The study explores the influence of Christian beliefs on herbal medicine practices among Christian healers in Asante of Ghana. It uses interviews with six certified Christian healers from Santasi, Dwaben, Kotei, Ayigya, and Abrepo to build a nuanced historical narrative concerning the subject matter under review. The findings, organised into five major themes, reveal that Christian healers view herbal remedies as divine gifts, legitimised through prayer and scriptural references. Treatment practices incorporate spiritual components, such as prayer, anointing, and scripture reading, promoting a holistic healing approach. This integration of faith and herbal medicine enhances treatment effectiveness and fosters trust. The study also reveals that Christian faith significantly alters public perceptions of herbal medicine, positioning herbs within the divine care framework. This research provides insights into the relationship between religion and health practices in contemporary Ghana.
This article examines archival violence and poetic reconstruction in the work of the British-Ethiopian poet Lemn Sissay, focusing on his debut collection Rebel Without Applause ( 1992/2016). Drawing on Sissay’s experience as a “child of the state” removed from his Ethiopian mother at birth, renamed by social services, and raised within the British care system the article argues that bureaucratic records inflict epistemic harm through erasure, fragmentation, surveillance, and the imposition of reductive identities. Integrating archival theory (Derrida, 1996; Mbembe, 2002; Stoler, 2009; Foucault, 1977), trauma and memory studies (Caruth, 1996; Hirsch, 2012; Cvetkovich, 2003), and diasporic frameworks (Gilroy, 1993; Hall, 1990; Brah, 1996), it positions Sissay’s early poetry as a dynamic counter-archive. Close readings of poems such as “Invisible Kisses,” “Child of the State,” “The Report,” “Case History,” “The Foster Files,” “Freedom Ticket,” “Passport,” and “The City” demonstrate how Sissay appropriates and disrupts institutional language through fragmentation, repetition, minimalism, irony, and rhythmic orality. These formal strategies do not merely represent trauma but actively reconstruct subjectivity, transforming archival absence into affective memory and hybrid identity formation. By re-voicing and subverting bureaucratic discourse, Sissay converts the impersonal logic of state documentation into embodied, performative testimony, enacting a form of poetic justice that reclaims narrative agency, restores cultural and emotional continuity, and challenges the authority of the state archive over marginalized lives. The article also traces the trajectory of Sissay’s poetics from his early work to his most recent collection, Let the Light Pour In (2023), demonstrating continuity and evolution in his counter-archival practice.
Online gambling and betting have become a massive global industry in the age of digital capitalism, fueled by advanced technological capabilities and aggressive marketing strategies. This study examines the advertising content of five different platforms operating illegally in Turkey (1xBet, Bettilt, Bahsegel, Mostbet, Meritroyalbet) and the ideological world constructed by this content using a purposive sampling method. Ten prominent advertising videos were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis method, within the framework of Althusser’s (2014) theory of ideology. The findings reveal that the advertisements discursively marginalize the financial and psychological risks of gambling by condemning the mathematical risk to a “discursive silence,” representing wealth as something detached from labor and production, obtained solely through “luck” and “the power of desire.” Through luxury cars, stacks of banknotes, and objectified female figures, “hyper-reality” is constructed in the advertisements; the viewer is interpellated as a subject in the position of a “rational investor” or “member of an elite club.” The findings indicate that these advertisements function ideologically to normalize gambling, presenting it as a harmless and socially legitimate form of entertainment while obscuring its financial and psychological risks. In the era of digital capitalism, illegal betting and online gambling advertisements function as powerful ideological apparatuses. They obscure the financial and existential risks associated with gambling while constructing a hyper-reality based on narratives of luxury, status, and success. Through these representations, viewers are interpellated as rational investors or members of an exclusive elite.
This study examines how digital technologies can support the long-term preservation of Indigenous knowledge held by ethnic minority communities in China. It develops a four-dimensional framework that connects technological infrastructure, community empowerment, ethical governance, and sustainability mechanisms. A systematic review of literature published between 2020 and 2025, policy-document analysis, and three documented case studies were synthesized to identify recurring barriers and implementation patterns. The review indicates that digital competence gaps, infrastructure inequality, language barriers, cultural appropriation risks, sustainability pressures, and ethical governance gaps interact rather than operate independently. The analysis therefore treats digitization not simply as a technical exercise but as a governance and knowledge-relationship process in which questions of access, authority, consent, representation, and benefit sharing are central. The framework prioritizes community authority and culturally appropriate access controls as essential conditions, while positioning advanced tools such as knowledge graphs, AR/VR, and AI language processing as context-dependent options rather than universal solutions. It also provides a phased implementation logic intended to be adaptable to different linguistic, cultural, geographic, and institutional settings. The study contributes a China-contextualized bridge between archival practice, digital humanities, and Indigenous data governance. Because the study relies on secondary literature, policy documents, and publicly available case documentation and includes no primary community data, the framework should be treated as an analytical and planning model requiring participatory validation before local implementation.
Tribal prejudice remains a major obstacle to national cohesion in Nigeria, where ethnic identities continue to shape social relations, political participation, and access to opportunities. This article examines the representation of tribal prejudice in Mildred Okwo’s The Meeting (2012) and Kemi Adetiba’s The Wedding Party (2016). Drawing on intersectionality theory, it explores how ethnicity intersects with class, gender, bureaucracy, culture, and power to produce discrimination and exclusion. Using qualitative textual analysis, the study finds that The Meeting critiques institutionalised tribal prejudice through bureaucratic favouritism and ethnic patronage, while The Wedding Party exposes stereotypes and cultural tensions within family and interpersonal relationships. Despite their different genres, both films challenge ethnocentrism by promoting intercultural dialogue, empathy, meritocracy, and cross-cultural relationships as foundations for national cohesion. The article argues that Nollywood serves not only as entertainment but also as a cultural institution capable of interrogating ethnic divisions and encouraging inclusive national consciousness. By extending intersectionality to ethnic inequality in postcolonial Nigeria, the study contributes to scholarship on Nollywood, representation, and nation-building.
