Human-wildlife conflict is a growing problem worldwide wherever humans share landscapes with large predators, and negative encounters with eight species of the crocodilians is particularly widespread. Conservationists’ responses to these... more
Human-wildlife conflict is a growing problem worldwide wherever humans share landscapes with large predators, and negative encounters with eight species of the crocodilians is particularly widespread. Conservationists’ responses to these adverse encounters have focused on the ecological and behavioural aspects of predators, rather than on the social, political, and cultural contexts which have threatened their existence in the first place. Few studies have thusfar tried to understand the rich, varied, contradictory and complex relations that exist between particular humans and human societies, and particular predators and groups of predators. It is in the spirit of Brian Morris’s explorations of the interactional encounters and co-produced sociabilities that exist between humans and animals in specific places and regions that this paper offers a cultural herpetology (an account of human-crocodile interrelations) of the Nile crocodile (Crocodilus niloticus and C. suchus) in Africa. It draws on extensive historical documentation of the interactions of humans and crocodiles across Africa to examine how diverse and complex human responses to Nile crocodiles have been, and continue to be, and suggests some implications for improving human-crocodile relations.
This chapter gives an overview of how the substance ontology of Western philosophy thrives on the power producing Nature/Cuture dichotomy, has caused asymmetical violence, infiltrated everyday language, created academic divisions,... more
This chapter gives an overview of how the substance ontology of Western philosophy thrives on the power producing Nature/Cuture dichotomy, has caused asymmetical violence, infiltrated everyday language, created academic divisions, produced hierarchical categories and classifications, and underpins colonialism and colonising notions of relationships - not only between humans and subhumans (e.g. child), but also between humans and more-than-humans (e.g. animals, matter). This chapter shows how critical posthumanism as a navigational tool offers a different relational ontology – more akin to African Indigenous scholarship and ways of living - that reconfigures subjectivity and brings into existence the notions of posthuman child and the sympoietic diffractive teacher (human or nonhuman) – critically urgent notions to consider for education in the Anthropocene.
This study explores the current state and dynamics of the global Indigenous data sovereignty movement-the movement pressing for Indigenous peoples to have full control over the collection and governance of data relating to their lived... more
This study explores the current state and dynamics of the global Indigenous data sovereignty movement-the movement pressing for Indigenous peoples to have full control over the collection and governance of data relating to their lived realities. The article outlines the movement's place within the broader push for Indigenous self-determination; examines its links to big data, open data, intellectual property rights, and access and benefit-sharing; details a pioneering assertion of data sovereignty by Canada's First Nations; outlines relevant UN and international civil society processes; and examines the nascent movement in Africa. The study identifies a fundamental tension between the objectives of Indigenous data sovereignty and those of the open data movement, which does not directly cater for Indigenous peoples' full control over their data. The study also identifies the need for African Indigenous peoples to become more fully integrated into the global Indigenous data sovereignty movement.
The liberation of black humanity has been an area of scholarly reflection by black theologians and the black consciousness communities. The constructs of oppression such as race, class and sexism amongst others have been critiqued in the... more
The liberation of black humanity has been an area of scholarly reflection by black theologians and the black consciousness communities. The constructs of oppression such as race, class and sexism amongst others have been critiqued in the quest for liberation of a fragmented black humanity. In this article, this quest for liberation happens within ubuhlanti [kraal], a site for which Vuyani Vellem is ‘like a hermeneutical circle, where the mediations of the bonds of spheres and the instantiation of their life take place’. By looking at a fragmented black humanity and black women’s experiences, we posit that no western framework could ever be representative of those bodies, ubuhlanti becomes our solution as a heuristic device and symbol of a communication of the efficacy of integrated life. From a womanist perspective, ubuhlanti decentres the West. Ebuhlanti Amandla ngawethu [power belongs to us], as black women and men dialogue issues that affect black humanity. The whole proposition of this dialogue ebuhlanti is animated by our lived experiences, which already offer alternatives for us to decentre.
Ever since the arrival of colonialism gained momentum in the country, Somali literature has been approached narrowly from the tutelage of the pastoral culture. Colonial as well as early Somali writers have taken the comfort of disdaining... more
Ever since the arrival of colonialism gained momentum in the country, Somali literature has been approached narrowly from the tutelage of the pastoral culture. Colonial as well as early Somali writers have taken the comfort of disdaining the study of anthological themes related to the non-nomadic cultures and literatures. That restricted notion of one culture, as purported by colonial writers and later politically enshrined by the state and a section of Somali scholars, has obscured the wealth of the various non-nomadic cultures in this Horn of Africa nation. Therefore, contrary to the notion of a homogenous Somali nation of the same nomadic culture, this essay aims to produce a non-nomadic version of Somali literature as practised by a section among the agrarian communities in Somalia; those known as Bantu or Jareer. Because the Bantu is an ethnically oppressed community, all what is related to their culture and literature in particular has been deemed valueless and, as a consequence, an institution unworthy studying. In particular, the essay argues that despite the degradation by the Somali state and neglect by Somalia scholarship often obsessed with the apocryphal ideology of a self-same Somalia, the agrarian wordsmith is bestowed with rich cultural and literary wisdom which makes him view his environment with sharp consciousness.
