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This volume critically engages with how the idea of the human features in African societies and scholarship. From the most established to emergent scholars, contributions to this volume examine issues from the funding of the humanities to the relationship between the humanities and national development, and from citizenship and spirituality to the idea of the humane environment and a responsible media representation. All the contributors are concerned with the urgent imperative of rescuing the human and what it means to be humane in a world being pushed steadily towards a dystopic future by climate change, religious fundamentalism, racism and academic hubris—all contributing to the advancement of humanity to the brink of the precipice.
This collection of essays attempts to speak to the past, as it does the future. It engages the dialectics in Christians and Muslims’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic from theological, philosophical, sociological and gender perspectives. The interdisciplinary approach became a necessity based on the realization that beyond the high fatalities that resulted from the pandemic, people’s responses to it were as eclectic as were their existential realities. This volume is particularly unique because it yields space to Christianity and Islam and presents the trajectories in their practitioners’ response to the pandemic. The authors historicize, theorize and theologize these responses and present exemplar templates of coping mechanisms for religious institutions and people faced with unconventional situations bordering on religious ideals. The book is a valuable resource for scholars, religious leaders, historians, health practitioners and faith-based organizations on strategies to adopt for future pandemics.
Islam in Contemporary Africa: On Violence, Terrorism and Development features essays which are written by scholars, Christians and Muslims, on their experience of Islam and the Muslims in the continent of Africa and how tterrorism and violence have impacted intra-African harmony and cross-cultural understanding in the world today. The authors, most of whom reflect the cultural diversity of the continent particularly in its Eastern, Western and Southern-African contexts, have also tried to grapple with the dynamics which attend the current global war on terror, the Islamic and Christian jurisprudential perspectives to same and the politics of terror in and outside the continent. Perhaps most importantly the essays in this book betray, even though in an eclectic manner, a deep interest in the analyses of the phenomenon of terrorism and its over-all effects on Africa. Specifically the book examines the following as they relate to Violence, Terrorism, Africa's Development and global peace: Jurisprudence Anti-Terrorism Theology History Drugs and Narcotics The Media International Diplomacy Colonialism Intellectual Terrorism Gender and African Value System
This handbook generates new insights that enrich our understanding of the history of Islam in Africa and the diverse experiences and expressions of the faith on the continent. The chapters in the volume cover key themes that reflect the preoccupations and realities of many African Muslims. They provide readers access to a comprehensive treatment of the past and current traditions of Muslims in Africa, offering insights on different forms of Islamization that have taken place in several regions, local responses to Islamization, Islam in colonial and post-colonial Africa, and the varied forms of Jihād movements that have occurred on the continent. The handbook provides updated knowledge on various social, cultural, linguistic, political, artistic, educational, and intellectual aspects of the encounter between Islam and African societies reflected in the lived experiences of African Muslims and the corpus of African Islamic texts.
This volume provides the key to a deepened discourse on philosophy in Africa. Available literature and academic practice in African philosophy since the 1960s have largely featured discourses in the areas of origin, general meaning and nature of the discipline, with little attention given to specialized areas. By contrast, this book examines a noticeable shifting focus from such general concerns to more specific subject-matter, in such areas as epistemology, moral philosophy, metaphysics, aesthetics, and social and political philosophy in the light of the African experience. The volume includes specific discourses from expert contributors on the nature, history and scope of African ethics and metaphysics, while also discussing particular themes in African epistemology, philosophy of education, existentialism and political philosophy. Researchers seeking for new perspective on African philosophy will find this work thought-provoking, instructive and informative.
From interdisciplinary and continental perspectives, this volume explores elements of African culture and ideas, indigenous and modern, and how they have evolved through the ages. It considers areas such as education; cross-culturalism; the relationship between African, Arabic and Egyptian civilizations; traditions of philosophy; music, the performing arts and literature; language; gender; and the impact of colonialism and pan-Africanism.
From St. Augustine and early Ethiopian philosophers to the anti-colonialist movements of Pan-Africanism and Negritude, this encyclopedia offers a comprehensive view of African thought, covering the intellectual tradition both on the continent in its entirety and throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas and in Europe. The term "African thought" has been interpreted in the broadest sense to embrace all those forms of discourse - philosophy, political thought, religion, literature, important social movements - that contribute to the formulation of a distinctive vision of the world determined by or derived from the African experience. The Encyclopedia is a large-scale work of 350 entries covering major topics involved in the development of African Thought including historical figures and important social movements, producing a collection that is an essential resource for teaching, an invaluable companion to independent research, and a solid guide for further study.
This meticulously researched, forcibly argued and accessibly written collection explores the many and complex ways in which Africa has been implicated in the discourses and politics of September 11, 2001. Written by key scholars based in leading institutions in Canada, the United States, the Middle East and Africa, the volume interrogates the impact of post-9/11 politics on Africa from many disciplinary perspectives, including political science, sociology, history, anthropology, religious studies and cultural studies. The essays analyze the impact of 9/11 and the 'war on terror' on political dissent and academic freedom; the contentious vocabulary of crusades, clash of civilizations, barbarism and 'Islamofascism'; alternative genealogies of local and global terrorism; extraordinary renditions to black sites and torture; human rights and insecurities; collapsed states and the development-security merger; and anti-terrorism policies from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. This is a much-needed meditation on historical and contemporary discourses on terrorism.
The Dark Edge of African literature proposes arguments and theories for interpretation or exposition of Africa's modern fictions irrespective of the language of narrative. It attempts to discern how such interpretation of contemporary history may be received from an African perspective and what the implications are for African cultures and literatures abound by such experience. Starting with a writers profile of twentieth century African dictatorships and the African writer critical approaches on Somali, Nigerian, Kenyan, Angolan, Sudanese literatures present many different, if often not recognised, materials on uprising and resistance to readers of African literature. The physical and psychological dislocation by war, the controversy about the relational quality and dependent nature of text on context, and the exigency that informs the deliberate distortions of certain figures and images by contemporary African writers are some of the issues covered in this volume.
'There is no justice in Guinea-Bissau' many people lament in this West African country. Impunity and legal uncertainty tend to mark their interactions with judges, regulos (chiefs), police officers, or imams when they have become involved in a dispute. Based on case analysis, this book analyzes dispute settlers' self-presentations, stories told of them, and aggrieved parties' agency in semi-rural Guinea-Bissau. By introducing a typology of dispute settlers, as well as the concepts of person-bound dispute settlement and supporter activation, this book contributes to debates in legal anthropology. Dissertation. (Series: Contributions to African Research / Beitr�¤ge zur Afrikaforschung, Vol. 72) [Subject: African Studies, Legal Anthropology]