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Editor\u27s Note
No full textI am once again pleased to introduce and welcome readers to the second issue of the AASR E-Journal for the academic study of the religions of Africa and the African Diaspora, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal of the African Association for the Study of Religions (AASR). While the maiden issue centred on the specific theme ‘Health, Healing, and the Study of the Religions of Africa,’ articles in this issue have been structured rather differently, focusing on varied themes with their rich complementarity. One of the top priorities of the AASR E-Journal is to serve primarily as an interdisciplinary journal in which members and non-AASR members, particularly early career scholars and graduate researchers, are encouraged, supported and mentored to publish the outcomes of their original research on the religions of Africa and the African Diaspora. It is against this backdrop that I am exceedingly delighted to introduce these essays from four young, promising, erudite researchers/students who make robust contribution to knowledge in the field through sharing aspects of their current research projects
Stifling Human Responsibility? Human Agency and Transcendency in African Spirituality and Cultural Idioms
No full textThis article is an African traditional religious and cultural analysis of human responsibility as expressed in proverbs and idioms that demand human agency and transcendence in chiShona, Zimbabwean isiNdebele, and isiZulu languages. The analysis is done in line with the common spiritual belief that material wealth is a product of spiritual or magical power. The article analyzes selected proverbs and idioms from the three languages that demand or express agency and transcendence. This demand for agency and transcendence is juxtaposed with a religious belief of wealth as a product of spiritual and magical powers. Spiritualizing material wealth promotes a blame syndrome that is detrimental to human responsibility. A framework of human agency and transcendence that promotes human responsibility in African contexts of poverty is proposed. The article aims to contribute with an African response to poverty that promotes human responsibility and avoids a defeatist and escapist reliance on magic and spiritual solutions
Social research methods for students and scholars of theology and religious studies
No full textThis published work by Joshua Iyadurai is very timely and relevant for theologians, scholars in the field of religious studies, and students of different cultures and institutions. In this work, Iyadurai proposes multidisciplinary approaches in the study of religions that consider strategies rooted in social sciences
Employee engagement in the South African short-term insurance sector: repositioning communication climate as a job resource
No full textMeasuring employee engagement is a popular means for contemporary organisations to assess employee commitment and engagement. It is evident from literature that a strong relationship exists between improved employee engagement levels and positive business outcomes. However, globally and in South Africa, employees tend not to be engaged, with non-managerial employees showing lower engagement compared to their managerial counterparts. From this perspective, disengagement, resulting in untapped employee potential, has significant financial implications.
Traditional employee engagement models list a positive communication climate as one of many job resources that contribute to improved engagement, alongside resources such as performance feedback, employee autonomy and opportunities for learning and development. Against this background, this research argues that a positive communication climate could possibly play a more expanded role in driving non-managerial employee engagement than is currently recognised.
Survey data were collected from four short-term insurance organisations in the South African financial sector. Data analysis was done using factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results show a reasonable fit and support the notion that a positive communication climate may have an impact on all job resources, which could lead to higher levels of employee engagement among non-managerial staff.
The results show that communication climate may possibly be the foundation of job resource effectiveness. As such, management can address communication climate when seeking to improve engagement levels of non-managerial employees
Editorial
Get PDFThis issue marks three years of Communicare: Journal for Communication Studies in Africa publishing in an open-access format under UJ Press. Since 2022, the journal has achieved significant milestones by retaining South Africa\u27s Department of Higher Education accreditation and being added to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in 2024. Communicare is a top performing among UJ Press journals with monthly views between 1500 and 3000. These successes are attributed to the contributions of editors, reviewers, authors, readers and the production staff.