A critical examination of the history of theories and uses of concepts such as ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ in the academic study of religion in imperial, colonial and postcolonial contexts is particularly urgent in our time with its demands... more
A critical examination of the history of theories and uses of concepts such as ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ in the academic study of religion in imperial, colonial and postcolonial contexts is particularly urgent in our time with its demands to decolonise Western models of knowledge production. In Savage Systems (1996) and Empire of Religion (2014), David Chidester has contributed to this project by relating the invention and use of terms such as ‘religion’, ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ by theorists of religion in European imperial metropoles to South African colonial and indigenous contexts. This article intends to take Chidester’s project further by relating Gerardus Van der Leeuw’s phenomenological analysis of ‘primitive mentality’ (particularly in De primitieve mensch en de religie, 1937) to Chidester’s analysis and postcolonial critique of imperial theories of religion. By taking animism and dreams in Chidester’s and Van der Leeuw’s works as example, it is argued that in spite of the latter’s decontextualised use of ethnological material, a fundamental shift occurred in the judgement of ‘primitive’ religion from Tylor’s evolutionary to Van der Leeuw’s phenomenological analysis, which is contrary to claims according to which modern theories are unanimously denigratory of indigenous religions.
This paper is an attempt to define African musicology as a standalone discipline. The study of indigenous African music is, in the main, assumed to be the competency of ethnomusicology. That ethnomusicologists are musical anthropologists... more
This paper is an attempt to define African musicology as a standalone discipline. The study of indigenous African music is, in the main, assumed to be the competency of ethnomusicology. That ethnomusicologists are musical anthropologists suggests that they, like anthropologists, labour at presenting the image of the African to the European as well as the American institutions for a plethora of reasons and purposes. This explains a sense of reluctance when coming to addressing the need to fashion an alternative discipline designed, to unravel the intricacies of indigenous African music for the benefit of the African processes of knowledge making. Since the efforts of one Kwabena Nketia fifty years or so ago, African musicology has not succeeded in entrenching itself. By asserting itself, African musicology could stand to benefit the study of African music, let alone its own disciplinary development into the 21st century.
This handbook explores the evolution of African education in historical perspectives as well as the development within its three systems–Indigenous, Islamic, and Western education models—and how African societies have maintained and... more
This handbook explores the evolution of African education in historical perspectives as well as the development within its three systems–Indigenous, Islamic, and Western education models—and how African societies have maintained and changed their approaches to education within and across these systems. African education continues to find itself at once preserving its knowledge, while integrating Islamic and Western aspects in order to compete within this global reality. Contributors take up issues and themes of the positioning, resistance, accommodation, and transformations of indigenous education in relationship to the introduction of Islamic and later Western education. Issues and themes raised acknowledge the contemporary development and positioning of indigenous education within African societies and provide understanding of how indigenous education works within individual societies and national frameworks as an essential part of African contemporary society. https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030382766
When we discuss the legacies and impact of trans-Atlantic enslavement on the Diaspora, we must consider several issues. Among these is the tendency of the word “legacy” to have a positive connotation for many – where the enslavement of... more
When we discuss the legacies and impact of trans-Atlantic enslavement on the Diaspora, we must consider several issues. Among these is the tendency of the word “legacy” to have a positive connotation for many – where the enslavement of African people may fail with regard to this criterion. More importantly, in this paper I would like to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that in many places, such as the United States, slavery has never been abolished by law, merely renamed. As such, it becomes difficult to discuss a legacy or aftermath of something that is still in progress. Therefore, we will take the United States as a case study of slavery changing names/forms yet remaining essentially the same in spirit and nature if not worse in terms of impact on African people.
A journey through The Mind of Africa offers one a breath-taking scenery of the cultural traditions, practices, and conceptions of African societies. Interlacing his exposition with proverbs and sayings, Abraham offers unique perspectives... more
A journey through The Mind of Africa offers one a breath-taking scenery of the cultural traditions, practices, and conceptions of African societies. Interlacing his exposition with proverbs and sayings, Abraham offers unique perspectives and interpretations of the Akan culture and conceptual scheme – Akan cultural values, social and political institutions, metaphysical conceptions of man and society – as paradigmatic of the culture and conceptual schemes of African societies. But crucially, Abraham reveals, examines, and rejects, a plethora of unfounded notions about Africans and their cultures – some of these erroneous ideas are often repackaged and recited even in present times. In reading the book, one will come to understand and appreciate the theoretical underpinnings and the practical significance of the African experience
This two day symposium and one day film festival will bring together Indigenous educators and intellectuals from Latin America to Sydney to meet with interested Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators, scholars and activists, as... more
This two day symposium and one day film festival will bring together Indigenous educators and intellectuals from Latin America to Sydney to meet with interested Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators, scholars and activists, as well as non-Indigenous practitioners and allies, to discuss different models and approaches of Indigenous KnowledgeS and Education in the tertiary sector and beyond.
This project aims at helping educators and researchers in the Higher Education sector of Australia and Latin America to identify opportunities for integrating in their research and teaching and learning relevant aspects of Indigenous Knowledges in the areas of culture, education and sustainability.
Apart from the symposium itself, academic publications, public lectures by distinguished visitors and the creation of a website, the project will stimulate debate on Indigenous Knowledge and film production in Latin America and Australia by hosting a documentary screening on the topic. The selection of documentaries will be done in collaboration with the Sydney Latin American Film Festival, and this event will be targeted to the student population and the wider community.
