ABSTRACT
The idea of a clean break between stability and contention, and the duality between social structure and countercultural challenge still shapes culturalist analyses, with the effect that the cultural aspects of political and economic structures and opportunities are obscured. The causal factors that are privileged are mainly acultural. Culture is neither approached as entangled with social structures nor conceptualised as a source of mobilisation. Where culture is given attention, it is analysed as a distinct entity or the background to political and economic factors of significance; not as a causal factor in its own right. Some scholars emphasise the external origin or orientation of Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) frames. Such an effort undermines any continuity between MOSOP and the place or culture within which it emerged. Indeed, MOSOP appealed to global frames but it remained rooted in and motivated by institutional traditions in Ogoni and Nigeria as a whole.
