African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems

African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems
Author: Toyin Falola
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2022-03-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1350271950

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.

African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems

African Spirituality, Politics, and Knowledge Systems
Author: Toyin Falola
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2022-03-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1350271969

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.

African Religions

African Religions
Author: Jacob K. Olupona
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199790582

This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.

Encyclopedia of African Religion

Encyclopedia of African Religion
Author: Molefi Kete Asante
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2009
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1412936365

Collects almost five hundred entries that cover the African response to spirituality, taboos, ethics, sacred space, and objects.

Religious Beliefs and Knowledge Systems in Africa

Religious Beliefs and Knowledge Systems in Africa
Author: Toyin Falola
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2021-09-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1538150255

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.

African Spirituality

African Spirituality
Author: Anthony Ephirim-Donkor
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2021-03-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0761872612

Using the Akan in Ghana as a paradigmatic African representative group, African Spirituality: On Becoming Ancestors, Third Edition offers a unique African developmental praxis to eternal life immortality. Indeed, this way of life is predicated on the awareness and application of certain intrinsic values, which, if followed, lead to eternal life. As a way of living, African spirituality begins when an individual becomes morally and ethically responsible for one’s own actions while engaged on an ethical path (Ɔbra Bↄ) in pursuance of one’s unique career endeavor (Nkrabea). Though an individual quest, society is, however, the arbiter of one’s ethical and moral life, when society confers on the person adjudged a success the stage title of Nana. At old age, Ɔbra Bↄ ends as an active endeavor. However, as repositories of wisdom, senior elders continue to inculcate in succeeding generations the principles, art, and mastery of ideal life (Ɔbra pa). Then upon death, senior elders are transformed into deities, bequeathing to living descendants names worthy of evocation and worship. Indeed, this book is the first study of its kind to draw on the experiences of an entire people, their psychological dispositions and effects on the Akan during adulthood. Thus, this book brings a unique perspective to the study of spirituality, religion, developmental psychological theory, what it means to achieve perfection as an elder on earth, and upon death join the esteemed company of the Nananom Nsamanfo (Ancestors).

Introduction to African Religion

Introduction to African Religion
Author: John S. Mbiti
Publisher: Waveland Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2015-01-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1478628928

In his widely acclaimed survey, John Mbiti sheds light on the survival and prosperity of African Religion in different historical, geographical, sociological, cultural, and physical environments. He presents a constellation of African worldviews, beliefs in God, use of symbols, valued traditions, and practices that have taken root with African peoples throughout the vast continent. Mbiti’s accessible writing style sympathetically portrays how African Religion manifests itself in ritual, festival, healing, the human life cycle, and interplay with the mystical and invisible world. The account embraces foundational traditions, while touching on elements that spawn transitions, including migration, the spread of Christianity and Islam, political-economic development, and modern communication. This popular introduction leaves readers with informed knowledge of the riches of African heritage.

Decolonising Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in an Age of Technocolonialism

Decolonising Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) in an Age of Technocolonialism
Author: Nhemachena, Artwell
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2020-03-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9956551864

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.

From Pews to Politics

From Pews to Politics
Author: Gwyneth H. McClendon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2019-11-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108486576

Using Christianity in Africa, this book demonstrates that cultural influences, specifically religious sermons, can impact political participation.

Indigenous Knowledge and the Integration of Knowledge Systems

Indigenous Knowledge and the Integration of Knowledge Systems
Author: Catherine Alum Odora Hoppers
Publisher: New Africa Books
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2002
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781919876580

This book explores the role of the social and natural sciences in supporting the development of indigenous knowledge systems. It looks at how indigenous knowledge systems can impact on the transformation of knowledge generating institutions such as scientific and higher education institutions on the one hand, and the policy domain on the other.