Robustness of the Poverty Measures: Evidence from Farm Households in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

The use of a plethora of poverty indexes is sometimes fraught with difficulties. The purpose of this research was to quantitatively assess poverty and to examine the robustness of the poverty metrics. Selecting representative farm homes required a multistage sample technique, which was implemented. A total of 150 rural homes were surveyed using questionnaires. Stochastic dominance and the weighted poverty measures of Foster, Greer and Thorbecke were used in this work to examine the weighted poverty measures' resilience and sensitivity to changes in the poverty line. According to the findings, as people become older and their families get larger, the likelihood, severity, and depth of poverty increases. An asymptotic sampling distribution was utilized to infer whether poverty was larger across a variety of hypothetical poverty lines by stochastic dominance analysis. First-order stochastic dominance was found, with the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of households headed by people over 60 years old lying totally above the other distribution functions (CDFs). The CDF of single families was lower than the CDF of married households, according to the findings. At any poverty level, the CDF of families with more than 10 household members stochastically dominated those with fewer family members. Many households will be lifted out of poverty if poverty-reduction initiatives are targeted at those over 60 and those with big families.

Poststructuralist and Postcolonial Analysis of the Myth of Objectivity of Anglo-American Literary Tradition

Poststructuralist and Postcolonial Analysis of the Myth of Objectivity of Anglo-American Literary Tradition Anglo-American Literary Tradition is humanist, mimetic, teleological and canonical. Humanism manifests itself in its emphasis on individual as a unified entity and a rational being and culminates in valorizing the author and the reader. Mimesis signifies representation, depiction, presentation, realism, correspondence, and resemblance. Mimetic view of language suggests that language describes and represents reality objectively. Anglo-American Literary Tradition is canonical. Shakespeare is presented as the centre of Western literary canon and is considered as indispensable to the western culture as Christ is to Christianity. Teleology reflects itself in the concern among the western critics and authors for the maintenance of form of literature and its role in life. The objectivity of Anglo-American Literary Tradition implies that it is neutral, impersonal and universal. Poststructuralism challenges and subverts the traditional concepts of language, author, text, meaning and reading practices. It exposes the western culture to be phonocentric, phallocentric and logocentric. Postmodernism denies all claims to objectivity, universality and teleology. It denies all truth claims and privileges hyper-reality. Postcolonial criticism exposes western art and literature to be complicit in the colonization project. The postcolonial critics show how the myths of universality and objectivity were enlisted in projecting western culture and ideology through art and literature in the once colonized world. Shakespeare was imposed on the colonized people as a source of universal values. His works were projected as embodying human nature. Shakespeare was enrolled in the colonization project for his valorizing western race and culture and condemnation of people of other cultures and religions. Presence of racist and colonial content in his work has seriously dented his reputation as champion of humanity. The critics from the postcolonial world are taking Shakespeare to task for his involvement in race politics.