Primal or Indigenous?

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 64-82
Author(s):  
Anthony Oswald Balcomb
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Religion ◽  
African Religion ◽  
The Past ◽  
Indigenous Religions

Abstract Indigenous religions have been demonised, eclipsed or ignored ever since the advent of modernity. However, in the wake of the decolonial turn they are enjoying a revival of interest and restoration. In Africa this has led to a renewed interest in African Religion. Five approaches are made to the topic by its non-practitioners – that it does not exist, that it is evil, that it is inadequate, that it is preparation for the Christian gospel, or that it is a form of indigenous religion and has integrity in its own right. A particular debate has emerged over the past twenty years concerning nomenclature. How should African Religion be understood and what should it be called? Two possibilities have emerged, the primal and the indigenous. The primal discourse emphasises the role that African Religion plays in the shaping of religion generally and Christianity particularly. The indigenous discourse has developed in opposition to this and emphasises the particularity and uniqueness of African Religion as a species of indigenous religion to be understood in its own right.

scholarly journals Sámi indigenous(?) Religion(s)(?)—Some Observations and Suggestions Concerning Term Use

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 432
Author(s):  
Konsta Kaikkonen
Keyword(s):  
Culturally Sensitive ◽  
Indigenous Religion ◽  
Historical Materials ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Sensitive Topics ◽  
The World ◽  
Great Relevance ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
To Come ◽  
Indigenous Religions

When writing about politically and culturally sensitive topics, term use is of great relevance. Sámi religion is a case in point. Words organise and create the world around us, and labels have direct consequences on how religious phenomena are perceived. Even labelling a phenomenon or an action “religious” carries certain baggage. Term use is, of course, easier when writing about historical materials and describing rituals whose practitioners have been dead for centuries. Nonetheless, contemporary practitioners of age-old rituals or people who use ancient symbols in their everyday lives often see themselves as carriers of old tradition and wish to identify with previous generations regardless of opinions that might deem their actions as “re-enacting”, “neoshamanism”, or “neopaganism”. If, for example, outsider academics wish to deem modern-day Indigenous persons as “neo”-something, issues of power and essentialism blend in with the discourse. This paper critically explores terms used around the Sámi religion in different time periods and attempts to come to suggestions that could solve some of the terminological problems a student of modern practitioners of indigenous religions inevitably faces.

Ibo Spirituality and Marriage Customs On the Eve of Nigerian Independence: the Testimony of Onuora Nzekwu's Wand of Noble Wood

2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-39
Author(s):  
Frederick A. Hale
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
African Religion ◽  
Imaginative Literature ◽  
To Come ◽  
Indigenous Religions ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractFor many years scholars of African religion have appreciated the potential insights that imaginative literature can provide into religious beliefs and practices in rapidly transforming societies, not least with regard to the confrontation of indigenous religions and missionary Christianity. Generally ignored, however, has been the fiction of Onuora Nzekwu, a talented Ibo novelist who during the 1960s was hailed as one founder of Nigerian letters but who stood in the shadow of Chinua Achebe and a handful of other contemporary literary giants. The present article is a study of enduring commitment to Ibo spiritual and marital traditions and the critique of Roman Catholic missionary endeavours in Nzekwu's first novel, Wand of Noble Wood (1961). It is argued that in this pioneering treatment of these recurrent themes in African literature of that decade, Nzekwu vividly highlighted the quandary in which quasi-Westernised Nigerians found themselves as they sought to come to grips with the confluence of colonial and indigenous values and folkways on the eve of national independence in 1960. Nzekwu did not speak for all Ibo intellectuals of his generation; his portrayal of the weakness of Ibo commitment to the Roman Catholic Church is squarely contradicted by other literary observers, such as T Obinkaram Echewa.

Apartheid

Religion ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 124-132
Author(s):  
David Chidester
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Comparative Religion ◽  
African Religion ◽  
Evolutionary Progress ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Indigenous Religions

Apartheid was established in South Africa between 1948 and 1994 as a force of exclusion and incorporation, excluding people from citizenship and exploiting people as labor. This chapter suggests that the term apartheid, meaning “separation,” was formative for certain ways of thinking about religion. One of the architects of apartheid, the anthropologist W. M. Eiselen, was a leading expert on indigenous religions in South Africa. Eiselen’s writings on African religion illustrate three overlapping types of comparative religion—a frontier comparative religion based on denial and containment; an imperial comparative religion assuming evolutionary progress from savagery to civilization; and an apartheid comparative religion creating and reinforcing boundaries to keep people apart. Although apartheid was formally established as a racist policy of separation in South Africa, the making and maintaining of boundaries has been a recurring feature of religious formations.

African Indigenous Religions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter E.A. van Beek
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Indigenous Religion ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Other World ◽  
Indigenous Religions ◽  
The Village

There is not one African indigenous religion (AIR); rather, there are many, and they diverge widely. As a group, AIRs are quite different from the scriptural religions the world is more familiar with, since what is central to AIRs is neither belief nor faith, but ritual. Exemplifying an “imagistic” form of religiosity, these religions have no sacred books or writings and are learned by doing, by participation and experience, rather than by instruction and teaching. Belonging to specific local ethnic groups, they are deeply embedded in and informed by the various ecologies of foragers, pastoralists, and horticulturalists—as they are also by the social structures of these societies: they “dwell” in their cultures. These are religions of the living, not so much preparing for afterlife as geared toward meeting the challenges of everyday life, illness and misfortune, mourning and comforting—but also toward feasting, life, fertility, and togetherness, even in death. Quiet rituals of the family contrast with exuberant public celebrations when new adults re-enter the village after an arduous initiation; intricate ritual attention to the all-important crops may include tense rites to procure much needed rains. The range of rituals is wide and all-encompassing. In AIRs, the dead and the living are close, either as ancestors or as other representatives of the other world. Accompanied by spirits of all kinds, both good and bad, harmful and nurturing, existence is full of ambivalence. Various channels are open for communication with the invisible world, from prayer to trance, and from dreams to revelations, but throughout it is divination in its manifold forms that offers a window on the deeper layers of reality. Stories about the other world abound, and many myths and legends are never far removed from basic folktales. These stories do not so much explain the world as they entertainingly teach about the deep humanity that AIRs share and cherish.

African Humanism: Between the Cosmic and the Terrestrial

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-190
Author(s):  
Patrice Haynes
Keyword(s):  
Ritual Studies ◽  
Indigenous Religion ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
South West ◽  
Alternative Vision ◽  
Indigenous Religions ◽  
Humanistic Orientation ◽  
Sylvia Wynter

This chapter explores the anthropocentrism of African indigenous religions, with a focus on the religious traditions of the Yoruba peoples (south-west Nigeria). In doing so it hopes to disclose an alternative vision of the human to that of what Sylvia Wynter calls “Man,” the figure at the heart of colonial modernity. While the humanistic orientation of African indigenous religion could be understood in a Feuerbachian sense, this chapter argues that such an approach fails to address the Eurocentric assumptions in Feuerbach’s anthropological analysis of religion. Drawing on ritual studies and recent efforts to rehabilitate the idea of “animism,” the chapter goes on to sketch what it calls an “animist humanism.” The aim here is to articulate a religious anthropocentrism that indicates how thinking with African indigenous religions might enable us to think beyond the doctrine of Man.

Ibo Spirituality and Marriage Customs On the Eve of Nigerian Independence: the Testimony of Onuora Nzekwu's Wand of Noble Wood

2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-39
Author(s):  
Frederick A Hale
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
African Religion ◽  
Imaginative Literature ◽  
To Come ◽  
Indigenous Religions ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractFor many years scholars of African religion have appreciated the potential insights that imaginative literature can provide into religious beliefs and practices in rapidly transforming societies, not least with regard to the confrontation of indigenous religions and missionary Christianity. Generally ignored, however, has been the fiction of Onuora Nzekzuu, a talented Ibo novelist who during the 1960s was hailed as one founder ofNigerian letters but who stood in the shadow of Chinua Achebe and a handful of other contemporary literary giants. The present article is a study of enduring commitment to Ibo spiritual and marital traditions and the critique of Roman Catholic missionary endeavours in Nzekwu's first novel, Wand of Noble Wood (1961). It is argued that in this pioneering treatment of these recurrent themes in African literature of that decade, Nzekwu vividly highlighted the quandary in which quasi- Westernised Nigerians found themselves as they sought to come to grips with the confluence of colonial and indigenous values and folkways on the eve of national independence in 1960. Nzekwu did not speak for all Ibo intellectuals of his generation; his portrayal of the weakness of Ibo commitment to the Roman Catholic Church is squarely contradicted by other literary observers, such as T Obinkaram Echewa.

