Lawuyi, Olatunde Bayo. “The Social Marketing of Elites: The Advertised Self in Obituaries and Congratulations in Some Nigerian Dailies.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 61, no. 2 (1991): 247–63. https://doi.org/10.2307/1160617.

This article is concerned with the analysis of elite culture and the way it articulates the particular and the universal within an heterogenous, stratified and dynamic system. The focus is on elite values in obituary and congratulation advertisements in the Daily Times (Lagos) and Daily Sketch (Ibadan), but careful consideration has been given to other newspapers. A remarkably similar pattern of publication is found nationally within Nigeria and regionally along the West African coast. Even elite residents abroad, with limited access to their national dailies, patronize regional publications like West Africa to advertise their concerns, interests and achievements. The accent is on the personal and institutional processes involved in the creation and maintenance of communities: for instance, career making, mobilization of resources and personnel, and interaction of personalities. The thesis is that the obituary and congratulation advertisements are not only about power but are also attributes of status. Specifically, the power order and the economic order that inform their construction form a dialectic the essential manifestation of which is selfhood (Cohen, 1976). This selfhood, as a social construct, brings out not only the public nature of success, but also how it may be altered to define a new situation or status.

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