scholarly journals Dimensions of Epistemology and the Case for Africa’s Indigenous Ways of Knowing

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Amaechi Udefi
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Philosophical Practice ◽  
Intellectual Community ◽  
Large Scale Problems ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indigenous Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Modes Of Thought

philosophical practice has taken a new turn since it survived the large scale problems and debates which characterized its early beginnings in an African environment and intellectual community. The metaphilosophical issues then concerned about its status, relevance and methodology appropriate or usable for doing it. Although the issues that troubled African philosophers then may have subsided, yet some of them have and are still expressing reservations on the possibility of having Africa‟s indigenous ways of knowing, just as they deny the possibility of „African physics‟ or „African arithmetic‟. Paulin Hountondji, a leading African philosopher, is reputed for denying African traditional thought as philosophy, which he prefers to type as ethnophilosophy, simply because it thrives on orality and other ethnographical materials like proverbs, parables, folklores, fables, songs etc. For him, the piece, at best can qualify as ethnographical or anthropological monographs as opposed to philosophical work which relies on written texts and documentation on the basis of which “theoretical knowledge and significant intellectual exchange and innovation can” be achieved in Africa. Hountondji‟s position is, to say the least, exclusionist, since it denies and debars African modes of thought and heritage a position in the on-going philosophical conversation or discourse. The paper shares Hountondji‟s vision of adoption of an attitude of critical, scientific and skeptical orientation in African societies. However, it rejects the views of Hountondji and other scholars who deny African intellectual and cognitive systems and argues that their position rests on one sided conception or dimension of epistemology. The other intention of the paper is to show that philosophical practice is as old as the history of mankind in Africa, though Hountondj has expressed the view that philosophy as an academic discipline started in African Universities only in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

scholarly journals Past as Prophecy: Indigenous Diplomacies beyond Liberal Settler Regimes of Recognition, as Told in Shell

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 510
Author(s):  
Lee Bloch
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Us South ◽  
State Recognition ◽  
Temporal Differences ◽  
Indigenous Knowledges ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indigenous Ways Of Knowing

According to a prophecy told in a small, Muskogee-identified community in the US South, the seeds of Indigenous ways of knowing and relating to more-than-human kin will once again flourish in the ruins of colonial orders. Even settlers will be forced to turn to Indigenous knowledges because “they have destroyed everything else”. Following this visionary history-future, this article asks how Indigenous diplomacies and temporalities animate resurgent possibilities for making life within the fractures (and apocalyptic ruins) of settler states. This demands a rethinking of the global and the international from the perspective of deep Indigenous histories. I draw on research visiting ancestral landscapes with community members, discussing a trip to an ancient shell mound and a contemporary cemetery in which shells are laid atop grave plots. These stories evoke a long-term history of shifting and multivalient shell use across religious and temporal differences. They speak to practices of acknowledgement that exceed liberal settler regimes of state recognition and extend from much older diplomatic practices.

scholarly journals Applying Indigenizing Principles of Decolonizing Methodologies in University Classrooms

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin William Louie ◽  
Yvonne Poitras-Pratt ◽  
Aubrey Jean Hanson ◽  
Jacqueline Ottmann
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Decolonizing Methodologies ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Learning ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indigenous Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Faculties Of Education ◽  
University Classrooms

This case study examines ongoing work to Indigenize education programs at one Canadian university. The history of the academy in Canada has been dominated by Western epistemologies, which have devalued Indigenous ways of knowing and set the grounds for continued marginalization of Indigenous students, communities, cultures, and histories. We argue that institutions of higher learning need to move away from the myopic lens used to view education and implement Indigenizing strategies in order to counteract the systemic monopolization of knowledge and communication. Faculties of education are taking a leading role in Canadian universities by hiring Indigenous scholars and incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing into teacher education courses. Inspired by the 25 Indigenous principles outlined by Maōri scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012), four Indigenous faculty members from Western Canada document effective decolonizing practices for classroom experience, interaction, and learning that reflect Indigenous values and orientations within their teaching practices.

scholarly journals How to Distil Words and Obtain Culture History

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 499-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Vansina
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
African History ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Central European ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
Large Scale Problems ◽  
Culture History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Scrutiny ◽  
Extended Discussion

Nearly every historian of early African history has recently encountered studies that use the history of words as a source for history more generally defined, an approach also known as words-and-things. Indeed, by now a more or less elaborate use of words-and-things has become fashionable, especially in the Anglophone literature. A number of short presentations of the overall principles underlying this approach have been published, but they all lack an extended discussion of the methodological issues involved. Perhaps this is the main reason why words-and- things analyses are almost never subjected to critical scrutiny, while the conclusions of studies based on them, however weak or strong they might be, tend to be accepted as gospel—a most unsatisfactory situation. Hence a book-length study of the methodology involved in the application of words-and-things should be very welcome.As Klein-Arendt's book is devoted exclusively to this subject, it should fill the gap. Yet it will disorient most readers of this journal because K-A is not concerned with the solution of smaller- or large-scale problems of history as understood by such readers, but focuses on the epistemology of the central European school known as Kulturgeschichte (more or less “Culture History”), to which he subscribes and which is likely to be largely unknown to most readers. Yet when the expression “words-and-things” was first coined in 1909. it was intended to be a tool to elucidate Kulturgeschichte. Indeed, the journal from which the label stems was called Wörter und Sachen. Kulturhistorische Zeitschrift für Sprach-und Sachforschung (Words and Things, a Journal of Culture History for Research in Languages and Things) and on its very first page Rudolf Meringer stated that “[linguistics is only a portion of the science of culture … We hold that the future of Kulturgeschichte resides in the union of the science of language with the science of things” in which “things” stood for what came to be better known as “culture traits.”

