Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T16:44:34.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Symbol of Wealth and Prestige: A Social History of Chinese-made Enamelware in Northern Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2020

Shaonan Liu Open the ORCID record for Shaonan Liu [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Between the 1950s and the 1990s, Chinese enamelware products dominated kitchens, living rooms, and bedrooms in the northern part of Nigeria. These were initially imported from China by European trading firms but later manufactured in Nigeria by Chinese-owned factories. Liu concludes that it was not only the immediately obvious “modern” advantages of the enamelware that enabled it to dominate northern Nigeria’s market, but it was also its integration into local, socio-cultural networks of meaning that granted it a significance far beyond its practical use. Such processes of integration further enabled enamelware to become an important component of local marriage customs and an essential possession for Hausa women.

Résumé

Résumé

Entre les années 1950 et 1990, les produits en métal émaillé chinois dominaient les cuisines, les salons et les chambres dans la partie nord du Nigeria. Ceux-ci ont d’abord été importés de Chine par des sociétés commerciales européennes, mais plus tard furent fabriqués au Nigeria par des usines chinoises. Liu conclut que ce n’est pas seulement les avantages « modernes » immédiatement évidents du métal émaillé qui lui ont permis de dominer le marché du nord du Nigeria, mais aussi son intégration dans des réseaux de sens au niveau local et socioculturel qui lui ont accordé une signification au-delà de son utilisation pratique. De tels processus d’intégration ont permis aux produits en métal émaillé de devenir une composante importante des coutumes locales de mariage et un bien précieux et essentiel pour les femmes haussa.

Resumo

Resumo

Entre as décadas de 1950 e 1990, na Nigéria setentrional, os produtos esmaltados chineses ganharam uma presença dominante nas cozinhas, nas salas de estar e nos quartos de dormir. Inicialmente, estes produtos eram importados da China por empresas de import/export europeias, mas depois começaram a ser produzidos na Nigéria, em fábricas detidas por proprietários chineses. No presente artigo, Liu conclui que a preponderância destes utensílios no mercado nigeriano não resultou apenas das suas óbvias vantagens "modernas", tendo a sua integração nos códigos locais e socioculturais contribuído para lhes atribuir um significado muito mais abrangente do que a sua mera aplicação prática. Estes processos de integração facilitaram ainda mais o papel desempenhado pelos utensílios de esmalte chineses nas cerimónias locais de casamento e enquanto bens essenciais para todas as mulheres da etnia hausa.

Keywords

enamelwareChinese factoriesNigeriawomengenderindigenous containers
Type
Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 212 - 237
Copyright
© African Studies Association, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achebe, Nwando. 2000. Farmers, Traders, Warriors and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900–1960. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Ahmed, S. Gimba. 1962. “Grass Weaving.” Nigeria Magazine, September.Google Scholar
Akinrinade, Sola, and Ogen, Olukoya. 2008. “Globalization and De-Industrialization: South-South Neo-Liberalism and the Collapse of the Nigerian Textile Industry.” The Global South 2 (2): 159–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ali, Vincent Egwu. 2010. “An Investigation into the Influence of Modernity on the Traditional Pottery Industry of the Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria during the Colonial and Post-Colonial Eras.” Institute of African Studies Research Review 26 (2): 75–89.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Appadurai, Arjun, 3–63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callaway, Barbara. 1987. Muslim Hausa Women in Nigeria: Tradition and Change. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Chuku, Gloria. 1995. “Women in the Economy of Igboland, 1900 to 1970: A Survey.” African Economic History 23: 37–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Abner. 1969. Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Cook, Arthur Norton. 1943. British Enterprise in Nigeria. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Barbara. 1995. “Women’s Worth and Wedding Gift Exchange in Maradi, Niger, 1907–89.” Journal of African History 36: 121–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Barbara. 1997. Marriage in Maradi: Gender and Culture in a Hausa Society in Niger, 1900–1989. Portsmouth, N.H.: Oxford: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Cunningham, Jerimy J. 2009. “Pots and Political Economy: Enamel-Wealth, Gender, and Patriarchy in Mali.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2): 276–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dankwah, Kwaku Opoku and Valenta, Marko. 2019. “Chinese Entrepreneurial Migrants in Ghana: Socioeconomic Impacts and Ghanaian Trader Attitudes.” Journal of Modern African Studies 57(1): 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fagg, Angela. 1972. “A Preliminary Report on an Occupation Site in the Nok Valley, Nigeria: Samun Dukiya, AF/70/1.” West African Journal of Archaeology 2: 75–79.Google Scholar
Falola, Toyin, and Heaton, Matthew M.. 2008. A History of Nigeria. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, James. 1999. Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geschiere, Peter. 1997. The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. Translated by Geschiere, Peter and Roitman, Janet. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.Google Scholar
Herbert, Eugenia. 1984. Red Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Hogben, S. J., and Kirk-Greene, A. H. M.. 1966. The Emirates of Northern Nigeria: A Preliminary Survey of Their Historical Traditions. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hopkins, Anthony. 1973. An Economic History of West Africa. London: Longman.Google Scholar
King, John. 1962. “A Commentary on Contemporary Nigerian Pottery.” Nigeria Magazine.Google Scholar
Konan, Mildred A. 1974. “Calabashes in Northern Nigeria.” Expedition, Fall.Google Scholar
Liu, Shaonan. 2019. “China Town in Lagos: Chinese Migration and the Nigerian State Since the 1990s.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 54 (6): 783–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marfaing, Laurence, and Thiel, Alena. 2013. “The Impact of Chinese Business on Market Entry in Ghana AND Senegal.” Africa 83 (04): 646–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, E. F. 1903. “87. Notes on Some Native Objects from Northern Nigeria.” Man 3: 150–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Obeng, Mark Kwaku Mensah. 2019. “Rational or Irrational? Understanding the Uptake of ‘Made-in-China’ Products.” Asian Ethnicity 20 (1): 103–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pedler, Frederick. 1974. The Lion and The Unicorn in Africa: A History of the Origins of the United Africa Company 1787-1931. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Platte, Editha. 2004. “Towards an African Modernity: Plastic Pots and Enamel Ware in Kanuri-Women’s Rooms (Northern Nigeria).” Paideuma: Mitteilungen Zur Kulturkunde 50: 173–92.Google Scholar
Porter, Gina. 1996. “Competing Interests: Company Rivalry and Indigenous Markets in Nigeria in the Early Colonial Period.” Journal of Macromarketing 16 (1): 91–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowlands, Michael. 1996. “The Consumption of an African Modernity.” In African Material Culture, 188–213. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Sargent, Carolyn F., and Friedel, David A.. 1986. “From Clay to Metal: Culture Change and Container Usage among the Bariba of Northern Bénin, West Africa.” The African Archaeological Review 4: 177–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schildkrout, Enid. 1982. “Dependence and Autonomy: The Economic Activities of Secluded Hausa Women in Kano, Nigeria.” In Women and Work in Africa, edited by Bay, Edna G., 55–81. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Vernon-Jackson, Hugh. 1960. “Craft Work in Bida.” Journal of the International African Institute 30 (1): 51–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar