African Potentials: Bricolage, Incompleteness and Lifeness

Yaya Fonye Odette

Description

This book is the result of a research project, called African Potentials, that we have been conducting for 10 years. This project was aimed at overturning negative stereotypes the world has imposed on Africa, such as poverty, hunger and conflict, the achievement of which would help to decolonise and de-Westernise our world while creating a new, alternative future. This book explores how this can be achieved, focusing on the wealth of African knowledge and institutions that African people have created and practised throughout their history. While learning from these indigenous systems, this book reconsiders the subservience to Western values that have been assumed to be universally applicable. This volume aims to establish an ideology that radically transforms the dominant framework of knowledge, and that can relativise and pluralise the hegemonic centre.

Chapter 1. DECOLONIALITY Who is Afraid of Epistemic Relativism? Disentangling African Philosophy from the 'Universalist' Entrapment

Chapter 2. UNIVERSALS Activating Latent Cultural Potentials and Social Prescriptions

Chapter 3. MOBILITY Mobility as Freedom, and Hospitality as Kinship

Part 2: How Contradictions Are Resolved

Chapter 4. NEGOTIATION Palaver and Consensus: How Contradictions Are Reconciled in Africa

Chapter 5. PEACEBUILDING Exploring Local Peacebuilding Potentials in Northwestern Kenya

Chapter 6. INGOVERNMENTALITY 'Eating Chiefs': Explaining the Tolerance of the People of South Sudan for Bad Political Leaders

Part 3: How We Confront the Hegemonic System of the Modern World

Chapter 7. KNOWLEDGE Knowledge Sharing: Epistemology Lessons for Modern Culture from Traditional African Oral Culture

Chapter 8. CHILDHOOD Childhood and Children: Realities and Reimaginations in Sub-Sahara Africa's Development

Chapter 9. MONEY How Money Builds Communities

Chapter 10. CIRCULATION Waste Valorisation and African Potentials: The Forgotten Life of Things and Their Rebirth in Mass Consumption Capitalism

Part 4: How We Reconstruct This World from the Periphery

Chapter 11. INDIGENEITY Indigeneity from the Vantage Point of African Potentials and a Re-visioning of African Realities

Chapter 12. INCOMPLETENESS Cecil John Rhodes: 'The Complete Gentleman' of Imperial Dominance

Chapter 13. EVERYDAYNESS Everyday Lifeworld as a Source of Creativity for African Potentials

Postscript: African Potentials and the Creation of an Alternative Future for Humanity

Sujets

• African Studies
• Ethnic Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• International studies
• Region
• Social sciences
• Regional

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789956552542
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

Extrait

African Potentials Bricolag e,Incompleteness andLifeness

Edited by

Itaru Ohta Francis B. Nyamnjoh & Motoji Matsuda

In collaboration

L a ng aaR P CIG M a nk onB a m enda

 CAAS  KyotoU niversity

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net In Collaboration with The Center for African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Japan Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookscollective.com

ISBN-10: 9956-552-30-5

ISBN-13: 978-9956-552-30-6 ©Itaru Ohta, Francis B. Nyamnjoh & Motoji Matsuda 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher

Notes on Contributors Misa HIRANO-NOMOTOthe Graduate Schoolis Professor of of Asian and African Area Studies, and Center for African Area Studies at Kyoto University, Japan. She has extensively researched urban communities in Cameroon and Okinawa, Japan. Her research topics are the urban informal economy, mutual assistance, and rotating saving and credit associations. Her major works include: ‘Urban voluntary associations as “African potentials”: The case of Yaoundé, Cameroon’ (African Studies Monographs,Supplementary Issue, Vol. 50, pp. 123–136, 2014) andPeople, Predicaments and Potentials in Africa(co-edited with T. Ochiai and D. E. Agbiboa, Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2021). Husein INUSAHClassicsis Senior Lecturer in the Department of and Philosophy, University of Cape Coast, Ghana, where he teaches Philosophy. His area of specialisation is epistemology. He currently researches on topics such as the regress problem, consensual rationality and epistemic decolonisation. He is the leading author of Understanding and Applying Critical Thinking (Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2019) and has published several papers in both local and international peer-reviewed journals. His current project is on harnessing the insights of African proverbs to promote the intellectual virtues for epistemic decolonisation in Africa. Edward K. KIRUMIRA is Professor of Medical Sociology and Director, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS), Stellenbosch, South Africa. He is also Professor Extraordinary in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of Stellenbosch University. His research focuses on HIV/AIDS, population and reproductive health, emergent diseases and global health. His works include:the Multi-SectoralThe Politics of Coordination and Management of Response to HIV/AIDS in the Context of Global Funding (London: Palgrave, 2008), ‘Revisiting indigeneity: African Potentials as discourse for sustainable development in Africa (in Y. Gebre, I. Ohta and M. Matsuda [eds], Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2017), and ‘“Obwavu”: The cultural concepts of poverty narrated among refugees in central Uganda’ (co-authored with K. Umeya,Journal of Intercultural Studies, No. 54, 2020).

