Gender, African Philosophies, and Concepts

Gender, African Philosophies, and Concepts
Author: Musa W. Dube
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2024-03-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1003856004

This volume sets out to explore, propose, and generate feminist theories based on African indigenous philosophies and concepts. It investigates specific philosophical and ethical concepts that emerge from African indigenous religions and considers their potential for providing feminist imagination for social justice-oriented earth communities. The contributions examine African indigenous concepts such as Ubuntu, ancestorhood, trickster discourse, Mupo, Akwaaba, Tukumbeng, Eziko, storytelling, and Ngozi . They look to deconstruct oppressive social categories of gender, class, ethnicity, race, colonialism, heteronormativity, and anthropocentricism. The book will be of interest to scholars of religion, philosophy, gender studies, and African studies.

Family Matters

Family Matters
Author: Nkiru Uwechia Nzegwu
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0791481824

Prior to European colonialism, Igboland, a region in Nigeria, was a nonpatriarchal, nongendered society governed by separate but interdependent political systems for men and women. In the last one hundred fifty years, the Igbo family has undergone vast structural changes in response to a barrage of cultural forces. Critically rereading social practices and oral and written histories of Igbo women and the society, Nkiru Uwechia Nzegwu demonstrates how colonial laws, edicts, and judicial institutions facilitated the creation of gender inequality in Igbo society. Nzegwu exposes the unlikely convergence of Western feminist and African male judges' assumptions about "traditional" African values where women are subordinate and oppressed. Instead she offers a conception of equality based on historical Igbo family structures and practices that challenges the epistemological and ontological bases of Western feminist inquiry.

African Philosophy and the Epistemic Marginalization of Women

African Philosophy and the Epistemic Marginalization of Women
Author: Jonathan Chimakonam
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-08-14
Genre:
ISBN: 9780367591168

This book examines the underexplored notion of epistemic marginalization of women in the African intellectual place. Women's issues are still very much neglected by governments, corporate bodies and academics in sub-Saharan Africa. The entrenched traditional world-views which privilege men over women make it difficult for the modern day challenges posed by the neglect of the feminine epistemic perspective, to become obvious. Contributors address these issues from both theoretical and practical perspectives, demonstrating what philosophy could do to ameliorate the epistemic marginalization of women, as well as ways in which African philosphy exacerbates this marginalization. Philosophy is supposed to teach us how to lead the good life in all its ramifications; why is it failing in this duty in Africa where the issue of women's epistemic vision is concerned? The chapters raise feminist agitations to a new level; beginning from the regular campaigns for various women's rights and reaching a climax in an epistemic struggle in which the knowledge-controlling power to create, acquire, evaluate, regulate and disseminate is proposed as the last frontier of feminism.

Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference

Handbook of African Philosophy of Difference
Author: Elvis Imafidon
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-01-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9783030148348

This handbook explores essential philosophical questions about the experience of difference and the other in African societies. The contributions go beyond a mere discussion of empirical manifestations. They offer a critical analysis of, among other things, the very nature and essence of difference that makes such manifestations possible. Coverage examines the philosophical basis for the African contexts of gender differences, bodily differences and disability; racial, religious, and cultural differences; xenophobia and xenophilia; and issues of the otherings of non-human beings from human beings. These insightful analyses detail the ontological, epistemological, and moral foundations of difference and alterity in African societies, both traditional and modern. Readers will gain a deeper understanding into such questions as: What value is placed on the other in African societies? What is the ethics and burden of care for those considered different in African societies? What role does language play in the othering of the other in African societies? What is the nature and challenges of the alleged White-Black difference. This exploration offers a vital contribution to the philosophy of difference. It not only shows the importance of place in such theorization. It also contributes significantly to African philosophical discourse. This handbook will interest both undergraduate, postgraduate students, and researchers in such fields as African studies/philosophy, identity, racism and alterity studies in sociology, feminism and LGBT studies.

The Invention of Women

The Invention of Women
Author: Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 1997-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452903255

The "woman question", this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western contruction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures. Oyewumi traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age.

The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy

The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy
Author: Adeshina Afolayan
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 863
Release: 2017-11-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1137592915

This handbook investigates the current state and future possibilities of African Philosophy, as a discipline and as a practice, vis-à-vis the challenge of African development and Africa’s place in a globalized, neoliberal capitalist economy. The volume offers a comprehensive survey of the philosophical enterprise in Africa, especially with reference to current discourses, arguments and new issues—feminism and gender, terrorism and fundamentalism, sexuality, development, identity, pedagogy and multidisciplinarity, etc.—that are significant for understanding how Africa can resume its arrested march towards decolonization and liberation.

Gender

Gender
Author: Tina Chanter
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780826471680

Explores and analyses the main philosophical theories, ideas and arguments that inform, and are raised by questions of gender and sexuality.

Philosophy from Africa

Philosophy from Africa
Author: Pieter Hendrik Coetzee
Publisher: International Thomson Publishing Services
Total Pages: 486
Release: 1998
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

The perspectives provided in this volume offer wise and refreshing alternatives to problems of self and society, culture, aesthetics, metaphysics, and religion.

A Companion to African Philosophy

A Companion to African Philosophy
Author: Kwasi Wiredu
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 608
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0470997370

This volume of newly commissioned essays provides comprehensive coverage of African philosophy, ranging across disciplines and throughout the ages. Offers a distinctive historical treatment of African philosophy. Covers all the main branches of philosophy as addressed in the African tradition. Includes accounts of pre-colonial African philosophy and contemporary political thought.

Sage Philosophy

Sage Philosophy
Author: Henry Odera Oruka
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2022-06-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004452265

Sage Philosophy is an anthology of three main parts: Part one contains papers by Odera Oruka clearing the way and arguing about his research over the last decade on indigenous sages in Kenya. Part Two introduces verbatim interviews with a given number of those sages, while Part Three consists of published papers by scholars who are critics or commentators on the Oruka project. The author has spent the last decade in Kenya carrying out his research. It is the general stand of the book that the sages turn out to be thinkers or philosophers in no trivial sense, despite their lack of modern formal education. This study is a critique for all those scholars who hitherto have found no practice of critical philosophy in traditional Africa.