be among “Third World” nations! Trager should not have made sweeping generalizations about “developing,” “Third World” populations. In any case, she and other serious scientists ought to discard those terms because...

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