African Spirituality Politics And Knowledge Systems

Author : Toyin Falola
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2022-03-10
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781350271968

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African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems by Toyin Falola Pdf

Focusing on the three leading religious traditions in Africa (African Traditional Religion, Islam, and Christianity), this book shows how belief in the supremacy of sacred words compels actions and influences practices in contemporary Africa. "Sacred words” are taken to mean holy texts as in divination, the Quran and the Bible. Toyin Falola evaluates how religious leaders engage with sacred words, both orals and texts, engendering practices that reveal the expression of religious beliefs, the impact of those beliefs, and the knowledge contained in them. Attention is given to the key ideas in the words chosen by religious leaders, and how they form a continuous knowledge system, impacting the politics of managing society and people.

Author : Toyin Falola,Nicole Griffin
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2021-09-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781538150252

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Religious Beliefs and Knowledge Systems in Africa by Toyin Falola,Nicole Griffin Pdf

Key to African studies is understanding the knowledge systems of the continent and her diaspora. The representation and understanding of Africa are dependent on the observer’s definition of knowledge. Afrocentric knowledge is comprised of a collection of political, religious, and indigenous belief systems. Religious Beliefs and Knowledge Systems in Africa begins with deconstructing the Western philosophy of knowledge before defining and exploring the epistemic disciplines of Africa. It transcends postcolonial critique, through an Afrocentric approach to knowledge divided into three key themes. The first of these is the African worldview, exploring knowledge through eldership, witchcraft, and divination. This is followed up by kingship ideology and epistemologies, exploring discussing how politics, religion, and belief shape African society. Finally, the world religion chapter examines Christianity, Islam, and Pentecostalism in their impact on African ways of knowing. This book calls to action new fields of study in universities, encouraging a greater understanding of African ways of knowing through more nuanced disciplines.

Author : Toyin Falola
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 535 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2022-07-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9781316511237

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Decolonizing African Knowledge by Toyin Falola Pdf

Uses textual and visual materials on the 'Self' to understand how African ways of thinking shape the nature of societies.

Author : Munyaradzi Mawere
Publisher : African Books Collective
Page : 138 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789956726851

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African Belief and Knowledge Systems by Munyaradzi Mawere Pdf

The debate on the existence of African philosophy has taken central stage in academic circles, and academics and researchers have tussled with various aspects of this subject. This book notes that the debate on the existence of African philosophy is no longer necessary. Instead, it urges scholars to demonstrate the different philosophical genres embedded in African philosophy. As such, the book explores African metaphysical epistemology with the hope to redirect the debate on African philosophy. It articulates and systematizes metaphysical and epistemological issues in general and in particular on Africa. The book aptly shows how these issues intersect with the philosophy of life, traditional beliefs, knowledge systems and practices of ordinary Africans and the challenges they raise for scholarship in and on philosophy with relevance to Africa.

Author : Teboho Pitso
Publisher : African Sun Media
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2023-05-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781991201973

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The Forgotten by Teboho Pitso Pdf

The book focuses on uncovering lies and myths that sustain the colonial and European supremacist agendas and restores Africa’s role in originating civilisation, science, mathematics, philosophy, spirituality, and Christianity. It forms part of questioning the deification of Global North episteme as a universal theory. The volume thus contributes to Southern theorisation that draws from multiple practices and lived experiences of those from the austral geographic location (Global South) whose understanding of time is secular. Such theorisation challenges and denounces the imperialist gaze on contemporary science as the sole spectacle and arbiter of its significance in society. The Global South episteme, whose sources are indigenous practices, collective knowing, and collective experiences, has all the right to claim its stake in hallowed spaces of knowledge production.

Author : Nyoni, Bednicho
Publisher : University of Bamberg Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783863096649

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Abundant Life and Basic Needs by Nyoni, Bednicho Pdf

"Western neglecting traditional religion is an important factor for the failure of many developmental strategies towards Africa. Therefore, religion(s) of the indigenous peoples must be given the neccesary attention. The book presents the example of the Shona religion playing a critical role in the life of the Zimbabweans. If incorporated, it will contribute to the better success of development initiatives." --back cover

Author : Njoki N. Wane,Energy L. Manyimo,Eric J. Ritskes
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2011-10-29
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789460916038

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Spirituality, Education & Society by Njoki N. Wane,Energy L. Manyimo,Eric J. Ritskes Pdf