scholarly journals Edith Wharton's Resource Aesthetics and the Dawn of the American Energy Crisis

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 925-952
Author(s):  
ALAN ACKERMAN
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Continuous Production ◽  
High Volume ◽  
World War ◽  
Power Stations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Modes Of Thought

Situating Edith Wharton in the context of America's accelerating petro-culture, this essay argues that her novels critique a society that takes for granted high-volume, nonrenewable energy, and specifically revolutionary new kinds of energy: petroleum, natural gas, and the fossil-fueled power stations necessary for the large-scale, continuous production of electricity. Attention to the idiom of energy inThe House of Mirthand its mirror text,The Custom of the Country, along with Ida Tarbell'sHistory of Standard Oiland Theodore Roosevelt's conservationism, sheds new light on assumptions about moral agency, personal freedom, changing modes of thought, and the environment between 1880 and World War I. The essay shows how Wharton's allegorical treatment of Lily Bart and Undine Spragg anticipates the notion of externalities or consequences of industrial activities that affect outside parties but are not reflected in the cost of production.

scholarly journals Fear of an other geography

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
LaToya Eaves
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
The Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indigenous Ways Of Knowing ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Black Geographies ◽  
Do So

Geography has failed to accommodate ‘indigenous ways of knowing’. To do so requires transforming and shifting power relations to account for the landscapes of white supremacy and imperialist practices that shape epistemological, pedagogical, and departmental climates. This commentary responds to Oswin’s call for mobilizing and building ‘an other geography’ by nodding toward the creation of the Black Geographies Specialty Group. In particular, it interweaves autoethnographic reflections on the body and provocations about the history of the discipline to illustrate another perspective on Oswin’s frustrations with stagnant, contained geographic practice.

scholarly journals Applying Indigenizing Principles of Decolonizing Methodologies in University Classrooms

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dustin William Louie ◽  
Yvonne Poitras-Pratt ◽  
Aubrey Jean Hanson ◽  
Jacqueline Ottmann
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Decolonizing Methodologies ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Learning ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Indigenous Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Faculties Of Education ◽  
University Classrooms

This case study examines ongoing work to Indigenize education programs at one Canadian university. The history of the academy in Canada has been dominated by Western epistemologies, which have devalued Indigenous ways of knowing and set the grounds for continued marginalization of Indigenous students, communities, cultures, and histories. We argue that institutions of higher learning need to move away from the myopic lens used to view education and implement Indigenizing strategies in order to counteract the systemic monopolization of knowledge and communication. Faculties of education are taking a leading role in Canadian universities by hiring Indigenous scholars and incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing into teacher education courses. Inspired by the 25 Indigenous principles outlined by Maōri scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012), four Indigenous faculty members from Western Canada document effective decolonizing practices for classroom experience, interaction, and learning that reflect Indigenous values and orientations within their teaching practices.  

Materials for the history of the gospel-Baptist movement in Ukraine

1996 ◽  
pp. 4-15
Author(s):  
S. Golovaschenko ◽  
Petro Kosuha
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Theological Seminary ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Evangelical Christians ◽  
Evangelical Christian ◽  
First Results ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fruitful Cooperation ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The report is based on the first results of the study "The History of the Evangelical Christians-Baptists in Ukraine", carried out in 1994-1996 by the joint efforts of the Department of Religious Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Odessa Theological Seminary of Evangelical Christian Baptists. A large-scale description and research of archival sources on the history of evangelical movements in our country gave the first experience of fruitful cooperation between secular and church researchers.

Integration of Ecological and Engineering Aspects in Planning Large Scale Tidal Power Development in the Bay of Fundy, Canada

1984 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 281-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Feasibility Studies ◽  
Bay Of Fundy ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Power Development ◽  
Tidal Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientists And Engineers ◽  
The Many ◽  
University Scientists

Large-scale tidal power development in the Bay of Fundy has been given serious consideration for over 60 years. There has been a long history of productive interaction between environmental scientists and engineers durinn the many feasibility studies undertaken. Up until recently, tidal power proposals were dropped on economic grounds. However, large-scale development in the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy now appears to be economically viable and a pre-commitment design program is highly likely in the near future. A large number of basic scientific research studies have been and are being conducted by government and university scientists. Likely environmental impacts have been examined by scientists and engineers together in a preliminary fashion on several occasions. A full environmental assessment will be conducted before a final decision is made and the results will definately influence the outcome.

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