Student disciplinary policies at a distance and online university in South Africa
No full textAcademic integrity is at the core of the academic project and is threatened if universities and the academics and students in them, do not take the quest of achieving academic integrity seriously. If other universities, businesses, and the general public lose trust in a specific university due to a perceived lack of academic integrity in the institution and its qualifications, this creates a threat to the sustainability of the university. In this paper I evaluate the student disciplinary policies and codes of a distance education university against the core elements of an exemplary academic integrity policy (Bretag, Mahmud, Wallace, Walker, James, Green et al., 2011). The five core elements identified by Bretag et al. (2011) are access, approach, responsibility, detail, and support. The university’s policies were evaluated against these elements and rated on whether each one has been achieved or not. This analysis is done at the policy level and also encompasses the policy experiences of this university during COVID-19, by unpacking how these policies played out when a major challenge was applied to them. Apart from the policy analysis, this paper is based on 10 months of fieldwork undertaken during 2021 when 28 people were interviewed; an analysis of policies; and an analysis of five years’ worth of records from student disciplinary procedures. I argue that the five elements for effective student disciplinary policies need to be present for the institutionalisation of academic integrity to occur
The humanities impacting communities through entrepreneurship: A case study of student enterprise from a South African university
Get PDFThe role of a university education is to transform and develop communities through the production of academically competent graduates and research, as well as through knowledge creation. However, research has shown that the level of unemployment in South Africa remains high despite the increasing number of graduates. The Faculty of the Humanities at a South African university has been intentional in impacting communities by inculcating a culture of entrepreneurship among students. In this article, I reflect on a case study of students from various disciplines, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, who have been mentored in entrepreneurship, have registered a business, and interacted with communities to provide identified services. I follow a participatory research approach to engage the students in a reflection on their relationships with the community members and on the impact of their interventions on these communities. I also analysed the data collected through a focus group discussion and semi-structured interviews to identify common themes and determine the attributes developed by students as they engaged in entrepreneurship. The findings from the reflections demonstrate the humanities students’ perceived value of entrepreneurship on communities’ development and graduates’ employability
Putting the South back into Global South: SoTL as scholarly and social activism
Get PDFIn unpacking the theme of ‘Sustainable Futures for Teaching and Learning’, I explore the discourse of ‘grand challenges’ for SoTL in the South. I offer provocations to unsettle the premise that these challenges are in fact universally ‘grand’ and question our acceptance of the trope that what applies to the North applies equally to the South. In higher education (HE), themes like futures thinking and sustainability have enormous purchase as they encourage innovation to shape a better future. I challenge our complicity as SoTL authors in taking up these themes uncritically. I invite us all to consider how much our location and context in the Global South matter as an explanatory framework for the teaching and learning challenges we face and whether we can use our context as a locus of enunciation for the scholar-activist work we are called on to do. As long as our teaching contexts, linked to historical coloniality and the matrices of power, are sub-optimal for our students to thrive and succeed, we have an obligation to activate scholarly awareness and action towards bringing these into balance. My hope is that through collective scholar-activism, we enter a social imaginary where the world is socially inclusive and morally just, where location and context are immaterial to the possibilities that exist for human flourishing
Left Wing Fideism: A Critique of Non- Cognitivism
Get PDFThe non-cognitivist analysis of Religious Language often uses remarks from the later writings to Ludwig Wittgenstein to try and build a non-cognitivist apologetic for Christian belief. The “Concept of Prayer” by D.Z. Phillips represents this approach to the analysis of Religious Language. The crucial defect in Phillips account of the logic of religious language is that he assumes that it is single leveled. Once ‘depth’ grammar has revealed what logic of God is like, this univocal logic can be applied to every religious statement, and any religious statement which does not fit into this account, must be reduced to a statement which will, or be eliminated from religious discourse. Phillips uses Wittgestein’s insight that words and statements only have meaning in the stream of life, to prop up a doctrine which leads back to the dogma, to mean is to name. This paper argues that any such approach finds it difficult not to distort the ordinary meaning of Religious Language and attempts to offer a detailed critique of this position
Major Determinants of Health Seeking Behaviour
Get PDFThis paper uses document review to explore major determinants of health-seeking behaviour, with the view to establish how health-seekers’ religious beliefs, spirituality and faith influence their health-related decision making. It argues that since religious beliefs have a significant influence upon health-seekers, health providers should be fully aware of this issue. This paper therefore challenges health providers to integrate health seekers’ religious beliefs, faith and spirituality within their profession. In conclusion, this paper appeals to both medical and theological institutions to infuse the interdependence of religion and health into their curricular. Such a provision is capable of creating rapport between health providers and health seekers. This paper is therefore a valuable contribution to the growing literature geared towards the promotion of a holistic health provision, catering for the physical and spiritual needs of health seekers