Spirituality, education and society: An integrated approach argues the value of spirituality in education as a way to address the lived experiences and personal knowledge of students, with the goal of creating a more holistic, transformative educational process. This edited volume has a wide array of viewpoints which all point to the importance of spirituality in the authors’ personal lives, their communities and society at large. Spirituality is conceptualised as a base from which to challenge dominant forms of knowing, while in the process being able to center and engage with an important aspect of the student that has been missing from current evaluations – their spiritual selves.Within the diversity of this volume it becomes evident that spirituality cannot be confined to a singular definition and that educators must be willing to create spaces to foster spiritual growth and exploration if we are to break away from the commoditized, disempowering system that is so dominant today. This edited collection is a valuable resource for students, practitioners, educators and administrators who wish to engage in transformational schooling. Its multidisciplinary approach engages ideas around critical pedagogy, sociology of education, and inclusive schooling. There is an increasing need for exploring novel paradigms of studying education in the context of the dynamics that straddle social, economic and technological processes that have come to characterize the world in recent years. This book is a timely contribution in this respect as its focus transcends hitherto applied approaches that depend largely on western orientation. The book breaks new grounds in studying education and society that find significant relevance in societies that are marginalized by the dominant western understanding. The authors draw from the rich heritage of spirituality that is akin to the non-western social paradigms to develop a rigorous but creative concept of schooling. I am sure practitioners, researchers and students of education will find it a valuable source of practical and theoretical information that would widen their horizon of understanding of sociology of education. - Tom Mongare Ndege, PhD, Moi University, Kenya The editors have compiled a brilliant collection of essays. Each piece of scholarly work shows how spirituality is a paramount part of our everyday lives and is connected to teaching, learning, living and healing. This is a timely and most relevant work that is sure to spur critical dialogue and discussion. This collection shows that while the spirit may be wounded it can never be broken. - Erica Neeganagwedgin, PhD, University of Toronto

Author : Ikechukwu Anthony Kanu
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2021
Category : Africa, Sub-Saharan
ISBN : 9789975554

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African Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Systems by Ikechukwu Anthony Kanu Pdf

Author : V. Y. Mudimbe
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2016-10-06
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781474281379

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Tales of Faith by V. Y. Mudimbe Pdf

This book explores African religious practice and its relation to African identity. It takes the problem of faith as its central theme, emphasizing the particular existential tensions dividing yet uniting the Christian and the African. Drawing on Heidegger and Sartre, it analyses these tensions underlying and creating the dialogues of hybridity or metissage.

Author : Hlumelo Biko
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 207 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2024-06-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781040038635

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The God in Us by Hlumelo Biko Pdf

This book traces the unitary source of all of the world’s major religions. The book underscores the fact that there are many ways in which humanity has sought revelation of God, yet there is a common inspiration behind humanity’s God concept. The author’s analysis of world religions or faiths adopts a multi-interdisciplinary approach taking the reader through historical, anthropological, archaeological, and theological viewpoints to make juxtapositions. God in us is a rich resource that helps the readers understand the origins of human civilisation and how humans began to worship God, domesticate animals like sheep, invent astrology and create languages. Biko’s research also delves deeper into unveiling African indigenous knowledge systems and science that predate the arrival of the colonisers on the African soil. Print edition not for sale in Sub Saharan Africa.

Author : Ikechukwu Anthony Kanu
Publisher : AuthorHouse
Page : 407 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2022-07-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781665599597

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African Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Systems by Ikechukwu Anthony Kanu Pdf

The perspectives in this book reveal how in African anthroposophy, earth-based spiritual traditions and innovative spiritual practices are already emerging in response to the painful realities of climate change, mass extinction, biodiversity loss, and the disruption of local and global ecosystems which have for long not received the attention that it duly deserves. This piece, therefore, will become one of the greatest ornaments and lights in the world of African eco-spirituality as it responds to questions that are long overdue.

Author : Allan Charles Dawson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015080753539

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Shrines in Africa by Allan Charles Dawson Pdf

In the African context, shrines are cultural signposts that help one understand and read the ethnic, territorial, and social lay of the land. The contributions gathered here by Allan Charles Dawson demonstrate how African shrines help to define ethnic boundaries, shape group identity, and symbolically articulate a society's connection with the land it occupies. Shrines are physical manifestations of a group's claim to a particular piece of land and are thus markers of identity--they represent, both figuratively and literally, a community's 'roots' in the land it works and lives on. The shrine is representative of a connection with the land at the cosmological and supernatural level and, in terms of a community's or ethnic group's claim to cultivable territory, serves as a reminder to outsiders of ownership. Shrines in Africa explores how African shrines, in all their variable and diverse forms, are more than just spiritual vessels or points of worship--they are powerful symbols of ethnic solidarity, group cohesion, and knowledge about the landscape. Moreover, in ways subtle and nuanced, shrines represent ideas about legitimacy and authenticity in the context of the post-colonial African state.