Eisei KURIMOTOAnthropology and former Viceis Professor of President in charge of student affairs of Osaka University, Japan. His research topics are Nilotic ethnography, civil wars and ethnic conflicts, refugee and displacement issues, peacebuilding and humanitarianism. His major works include:People Living through Ethnic ConflictJapanese, 1996), (in Primitive and Modern WarsJapanese, (in 1999),Conflict, Age and Power in North East Africa1998), (co-edited, Remapping Ethiopia (co-edited, 2002) andKyosei Studies Manifesto (co- edited, in Japanese, 2020).

Motoji MATSUDAthe Graduate Schoolis Emeritus Professor of of Letters at Kyoto University and Professor at Research Institute of Humanity and Nature, Japan. His research fields are Nairobi and Western Kenya. His research topics are urbanisation, migration and conflict. His major works include:Urbanisation from Below (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 1998),theAnthropology of The Manifesto of Everyday Life World(Kyoto: Sekai Shisosha, 2008, in Japanese),African Virtues in the Pursuit of Conviviality: Exploring Local Solutions in Light of Global Prescriptions (co-edited with I. Ohta and Y. Gebre, Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2017), andThe Challenge of African Potentials: Conviviality, Informality and Futuritywith Y. Ofosu-Kusi, (co-edited Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2020).

Kennedy MKUTUis Professor in International Relations at United States International University (USIU) – Africa. His research interests include pastoralism, conflict and security, amongst others. He is currently working with the Universities of Bonn and Cologne under the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Future Rural Africa’ project funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. He is also working with University of Warwick on ‘Understanding the Dynamics of Water Scarcity and Violence’ funded by the British Academy of Sciences. He is a consultant for the World Bank.

Elizabeth NDUNDAis a PhD researcher with the Bonn Institute of Conflict Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. She has carried out extended research among the Turkana and Pokot communities of Kenya. Her research focuses on conflict transformation and peace building in marginalised societies. She holds a Master’s Degree in Sociology from Egerton University. Her major publications include:Collective Action Groups onContribution of Socio-Economic Wellbeing of Agro-Pastoralists in Makindu Sub-County, Kenya(Egerton-Njoro: Egerton University, 2016).

Michael NEOCOSMOSEmeritus Professor in Humanities at is Rhodes University in South Africa and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute in the United States. He is the author of many articles and several books includingFrom Foreign Natives to Native Foreigners: Explaining Xenophobia in South Africa(Dakar: CODESRIA, 2010) andThinking Freedom in Africa: Toward a Theory of Emancipatory Politics(Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2016). This last book was awarded the Frantz Fanon Prize for outstanding work by the Caribbean Philosophical Association in 2017. He is currently working on a book provisionally titledThe Dialectics of Emancipation in Africato be published by Daraja Press as well as onAfrican Political Thought from AncientAn Anthology of Egypt to the Presentto be published by CODESRIA. Francis B. NYAMNJOHSocial Anthropology atProfessor of  is the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is recipient of the ‘ASU African Hero 2013’ annual award by the African Students Union, Ohio University, USA; of the 2014 Eko Prize for African Literature; and of the ASAUK 2018 Fage & Oliver Prize for the best monograph for his book#RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa. He is: a B1 rated Professor and Researcher by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF); a Fellow of the Cameroon Academy of Science since August 2011; a Fellow of the African Academy of Science since December 2014; a Fellow of the Academy of Science of South Africa since 2016; and a Fellow of the College of Fellows of the University of Cape Town since December 2021. His scholarly books include:Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africaand (2006) Drinking from the Cosmic Gourd: How Amos Tutuola Can Change Our Minds(2017). Yaw OFOSU-KUSIis Professor of Social Studies and currently Dean of the School of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Energy and Natural Resources, Sunyani, Ghana. He holds a PhD in Applied Social Studies from the University of Warwick, UK. His research focuses on urban childhood and the informal economy, with emphasis on child migration, street life and children’s agency. His main works include:Children’s Agency and Development in African Societies(edited, Dakar: CODESRIA, 2017),The Challenge of African Potentials: Conviviality, Informality and Futurity(co-edited, Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2020) andChildhood, Children and the Future: An

