International Journal of Arts and Humanities

(Non)violent protest in Africa: Echoes and lessons from Fela Anikulapo Kuti

2023-09-05T15:11:54+08:00

This study examines the intersection of popular music/culture, social movement and protest by analysing the numerous protest music produced and performed by Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Africa’s most iconic resistant artist of the twentieth century. It engages the core questions of right, injustice and inequality that have manifested in Africa/Nigeria’s underdevelopment since the Union Jack was lowered in 1960. It argues that Fela’s music did have obvious impact on Nigerian youth and the working class who attempted to revise or renegotiate their relationship with the Nigerian state. Yet, it posed hitherto unanswered questions of the changing meaning of social movement in relation to artistic production -- an aspect of peace studies that scholars have completely overlooked. It concludes that as people reconfigure social relations from one stage to another in their life, their engagement with the State and the social meaning attributed to social justice, which Fela’s music emphasised, also change. Thus, popular consciousness shaped by resistant music is not immutable to nonviolent social protest. Rather, it continued to change as individuals and groups reconstitute their relationship with the society, and as their social status transformed in accordance with the acquisition of better education, wealth/resources, among other significant elements that shape human’s consciousness.

Challenges and limitations of ChatGPT and other large language models

2023-06-21T15:12:40+08:00

This article explores the challenges and limitations of large language models, focusing on ChatGPT as a representative example. We begin by discussing the potential benefits of large language models, such as their ability to generate natural language text and assist with language-related tasks. However, we also acknowledge the concerns around these models, including their environmental impact, potential for bias, and lack of interpretability. We then delve into specific challenges faced by ChatGPT and similar models, including limitations in their understanding of context, difficulty in handling rare or out-of-vocabulary words, and their tendency to generate nonsensical or offensive text. We conclude with recommendations for future research and development, including the need for increased transparency, interpretability, and ethical considerations in the creation and deployment of large language models.

The Coca-Cola Company advertising history illustrated through phonecards

2023-03-20T15:07:31+08:00

Coca-Cola is a carbonated beverage created by The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America (USA) which leadership in the soft drink business was achieved after development of advertising programs. Phonecards are items collected by people worldwide. Telecommunication companies along with The Coca-Cola Company displayed Coca-Cola advertising on phonecards. The objective was to illustrate The Coca-Cola Company advertising history through Coca-Cola phonecards. Single phonecards and those in the form of sets and puzzles, besides phonecard folders were used in the study. The number of Coca-Cola phonecards ever produced per country and continent was listed. Coca-Cola advertising slogans were extensively displayed on phonecards, including “Always in Motion”, “Delicious & Refreshing”, “Drive Refreshed”, “Enjoy”, “Have a Coke”, “Refreshing”, “Refresh Yourself”, “Talk about Refreshing”, and “What I Want is a Coke” from Japan as well as “Refreshment Right Out of the Bottle” and “Always Together” from Hungary and Indonesia, respectively. Japan had the highest number of Coca-Cola phonecards ever produced, 584, followed by USA, 441, China, 95, Germany, 51, and Australia, 41. Asia had the highest number of Coca-Cola phonecards ever produced, 760, followed by America, 519 and Europe, 211. The Coca-Cola Company history was successfully illustrated through advertising phonecards.

A prospect of developing epistemology of moral intuitions by analogy with mathematical knowledge

2023-03-15T14:50:01+08:00

In the first part, this article deals with the idea of supporting Moral Intuitionism by drawing an analogy with conceptual mathematical knowledge. The analysis shows that arguments of pro and contra to the above idea are rather aimed toward assumptions and expectations of moral epistemologists; the arguments miss the essence of mathematical conceptual thinking. The image of mathematical thinking exemplified in the epistemological discussion is probably afflicted by implicit biases. The second part of the article applies a very tentative model of mathematical thinking to several cases, or thought experiments, that have been bothering analytical philosophers, practical philosophers, and moral epistemologists. As a result, one can find that the considered thought experiments look very undefined even from a point of view of an imaginary applied mathematician.

Measuring university performance in Tanzania: A comparative analysis of market orientation scales

2022-10-20T13:48:11+08:00

This study makes a comparison between a well- established tool for measuring market orientation (MKTOR) with a new tool especially designed for measuring university performance, i.e., University MARKOR. Data were collected from 212 private and public universities across Tanzania and were an analyzed using AMOS 22. A response rate of 58.2% was achieved and considered adequate. The findings show that both scales demonstrated good model fit. Consistent with previous studies University MARKOR has demonstrated superior psychometric properties than MKTOR.Strong leadership is needed at universities in order to identify new sources of funding and reduce their dependence on traditional sources such as school fees, subventions and grants. A major contribution of this study is that it is the first ever study in Africa which is pan territorial involving both private and public universities that has tested the robustness of market orientation scales.

