An African Worldview

An African Worldview PDF Author: Ian D. Dicks
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9990887519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
In this book Ian Dicks informs the reader about the ways in which the Yawo of Malawi view the world. The Yawo are predominantly Muslim, yet many maintain strong links with their traditional religion. They are a largely oral society, teaching and reinforcing their beliefs and practices using oral literature, which includes myths, proverbs, proverbial stories, songs of advice and prayers at various stages of the life cycle, particularly during initiation events. Ian Dicks describes in detail the Yawo's material world, customs, beliefs and rituals, and juxtaposes these with Yawo oral literature. He then examines them under six worldview categories, the result being a rich description of the way in which the Yawo see the world. This book is not an armchair study but has the feel of being written by an eyewitness, by someone who has had first-hand experience of the subject and who seeks to describe this in a manner which is sensitive to the Yawo and their culture.

An African Worldview

An African Worldview PDF Author: Ian D. Dicks
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9990887519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this book Ian Dicks informs the reader about the ways in which the Yawo of Malawi view the world. The Yawo are predominantly Muslim, yet many maintain strong links with their traditional religion. They are a largely oral society, teaching and reinforcing their beliefs and practices using oral literature, which includes myths, proverbs, proverbial stories, songs of advice and prayers at various stages of the life cycle, particularly during initiation events. Ian Dicks describes in detail the Yawo's material world, customs, beliefs and rituals, and juxtaposes these with Yawo oral literature. He then examines them under six worldview categories, the result being a rich description of the way in which the Yawo see the world. This book is not an armchair study but has the feel of being written by an eyewitness, by someone who has had first-hand experience of the subject and who seeks to describe this in a manner which is sensitive to the Yawo and their culture.

Naming and Othering in Africa

Naming and Othering in Africa PDF Author: Sambulo Ndlovu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000485498
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
This book examines how names in Africa have been fashioned to create dominance and subjugation, inclusion and exclusion, others and self. Drawing on global and African examples, but with particular reference to Zimbabwe, the author demonstrates how names are used in class, race, ethnic, national, gender, sexuality, religious and business struggles in society as weapons by ingroups and outgroups. Using Othering theory as a framework, the chapters explore themes such as globalised names and their demonstration of the other; onomastic erasure in colonial naming and the subsequent decoloniality in African name changes; othering of women in onomastics and crude and sophisticated phaulisms in the areas of race, ethnicity, nationality, disability and sexuality. Highlighting social power dynamics through onomastics, this book will be of interest to researchers of onomastics, social anthropology, sociolinguistics and African culture and history.

The Mlungu in Africa

The Mlungu in Africa PDF Author: Michael Stevenson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description


African Arts

African Arts PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art, African
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description


The Native Problem of South Africa

The Native Problem of South Africa PDF Author: Alexander Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description


The Doctrine of God in African Christian Thought

The Doctrine of God in African Christian Thought PDF Author: James Henry Owino Kombo
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004158049
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Noting the relationship between philosophy and the doctrine of the Trinity, this book offers the African pre-Christian understanding of God and the "Ntu"-metaphysics as theoretical gateways for African reflections on the doctrine of the Trinity.

Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church

Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church PDF Author: Joel Cabrita
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139917129
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Church tells the story of one of the largest African churches in South Africa, Ibandla lamaNazaretha, or Church of the Nazaretha. Founded in 1910 by charismatic faith-healer Isaiah Shembe, the Nazaretha church, with over four million members, has become an influential social and political player in the region. Deeply influenced by a transnational evangelical literary culture, Nazaretha believers have patterned their lives upon the Christian Bible. They cast themselves as actors who enact scriptural drama upon African soil. But Nazaretha believers also believe the existing Christian Bible to be in need of updating and revision. For this reason, they have written further scriptures - a new 'Bible' - which testify to the miraculous work of their founding prophet, Shembe. Joel Cabrita's book charts the key role that these sacred texts play in making, breaking and contesting social power and authority, both within the church and more broadly in South African public life.

