A HISTORY OF IFA IKOT OKPON, ETOI ( FROM EARLIEST TIME TO 2015.)
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
- Background of the study
Historical research, sometimes referred to as historiography, means according to Berg (2012) investigation of elements from history. It is a specific type of scientific research work. According to Hendl (2005) is one of the basic approaches of qualitative research. Kerlinger (1972: 673) defines historical research as critical investigation of events, development and experiences of the past, careful consideration of past testimonies from the perspective of information sources validity and subsequent interpretation of the concerned testimonies. It differs from other scientific activities only by the subject matter which is hard to capture – the past – and especially by a difficult task of interpretation influenced by the nature of the unique subject matter. The term historiography comprises a description of methods which we need to do historical research. Collecting historical data is only one part of historiography. Historical research finds its use in various areas.
The past is a source of experience. Ignorance of the past or forgetting it means a loss of an inexpressible value. The folk wisdom say us: “The nation which forgets its history is forced to repeat the same mistakes.” Preceding generations have tried a lot of things. Through a historical research we have the chance to learn from their lives. However, we must keep in mind that not everything from preceding past can be used. If we keep historical memory, we can consider each new phenomenon, whether it has existed before and how it was solved. If we do not have this memory, then we are really doomed to repeat history. Following history of anything is informative, interesting as well as important and reasoned.
According to Mills (2001), Studying the history of a geographic location resembles the activity of an explorer. The first stage in historical research is heuristics which more specifically means discovering, gathering and research of both historical sources and literature. It does not study the subject of its research immediately but through historical sources and literature, which is distinctive of the science of history.
Communities such as Iffa Ikot Okpon Etoi are found in localities, but Iffa Ikot Okpon Etoi is clearly not synonymous with locality. In defining a community, the word community implies people interacting in various ways within certain boundaries that mark off one community from another. While suggesting the existence of other versions of community the emphasis in Dennis Mills’ article is on face-to-face territorial communities, small enough for most people to be known to each other (see also Mills 2001: 9). Defining community in this way inevitably restricts its application to smallish areas. Furthermore, community appears to be viewed as networks of people or groups, held together by economic or political ties. As Wright (1992: 204/205) points out, studies of communities appear to engage with that ‘area of social activity’ between the ‘front doors where the private space of households starts, and the edge of the village or parish where “community” becomes “state”’. Community history is thus confined to how those networks operate in relatively small bounded areas, comparing these across time and space.
But community also has more ideological connotations (Short 1992: 8). Even one of the leading writers of the now discredited school of community studies pointed out that community was both ‘an arena of social living marked by some degree of social coherence’ and ‘community sentiment’ (Frankenberg 1966: 15). This introduces a more discursive aspect of community, that ‘rhetorical warmth’ which, along ‘conceptual vagueness’, Withington and Shephard (2001) identify as key aspects of the term. As they point out, there is a continuing tension between past and current meanings of community, with the powerful sense that community is the converse of modernity, conjuring up notions of conflict free social relations, a ‘byword for solidity and antidote to anonymous urban life’ (Schofield 2003: 5). This ideological or discursive side to community has given rise to calls for more study of the symbols and images of ‘community’ as much as studies of ‘communities’ per se (Wright 1992: 211). Perhaps not surprisingly, given the difficulty of finding and interpreting relevant sources, historians have been slower to address this issue of the discursive formation and reproduction of community, leaving this to the anthropologists (Cohen 1986), although early modern historians have provided some intriguing pointers (Shephard and Withington 2000).
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A HISTORY OF IFA IKOT OKPON, ETOI ( FROM EARLIEST TIME TO 2015.)