Bullying as a social malady in contemporary Japan

2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Noel Treml
Keyword(s):  
Educational System ◽  
Japanese Society ◽  
Indigenous Religion ◽  
The Past ◽  
National Trend

In the past 20 years bullying has become a serious problem in contemporary Japanese society. Bully-related suicides are on the rise and policymakers have been forced to aggressively pursue the issue. This article suggests that bullying in Japan has been affected by many factors, including the stresses involved in the educational system, Japan’s indigenous religion, Shinto, and a national trend of passivity towards power. Japan affords us the opportunity to see bullying as an international concern and to learn from the efforts of the Japanese to combat it.

scholarly journals Christian Torajan Youth in Perceiving Aluk To Dolo

Al-Albab ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Erin Gayatri
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Group Discussion ◽  
Student Organizations ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Region Of Origin ◽  
Home Base ◽  
Indigenous Religion ◽  
Local Religion ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
Indigenous Religions

The fascinating influence of world religion has given important impact to the existence of indigenous religion such as Aluk To Dolo within the life of the Christian Torajan Youth who live in Yogyakarta. Aluk To Dolo as one of indigenous religions in Indonesia, in fact, is almost in the position of weak as its followers are decreasing in its region of origin, Tanah Toraja of Sulawesi. It is found that only one leader is still remaining in Toraja accompanied by the practice of Rambu Solo which is also still being maintained in the region. This work is based on the view of the youth toward Alok To Dolo as the youth play an important role to determine and negotiate the inheritance of their religion including indigenous religion within their life. This article examines how Christian Torajan Youth perceive Christianity and Aluk To Dolo. Data collection is conducted through depth interview and focused group discussion with a group of Christian Torajan Youth members who stay in Yogyakarta for their studies. They are affiliated to Torajan student organizations and Torajan tribal church in Yogyakarta. This work concludes that Torajan students perceive the Aluk To Dolo as pendamping agama or the companion of religion they practice (Christianity) besides perceiving it as their cultural home base. In other words, they mean the Aluk To Dolo for cultural practices supporting their Christianity practice in their life. It is also found that the decreasing of the practice of Alok To Dolo by the students is more caused by three factors including the distance to the origin land, the influence from the Toraja tribal church, and the literatures having influence in their believe. As student, although the Christian Torajan youth are close and more influenced by literatures in Christianity (church), they also practice the teachings of the local religion to keep their cultural identity.

The Festival Isogaisa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trude Fonneland
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Religion ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
First Time

In this chapter, I examine stories, products, and services that take shape as a Sámi shaman festival opens its doors to the public for the first time. I ask what is included in the marketing of the Isogaisa festival as an appealing happening. I further explore the role the past and Sámi indigenous religion play in the production of experiences that takes place, and examine how what is distinctly local at Isogaisa is highlighted on the basis of global structures and organizations to create interest for a chosen product and a specific destination.

African psychology: from acquiescence to dissent

2020 ◽  
pp. 008124632095678
Author(s):  
Augustine Nwoye
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
African Literature ◽  
African Philosophy ◽  
African History ◽  
African Music ◽  
African Art ◽  
African Religion ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World

Over the past 5 or 6 years, it has consistently been argued that African psychology should be recognised as an emerging tradition and a counter-canonical and insurgent postcolonial discipline fitting to be classified in the same category as other postcolonial disciplines in African humanities such as African literature, African philosophy, African religion, African anthropology, African history, African archaeology, African music, and African art. This article is an attempt to expatiate on this thesis. It aims to demonstrate that continental African psychology is a legitimate, autonomous, and self-determinative postcolonial discipline endowed with its own definable epistemological, philosophical, and methodological traditions to psychological scholarship. The basic idea of the article is consistent with the view credited to Guba and Lincoln that social science scholarship ‘needs emancipation from hearing only the voices of Western Europe, emancipation from generations of silence, and emancipation from seeing the world in one color’ (p. 212), and in the context of this article, in one psychology.

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