This document summarizes Graham Furniss' presentation on cultural translation and debate. The presentation discussed how values and their interpretations are constantly debated through encoding in evaluative processes. It noted that debate and contestation equally surround issues like polio vaccination and women's education in northern Nigeria. The presentation also explored how motivations, hopes and fears are always contested and changing within and between groups in society, and how they take on different implications as they move from personal narratives to various media forms. It briefly discussed how Boko Haram represented an extreme end of ongoing debates about what is permitted or forbidden in Islam and Hausa culture. It also summarized the rise of popular Hausa fiction since 1987 which has been the subject of widespread public debates about

1. AHRC Translating Cultures Workshop
12 July 2012
Rashin Sani Ya Fi Dare Duhu (Hausa proverb) –
Ignorance is darker than the night
Graham Furniss
SOAS, University of London

2. • Dynamics of cultural translation and debate
• Encoding in evaluative processes
• Values themselves and their interpretation
are constantly debated

3. • Equally relevant for the MDG world of
development debate
• In northern Nigeria debate and contestation
of values equally surrounds issues like polio
vaccination and women’s education

4. • Not just the positive and negative evaluation
of things
• Equally about understanding motivations,
hopes and fears based upon experience

5. • Motivations, hopes and fears are always
contested, alternative, growing or shrinking,
within and between groups and sectors of
society
• Different implications as they move from
personal narrative to anecdote, to text, to
performance, to radio, to video, to social
media

6. Humanities and public policy concerns
• Boko Haram was at the far end of a spectrum
of ongoing and widespread debate about
• What is enjoined and what forbidden in Islam
• What is in line with or opposed to a concept
of ‘Hausa culture’

7. Hausa popular fiction
• Since 1987 an explosion of popular fiction
writing in Hausa
• Mostly self-published, and cheap
• Written increasingly by women
• Devoured by the relatively young

8. • Subject of widespread public debate
• In conferences, the press, on radio, and on TV
• About its value or lack of value
• Moral, economic, aesthetic and educational
value

17. Thank you