The Cambridge History of Africa

The Cambridge History of Africa PDF Author: J. D. Fage
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521224093
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1052

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Book Description
The eighth and final volume of The Cambridge History of Africa covers the period 1940-75. It begins with a discussion of the role of the Second World War in the political decolonisation of Africa. Its terminal date of 1975 coincides with the retreat of Portugal, the last European colonial power in Africa, from its possessions and their accession to independence. The fifteen chapters which make up this volume examine on both a continental and regional scale the extent to which formal transfer of political power by the European colonial rulers also involved economic, social and cultural decolonisation. A major theme of the volume is the way the African successors to the colonial rulers dealt with their inheritance and how far they benefited particular economic groups and disadvantaged others. The contributors to this volume represent different disciplinary traditions and do not share a single theoretical perspective on the recent history of the continent, a subject that is still the occasion for passionate debate.

Religion and Myth: The Comparative Study of African Spirituality

Religion and Myth: The Comparative Study of African Spirituality PDF Author: James MacDonald
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465517022
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Religion in the widest sense may be defined as man's attitude towards the unseen, and the earliest forms of human thought furnish the clue from which must be traced the development of those great systems of religion that have at different periods been professed by the majority of men. Under the term religion we must include, not only beliefs in unseen spiritual agencies, but numerous customs, superstitions, and myths which have usually been regarded, by both travellers and students, as worthless and degrading, till within a comparatively recent period. Only by taking account of such, and comparing usages common among tribes far removed from the influence of civilisation with survivals in other parts of the world, can we arrive at any definite knowledge regarding the world's earliest systems of thought. In both ancient Greece and Italy the union of royal title with priestly functions was common. At Rome the tradition was, that the sacrificial king had been appointed to perform sacred functions formerly belonging to the ruling monarch, after the overthrow of the ancient dynasty and the expulsion of the kings. In republican Athens the second magistrate of the city was called King, and his wife Queen. The functions of both were religious. Other examples will occur to readers familiar with the classics. Such traditions and usages leave no doubt but in very early times kings were not only civil rulers, but also the priests who offered the sacrifices and stood between the worshippers and the unseen world. The king would thus be revered as the ruler and father of his people who protected and cared for them. He would be also alternately feared and loved as the ghostly intercessor of men, and regarded as himself partaking of the ghostly nature, for the divinity which hedged a king in those days was no empty title, but a sober fact. He was regarded as able to bestow or withhold blessings; to bring blight and curse, and remove them; and so, being above and beyond the control of his subjects, reverence and fear would easily pass into adoration and worship. To us this may appear strange, but it is quite consistent with savage thought. To the savage African or South Sea Islander the world is largely, if not exclusively, worked by supernatural agents, and these act on impulses similar to those which move and influence men, and with which he is familiar in himself and others. Where the forces of nature are under the control of the king-priest, the worshipper sees no limit to his power and the influence he can exert on the course of nature, or even upon the material universe itself, as when a man's father's spirit shakes the earth because the king hurt his toe. He holds converse with the gods. From them come abundant crops, fecundity, success in war, and kindred blessings, and the king who bestows these is regarded as having the god residing in his own person; to the savage man he is himself divine.

The Spirit of Resistance in Music and Spoken Word of South Africa's Eastern Cape

The Spirit of Resistance in Music and Spoken Word of South Africa's Eastern Cape PDF Author: Lindsay Michie
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498576214
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
From an array of prominent activists including Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko to renowned performers and oral poets such as Johnny Dyani and Samuel Mqhayi, the Eastern Cape region plays a unique role in the history of South African protest politics and creativity. The Spirit of Resistance in Music and Spoken Word of South Africa's Eastern Cape concentrates on the Eastern Cape's contribution to the larger narrative of the connection between creativity, mass movements, and the forging of a modern African identity and focuses largely on the amaXhosa population. Lindsay Michie explores Eastern Cape performance artists, activists, organizations, and movements that used inventive and historical means to raise awareness of their plight and brought pressure to bear on the authorities and systems that caused it, all the while exhibiting the depth, originality, and inspiration of their culture.