The Pangs of an African Culture in Travail
Author: Emeka George Ekwuru
Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 190
ISBN-13:
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Culture, Precepts, and Social Change in Southeastern Nigeria
Author: Apollos O. Nwauwa
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2019-10-24
Total Pages: 287
ISBN-13: 1498589693
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book provides a unique insight into understanding the Igbo social, economic, and political world through comprehensive analyses of indigenous and foreign religious practices, issues surrounding women, literature, language, sexism in musical lyrics, films, and community development and government. It also explores thought-provoking cultural practices relating to marriage and divorce, reincarnation, naming, and masquerade dance. The themes covered in the book help readers appreciate the often-neglected multifaceted local and external forces that continue to shape the Igbo experience in southeastern Nigeria.
African Women and the Shame and Pain of Infertility
Author: Damasus C. Okoro
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2020-06-24
Total Pages: 214
ISBN-13: 1725265702
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn African Women and the Shame and Pain of Infertility: An Ethico-Cultural Study of Christian Response to Childlessness among the Igbo People of West Africa, Okoro discusses the shipwreck that is associated with infertility in marriage in Africa. Within this space, childlessness places a big question mark on a woman’s femininity and the self-esteem of the man. The stigma of infertility most often leads to social isolation and humiliation, particularly of married women, even when the source of infertility may not have come from them. Unfortunately, this situation goes against the highly valued Igbo ethical principle of onye aghala nwanne ya, meaning “no kith or kin should be left behind.” Therefore, the purpose of the book is to help married people in Igbo land and Africa at large to appropriate this indigenous principle in their response to the problem of infertility. To attain this, the author critically evaluates discrimination and oppression of infertile couples, particularly women, and shedding light on the paradoxes found in Igbo cultural expressions. He employs a constructive, ethical, cultural, religious, contextual, and theological approach that explores important Igbo religious paradigms like Chi (an Igbo religio-cultural understanding of personal destiny) and Ani (the feminine deity in-charge of the land and fertility) to argue the case for the liberation and integration of infertile couples.
African Cultural Personalities in a World of Change
Author: Ikechukwu Anthony Kanu
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Published: 2018-08-16
Total Pages: 275
ISBN-13: 1546296670
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis notwithstanding, over the years, the African culture in all its manifestations became the bulls eye for attack especially during the Atlantic Slave Trade, Colonialism, Racism. During these periods, Europe dealt coup de grace to the African personality, to his is-ness, by destroying the African cultural values. They disrespected African peculiarities, languages enriched with traditions of centuries, parables, many of them the quintessence of family and national histories; modes of thought, influenced more or less by local circumstances, local poetry which reveals the profundity of African literary wizardry. A lot of these were altered against the background that the African in all his susceptibilities is an inferior race and that it is needful to give him a foreign model beacon to emulate and follow. In our time of globalization, bringing about a new sweep of changes on the African cultural values, a more careful, historically grounded interpretation of the cultural changes occurring on the continent is, therefore, needed and for it to be useful, it should enable us to transcend the narrow and narrowing parameters that currently dominate the discourse on the processes and structures of change occurring in contemporary Africa. This piece is a great accomplishment by African scholars to do a grounded hermeneutics of the structures of changes taking place in Africa. The different chapters are the fruits of the 2018 International Conference of the Association for the Promotion of African Studies (APAS). The authors, like artists, combine originality with insightful imagination. They have carefully treated the historical, conceptual, basic and substantive issues in cultural change in Africa. Their coherent, systematic and encyclopedic approaches have the capacity to expand the intellectual and professional horizon of its readers.
African Indigenous Religious Traditions in Local and Global Contexts
Author: Ogungbile, David O.
Publisher: Malthouse Press
Published: 2015-09-23
Total Pages: 461
ISBN-13: 9785325016
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume honours one of the great scholars of our era, Professor Jacob Olupona. Although he has conducted significant portions of his career outside of Nigeria, he has not separated himself from his colleagues or from interests in religions in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. His publications and presentations offer the international scholarly community important critical insights into a range of religious activities, life ways and ideas originating in Africans and the African Diaspora. In spite of the diversity in the thoughts and opinions expressed, and equally of the range of disciplines and topics contained in the book, one can say that the contributors have developed a shared concern about the role of African Indigenous Religious Traditions in the processes of development and the context within which it (development) had or is taking place. The book guides us to a deep understanding and appreciation of how Africans in their varied situations grapple with existential problems through philosophical ruminations, complex ritual processes, cultivated memory and organized coping strategies.
JUSTICE AND HUMAN DIGNITY IN AFRICA
Author: GMT EMEZUE
Publisher: Lulu.com
Published: 2014-03-31
Total Pages: 740
ISBN-13: 9785244601
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJustice and Human Dignity, a collection of essays, is an assemblage of critical and well-researched essays projecting new theoretical and empirical hindsight from multidisciplinary perspectives. This books will be of special interest to academics, researchers and students of African Literature, Children's Studies, Languages and Linguistics, Religion, Media Studies, History, Economics, Finance, Political Science, Leadership and Governance, Peace and Conflict Studies, Gender Studies and Studies in African Diaspora. In all, the essays provide new and veritable insights on how past and recent issues and challenges bordering on themes of Justice and Human Dignity affect Africa and Africans in the 21st century.
