This book provides a unique insight into understanding the Igbo social, economic, and political world through comprehensive analyses of indigenous and foreign religious practices, issues surrounding women, literature, language, sexism in musical lyrics, films, and community development and government. It also explores thought-provoking cultural practices relating to marriage and divorce, reincarnation, naming, and masquerade dance. The themes covered in the book help readers appreciate the often-neglected multifaceted local and external forces that continue to shape the Igbo experience in southeastern Nigeria.

Politics and Identity Formation in Southeastern Nigeriaexplores the social, cultural, economic, political and aesthetic traditions that distinguish the Igbo of southeastern Nigeria from their neighbors. It is both multi- and cross-disciplinary in scope, focusing on experiences and forces that shaped the Igbo society.

The book is an introduction to the study of culture, with emphasis on the dynamism factor intrinsic and susceptible to generating growth, development initiatives and change, especially in religion and other aspects of Nigerian society. The collection of 19 papers is organised into five parts: Concepts and Theoretical Alignments, Social Institutions in Culture Change and Development, Religious Traditions and Change Experience, Votaries and Sectarian Reaction to Culture and Religious Change, and Pastoral Objective and the Management of Cultural Diversity and Change in Christianity.

In this study of the Biase, a small ethnic group living in Nigeria's Cross River State, David Uru Iyam attempts to resolve a long-standing controversy among development theorists: must Third World peoples adopt Western attitudes, practices, and technologies to improve their standard of living or are indigenous beliefs, technologies, and strategies better suited to local conditions? The Biase today face social and economic pressures that seriously strain their ability to cope with the realities of modern Nigeria. Iyam, an anthropologist and a Biase, examines the relationship between culture and development as played out in projects in local communities. Western technologies and beliefs alone cannot ensure economic growth and modernization, Iyam shows, and should not necessarily be imposed on poor rural groups who may not be prepared to incorporate them; neither, however, is it possible to recover indigenous coping strategies given the complexities of the postcolonial world. A successful development strategy, Iyam argues, needs to strengthen local managerial capacity, and he offers suggestions as to how this can be done in a range of cultural and social settings.

"Examines the Igbo social system and view of the world. Covers their contact with European culture and the warfare that raged within the Igbo borders."--Textbooks.com viewed Dec. 8, 2020.