African Perspective(co-edited,Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020). Itaru OHTAis Emeritus Professor at the Centre for African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. He has carried out anthropological research among the Turkana in Kenya and the Himba in Namibia. His major publications include:Devoting Themselves to Convivial Negotiation: Property Relations among the East African Pastoral Societies (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2021, in Japanese);African Virtues in the Pursuit of Conviviality: Exploring Local Solutions in Light of Global Prescriptions(co-edited, Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2017);African Potentialsfive volumes, Kyoto: Kyoto(editor-in-chief, a set of University Press, 2016, in Japanese) andConflict Resolution and Coexistence: Realizing ‘African Potentials’(co-edited, Kyoto: Kyoto University, 2014). Shuichi OYAMAis Professor at the Center for African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. He conducted multi-disciplinary research based on geography in Zambia, Uganda, Niger and Djibouti. His main publications include:Tackling the Land Degradation in Sahel Region of West Africa: Trash Input for Land Rehabilitation, Food Security and Conflict PreventionShowa-do, 2015, in Japanese), ‘Action (Kyoto: research and reverse thinking for anti-desertification methods’, in T. Haller and C. Zingerli (eds)Towards Shared Research:Participatory and Integrative Approaches in Researching African Environments (Bielefeld: Transcript Publishers, 2020), andDevelopment and Subsistence in Globalising Africa: Beyond the Dichotomy(co-edited, Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2021). Owen B. SICHONE recently retired from the Copperbelt University after serving as Inaugural Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences; and as Director of the Dag Hammarskjold Institute for Peace and Conflict. He was trained in anthropology at Cambridge University and sociology at Sussex and UNZA. He has previously worked on migration and xenophobia in South Africa. He is now Executive Director at the Centre for Copperbelt Studies, a newly established people's think tank. He is also a member of the Electoral Eminent Persons Group advising the Electoral Commission of Zambia on peace and conflict matters including those during the August 2021 General Elections.

Shoko YAMADAis Professor of Comparative Education and African Studies at Nagoya University, Japan. She has conducted various researches on educational policy making and implementation in Africa, both in the historical and present-day contexts. She is also interested in the African traditional epistemology and social meaning of knowledge. Her major works include:Labour for AfricanDignity of Leaders: The Formation of Education Policy in the British Colonial Office and Achimota School on the Gold Coast(Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2018) and Post-Education-For-All and Sustainable Development Paradigm: Structural Change and Diversifying Actors and Norms(Bingley: Emerald, 2016).

Table of Contents Introduction—African Potentials: Bricolage, Incompleteness and Lifeness...................... 1 Motoji Matsuda, Francis B. Nyamnjoh and Itaru Ohta Part 1: How African Society Can Be Decolonised and Liberated Chapter 1. DECOLONIALITY Who is Afraid of Epistemic Relativism? Disentangling African Philosophy from the ‘Universalist’ Entrapment....................................... 29 Husein Inusah Chapter 2. UNIVERSALS Activating Latent Cultural Potentials and Social Prescriptions: The Potential for Emancipatory Political Thought in African Popular Cultures .......................................... 51 Michael Neocosmos Chapter 3. MOBILITY Mobility as Freedom, and Hospitality as Kinship: Reflections on the African Potentials for Using Solidarity to Manage Global Challenges......................................................... 73 Owen B. Sichone

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