Theorising Development in Africa
Author: Munyaradzi Mawere
Publisher: African Books Collective
Published: 2017-12-17
Total Pages: 205
ISBN-13: 9956764760
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow come Africa is so underdeveloped when it is one of the richest continents on earth? Indeed, Africa is a paradox: it is poor and rich at the same time! Resource-wise, Africa is among the top richest continents in the world, yet development-wise it is the poorest of all continents. This paradox desperately needs comprehensive theoretical unpacking and rethinking if Africa is to achieve breakthroughs to the multifaceted development-related problems that have haunted it since the beginning of its unequal encounters with Europe. Regrettably, current Eurocentric development theories fall short on several fronts. The need for a comprehensive body of knowledge theories and models from the perspective of Africans persists in urgency. The present volume is an attempt to theorise Africas [under-]development with a view to provide a sustainable enduring framework of operations that will arrest the elusive predicament of the continent while taking it forward from its current position of passivity. It rethinks and re-imagines a number of externally imposed problematic mechanisms used (un-)consciously in Africa, with the intention to raise awareness and foster critical thinking in scholars and scholarship on African development. With its predicament-oriented theorising, the book is a pacesetter on how to think and research Africas [under-]development. It is also an invaluable asset for social scientists, policy makers, development practitioners, civil society activists and politicians.
African Philosophy and Thought Systems
Author: Munyaradzi Mawere
Publisher: African Books Collective
Published: 2016-01-21
Total Pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9956763152
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe once acrimonious debate on the existence of African philosophy has come of age, yet the need to cultivate a culture of belonging is more demanding now than ever before in many African societies. The gargantuan indelible energised chicanery waves of neo-colonialism and globalisation and their sweeping effect on Africa demand more concerted action and solutions than cul-de-sac discourses and magical realism. It is in view of this realisation that this book was born. This is a vital text for understanding contextual historical trends in the development of African philosophic ideas on the continent and how Africans could possibly navigate the turbulent catadromous waters, tangled webs and chasms of destruction, and chagrin of struggles that have engrossed Africa since the dawn of slavery and colonial projects on the continent. The book aims to generate more insights and influence national, continental, and global debates in the field of philosophy. It is accessible and handy to a wider range of readers, ranging from educators and students of African philosophy, anthropology, African studies, cultural studies, and all those concerned with the further development of African philosophy and thought systems on the African continent.
African Perspectives on Global Development
Author: Mahmoud Masaeli
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2019-01-22
Total Pages: 386
ISBN-13: 1527526569
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAfrica is not merely an invention with a modern, imperial or colonial background. Nor is it simply a continent in need of foreign aid from the richer, more affluent societies. Africa might be economically needy, politically unstable, and, in part, socially chaotic and suffering from civil wars and social unrest. However, the continent and its peoples are certainly different from the negative image portrayed in the mass media. Africa had been the cradle of civilization in the pre-colonial era, and is today undergoing a diverse cultural, philosophical, and spiritual development with great potential, contributing to contemporary debates around the ethics of globality. The novelty of this book derives from its multidisciplinary approach. Although the authors generally come from the fields of development and economics, global studies, political science, philosophy and ethics, and sociology, they present Africa’s alternative view of human wellbeing in order to provide theories and policy recommendations which inspire the specific developmental patterns for the growth of the continent. The volume discusses the meaning of development for the continent by drawing on culture, identity, ethnicity, and philosophy of nature. The contributors examine a variety of issues and themes directly related to the opportunities provided by globality to promote the development of the continent. They also discuss solutions for underdevelopment and poverty, and how those perspectives might be effectively integrated into the global agenda for the development of Africa.
Reclaiming Traditions of Igbo Education and the Legacy of the Holy Ghost Missionaries
Author: Okonkwo Remigius Nwabichie
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing
Published: 2024-05-01
Total Pages: 142
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWHAT IMPACT HAS CHURCH MISSIONARY EDUCATION (CME) HAD IN AFRICA, ESPECIALLY SINCE THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES? Reclaiming Traditions of Igbo Education and the Legacy of the Holy Ghost Missionaries finds answers to that question. This book critically assesses the benefits and burdens of the Church Missionary Education (CME) of the Holy Ghost Missionaries among nd’Igbo in southeastern Nigeria. It interrogates the propriety of its philosophy and reviews the adequacy of the methods used to promote it. While critics lament the damage done by European explorers, merchants, colonialists, and missionaries to the educational traditions of Africa, apologists who defend them suggest that they did their best under prevailing circumstances. They ask, “Instead of revisit the past, why not get on with the business of modern times?” But the impact of the European presence in Africa is not a thing of the past. It is part of “Africa’s current and existential socioeconomic, political, religious, and educational struggles today. 1 This book describes the limitations of the neo-colonizing educational philosophy of the missionaries and calls for an alternative. A philosophy of wholeness is proposed as an alternative that would transition Africans to a liberating and liberatory Christian Religious Education (CRE) of the gospels. Such, it is argued, would better serve their needs and aspirations, and better heal the wounds of their colonial past. About the Author OKONKWO REMIGIUS NWABICHIE is a priest of Orlu diocese. He holds degrees in Philosophy, Theology, Administration, and Religious Education. He is the author of Religion for Morality in Education, Self-Reliant African Churches, and a forthcoming volume, Methods for Promoting Christian Religious Education in Africa. A lively discussant in Igbo/African affairs, and curriculum development, he can be reached at: [email protected] or [email protected].