Author : Stephen Ellis,Gerrie ter Haar
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : History
ISBN : 0195220161

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Worlds of Power by Stephen Ellis,Gerrie ter Haar Pdf

With Christian revivals (including Evangelicals in the White House), Islamic radicalism and the revitalisation of traditional religions it is clear that the world is not heading towards a community of secular states. Nowhere are religious thought and political practice more closely intertwined than in Africa. African migrants in Europe and America who send home money to build churches and mosques, African politicians who consult diviners, guerrilla fighters who believe that amulets can protect them from bullets, and ordinary people who seek ritual healing: all of these are applying religious ideas to everyday problems of existence, at every level of society. Far from falling off the map of the world, Africa is today a leading centre of Christianity and a growing field of Islamic activism, while African traditional religions are gaining converts in the West. One cannot understand the politics of the present without taking religious thought seriously. Stories about witches, miracles, or people returning from the dead incite political action. In Africa religious belief has a huge impact on politics, from the top of society to the bottom. Religious ideas show what people actually think about the world and how to deal with it. Ellis and Ter Haar maintain that the specific content of religious thought has to be mastered if we are to grasp the political significance of religion in Africa today, but their book also informs our understanding of the relationship between religion and political practice in general.

Author : Mawere, Munyaradzi,Awuah-Nyamekye, Samuel
Publisher : Langaa RPCIG
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2015-04-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789956792696

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Between Rhetoric and Reality by Mawere, Munyaradzi,Awuah-Nyamekye, Samuel Pdf

Since time immemorial, indigenous peoples around the world have developed knowledge systems to ensure their continued survival in their respective territories. These knowledge systems have always been dynamic such that they could meet new challenges. Yet, since the so-called enlightenment period, these knowledges have been supplanted by the Western enlightenment science or colonial science hegemony and arrogance such that in many cases they were relegated to the periphery. Some Euro-centric scholars even viewed indigenous knowledge as superstitious, irrational and anti-development. This erroneous view has, since the colonial period, spread like veld fire to the extent of being internalised by some political elites and Euro-centric academics of Africa and elsewhere. However, for some time now, the potential role that indigenous peoples and their knowledge can play in addressing some of the global problems haunting humanity across the world is increasingly emerging as part of international discourse. This book presents an interesting and insightful discourse on the state and role that indigenous knowledge can play in addressing a tapestry of problems of the world and the challenges connected with the application of indigenous knowledge in enlightenment science-dominated contexts. The book is not only useful to academics and students in the fields of indigenous studies and anthropology, but also those in other fields such as environmental science, social and political ecology, development studies, policy studies, economic history, and African studies.

Author : Nhemachena, Artwell,Hlabangane, Nokuthula,Matowanyika, Joseph Z. Z.
Publisher : Langaa RPCIG
Page : 351 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2020-03-02
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9789956551866

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Decolonising Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in an Age of Technocolonialism by Nhemachena, Artwell,Hlabangane, Nokuthula,Matowanyika, Joseph Z. Z. Pdf

Positing the notions of coloniality of ignorance and geopolitics of ignorance as central to coloniality and colonisation, this book examines how colonialists socially produced ignorance among colonised indigenous peoples so as to render them docile and manageable. Dismissing colonial descriptions of indigenous people as savages, illiterate, irrational, prelogical, mystical, primitive, barbaric and backward, the book argues that imperialists/colonialists contrived geopolitics of ignorance wherein indigenous regions were forced to become ignorant, hence containable and manageable in the imperial world. Questioning the provenance of modernist epistemologies, the book asks why Eurocentric scholars only contest the provenance of indigenous knowledges, artefacts and scientific collections. Interrogating why empire sponsors the decolonisation of universities/epistemologies in indigenous territories while resisting the repatriation/restitution of indigenous artefacts, the book also wonders why Westerners who still retain indigenous artefacts, skulls and skeletons in their museums, universities and private collections do not consider such artefacts and skulls to be colonising them as well. The book is valuable to scholars and activists in the fields of anthropology, museums and heritage studies, science and technology studies, decoloniality, policymaking, education, politics, sociology and development studies.