The return of the woman corpse in the funeral rites of the Urhobo and Isoko culture of Nigeria in historical perspective

2022-10-09T09:15:42+08:00

This paper aimed at interrogating the changes and continuity in an aspect of the Funeral rites of the Urhobo and Isoko of the Niger Delta of Nigeria. It critically examine the practice of returning the corpse of the married woman to the homestead of her family rather than bury her in her husband’s homestead. This practice has over the years been questioned and interrogated and calls for scrutiny. The paper argues that social change factors and processes have introduced continuous changes in the Urhobo and Isoko with regards to the funeral ceremony and have greatly been affected. The practice has been perceived as that which promotes Patriarchal dominance. The paper adopts the historical and analytical model, deploying both primary and secondary data in interrogating the practice of returning the corpse of the married woman to the homestead of her family rather than bury her in her husband’s homestead and avers that if not properly handled, it could affect intergroup relation. The paper, therefore, concludes that this trend is posing a serious threat to peaceful and harmonious intergroup relation among families that indulged in inter-tribal marriage. It recommends among others, that the Urhobo and Isoko should be re-socialized properly to flow with modernity in this aspect of their culture.

From a critical perspective: The defects of Hong Kong comedy since the 1950s

2022-09-22T13:48:58+08:00

This paper elucidates the defects of Hong Kong comedy since the 1950s with regard to five aspects: the inflexibility of structure, the obviousness of theme, the drawback of the plot, the slapstick style and the vulgarity of taste. The story and the characters are relatively stereotypical and rigid in terms of structure. The dialogue and the camera angles are straightforward and obvious in the way that they express the theme. With regard to the plot, the structural design is simplistic and lacking in depth and nuance. Their characteristic slapstick style is expressed through the liveliness and nonsense of folk discourse. They are typically in vulgar taste, which finds expression in the customs, imagery and language of carnivalesque civic culture. The Hong Kong comedy genre has a very strong aesthetic tradition and has performed brilliantly in a commercial sense, but filmmakers need to recognize and introspect on its shortcomings, with a view to improving the aesthetic quality of Hong Kong comedy films and Chinese comedy films more generally.

Nigerian theatre in a digital era and environment

2022-08-29T16:40:05+08:00

Theatre, the earliest form of entertainment and enlightenment in Nigeria, is becoming a ghost of itself as a result of its inability to take on the colouration of the times. Some scholars are of the view that there should be a revival of the theatre by establishing more theatre while it remains bonded to its functional root, the live stage, because of its uniqueness. This study examined the likelihood of this renaissance and its survival in the face of the deluge of other media of entertainment in a digitally advanced era and environment. The study relied on the Media Displacement Theory, MDT, which explains a paradigm shift in an individual's use of new media by discarding the preceding one. Using in-depth interviews and Focus Group Discussions, FGD, the study revealed that live theatre-going culture has become unpopular with the Nigerian audience as a result of digital technology and sundry circumstances in recent times, which include insecurity and the COVID-19 outbreak that negates public gathering. The paper advanced that Nigerian theatre cannot afford to remain glued to its roots in a technologically digitalised environment or society, but has to evolve.

Good and God: The Enlightenment Projects in Europe and China

2022-04-15T16:45:06+08:00

This paper will explore the following themes: (1) To argue that the concepts of Good and God belong to distinctly different discourses – the former to ethics or moral philosophy, the latter to religion; (2) There is no necessary logical link between Good and God; (3) Far from God logically preceding Good, it is Good which logically precedes God and guarantees its existence as a supernatural entity; (4) From above it follows that a society can be moral and not subscribe to a religion which postulates the existence of God as a supernatural entity; (5) Chinese history, its culture and its civilisation which have lasted and continues to endure for at least two and a half thousand years constitutes a refutation of the thesis that there can be no morality without religion and that a society resting solely on Good and not God could survive; (6) European Enlightenment which occurred in the 18th century is about dispensing with God and religion, ushering in secularism and humanism as an alternative philosophical foundation for society; (7) The Chinese has been secular and humanistic since the Spring and Autumn period when Kongzi and other philosophers lived and taught. This means that the Chinese Enlightenment Project has occurred, more than two thousand years before the European Enlightenment Project; (8) Furthermore, there is compelling circumstantial evidence that the Chinese Project could have played a role in the emergence of the European Project via the Jesuit route of knowledge transmission from the East to the West.

Epistemic value of transmitted reports (hadiths) in Shi'ism

2022-03-03T18:16:06+08:00

Unit-report (al-khabar al-wahid/pl. al-akhbar al-ahad) constitute almost all transmitted reports (hadiths) compendiums in Islam. Still, there are numerous arguments about the scope of their authenticity among Muslim scholars (‘ulama). The present paper focusing on Shi‘ism (Imamism) first addresses the doctrines of the significant theologians and jurists of the school of Baghdad in the early centuries of Shi‘a-Islam, the school of Hilla in the middle centuries, and 14th century Shi‘a scholars on the epistemological status of al-akhbar al- ahad. It then will explore the central importance of ‘certitude’ (yaqin) in setting up the criteria of the authenticity of the hadiths among the early Imami scholars. This topic is naturally involved with the historical dispute of Usuli jurists and Akhbari. After examining the rationale of the authenticity of unit-report in the legal process and jurisprudence, the paper will deal with a substantial question: was the unit-report among the founder of Imami’s doctrines an authentic and reliable source in other sciences like kalam, divine metaphysics, experimental sciences, e.g. medicine (tibb), economic, sociology, politics and astronomy, or in the issues like the creation of the universe and ontological status of Prophet and Imams?