Development Sociology

PurposeThe index case of COVID-19 in Nigeria was reported on 27 February 2020. Subsequently, the exponential increase in cases has brought about the partial and total lockdown of cities, the closure of all schools and the shutdown of government offices in order to curtail the spread of COVID-19. COVID-19 and its subsequent drastic curtailment policies have implications on vulnerable groups, especially, informal workers who constitute about 70% of the active working population in Nigeria. This reflective discourse critically engages the plight of informal workers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.Design/methodology/approachThe research was guided by the epistemology of pandemic interpretationism. It engages contextual reflections of the plight of economically vulnerable informal workers in Nigeria. Data were collected from secondary sources while rapid case studies were conducted with ten informal workers in Lagos and Ibadan. Afterwards, data were contextually analys...

The spread of soccer viewing centres (SVCs) in Nigeria is one of the unfolding legacies of global sporting media in Africa. While, providing access to live broadcast of European soccer competitions, SVCs have developed into supplementary social spaces where culturally defined rules of social relations are contested. Using Goffman's notion of performance and Agbalagba in Yoruba normative system, in conjunction with sociological perspective on space, the study explores the context and processes in the transformation of age social relations in Ibadan, SouthWestern Nigeria. Data were obtained through participant observation, and 23 in-depth interviews with viewing centre owners and soccer fans. Findings depict the SVC as a constructed space, with conflicting meanings, attitudes and practices, which inadvertently fracture and render fluid, the expectations of norms of age social relations. In conclusion, European soccer drives the spread of supplementary social spaces which impact local social structures in critical ways.

The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria describes children as the heritage of the society because children occupy a special place in societal survival and continuity. Children are esteemed and appreciated. Thus, the embedded culture propagates the essentiality of children, the need for proper socialisation and internalisation to make a responsible being ( Omoluabi). Also, children are prioritised above material wealth, and the essentiality of child wellbeing and education is emphasised in aspects of popular culture such as oral poetry, proverbs, local songs and popular music among others. Using extant elements of Yoruba popular culture which have remained dominant, this article contextually examines the value of children among the Yoruba.

This study utilised a context-based analysis of field observations and fifteen in-depth interviews to examine how begging is practiced by the elderly in a city in Southwestern Nigeria. As both sub-categories of beggars in the population and the larger elderly persons in the society, elderly beggars are a distinct demographic group whose needs differ from the rest of the population. Adopting a livelihood perspective as the exploratory frame, the study explains how beggary constitutes a rational response to economic, social, physiological, institutional and structural imperatives, adopted by old people as a strategy for improving their wellbeing. The study concluded that in trying to eradicate begging among elderly, the context of their emergence must be duly examined and given considerable attention in the policy process. Efforts should also be directed at supporting households headed by the elderly as means of removing the most fundamental social and economic situations that promote...

This paper provides a contextual discourse on the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent reality of taken-for-granted nuances using the epistemology of everyday sociology. The COVID-19 pandemic has become a global disease that has virtually affected all facets of life. Nigerian government has moved swiftly to curb the pandemic through containment protocols of lockdown, social distancing, face masking, discreet salutation and hand hygiene. As social actors continue to interact amid the pandemic, they construct and reconstruct the world around them through the social interpretations and contextual meanings derived from these containment protocols. The taken-for-granted nuances and meanings embedded in these micro interpretations allow social actors to take interpretive actions based on the meanings attached to COVID-19 pandemic and the containment protocols.