1,720,958 research outputs found
The meaning of African Traditional Religion for modern society: Zimbabwe as a case study
No full textIn contemporary times, religion has dominated the African studies. This study is an effort to contribute to the theme of the meaning of religion in African context. Basing on fieldwork in Buhera District, this work provided a qualitative interpretive study of the meaning of African Traditional Religion (ATR) in modern society of Zimbabwe. Afrocentrism and Symbolic Interactionism were the two theoretical frameworks found to be ideal for this study. Using a phenomenological approach, interviews and observations, the research took the functional, substantive and affective meanings as the modus operandi in the postulation of the meaning of African traditional religious practices in Zimbabwe. It challenges in a special way the idea of fashioning the meaning of ATR pre-occupied with the indigenous Supreme Being-talk, but also with the praxis of ATR in the modern human society. Inadequacy of studying ATR in the modern society of Zimbabwe with foreign nomenclatures was highlighted since English monikers like ATR are hardly used by the Shona people in their daily language. Rather, they commonly use Chivanhu, a vernacular term which is closely equivalent to religion. The thesis creates an awareness to discover rich values of Shona cultural values and belief systems and their place in the meaning of ATR. So in this study ATR and Chivanhu are used interchangeably. During the study, it was noted that there are various matrices of forces that determine the meanings of ATR in the modern society of Zimbabwe, which include: transcendental power, architectural power, traditional power, family power and modernity power. Whether the meaning of ATR is substantivist, affective or functionalist, it was found to be never entirely neutral and objective for it holds various hidden assumptions. Sometimes the meanings attached to ATR in the modern society are ideological or tactical designations. In a bid to search for its meaning, it has proved to be debatable whether ATR is essentially a private and individual matter or fundamentally communal and national. In a Zimbabwean multi-religious society, the issue of the meaning of ATR has been characterised by some problems especially when it gives in to the dictates of the country‘s constitution to avoid clashes. The profundity of the emancipation of women in the modern society has also contributed towards a gendered outlook of ATR in modern Zimbabwe. These kind of imports are often explanations advanced in support of an overriding view of traditional religion, summarised in aphorisms and or epigrams such as: Chivanhu chedu chinoti (our Chivanhu says) ichi ndicho Chivanhu chedu (this is our Chivanhu), musha mukadzi (the key person in a home is a woman). Thus the use of clichés in modern society has impacted the meaning of ATR in Zimbabwe. To this end, the conceptualisation of ATR in modern society of Zimbabwe is characterised by dynamics of alterisation processes that condition the contemplation between this religion and western religions (especially Christianity). These processes of alterisation are characterised by representing and treating ATR through synecdochisation, exoticisation, undervaluation, overvaluation, misunderstanding and exclusion. Though use of a substantivist, affective and functionalist perspective was handy in construing the meanings of ATR in the modern society of Zimbabwe, the same schemes of meaning for religion in various ways explained away ATR
Reinterpretation of Pre-existing Sexual and Reproductive Health Formulas in the Indigenous Shona Society of Zimbabwe
No full textWhile global actors on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) have increasingly championed young people’s participation in decision-making processes, incrementally, the youth continue facing SRH challenges as a result of exposure to Western culture, the internet, social media, and human rights discourse, to mention a few. This study identified a prescriptive ritual practice which promotes sexual repression to manage the SRH of the youth of indigenous Shona communities. The Shona people constitute the largest ethnic group in Zimbabwe. The study used the Indigenous Strengths-based theoretical framework to show how breastfeeding milk is utilised in Shona communities to mould children’s sexual behaviour. Data was collected through interviews and library research, making an appraisal of the kusvinira ritual (squeezing of the breast milk to a newborn baby’s sexual organ) in the indigenous Shona communities in Buhera District. The mother performs the ritual to heal and protect her newborn baby’s future SRH. This is because, across cultural contexts, constructions of SRH issues are strongly tied to notions of “womanhood,” interlinked with reproduction and emergent sexuality. The study argues that a holistic approach to managing the SRH of adolescents should start at an early age when they receive the kusvinira ritual. The ritual is an indigenous strength-based ritual that Shona communities have continually practised to come up with positive, deep-rooted, and lasting changes in children’s and young people’s lives
The Ambivalence of African Independent/Initiated Churches in Colonial and Postcolonial Politics
Get PDFAfrican Independent or Initiated Churches (AICs) are churches founded by Africans in the 1930s as a challenge to the marginalization, discrimination, and injustice African people were experiencing from the mission churches and the oppression of the colonial regime. The mission of both AICs and nationalists included fighting for justice, democracy, and the independence of African states. In Zimbabwe, the nationalists became the leaders of the independent state, but eventually they began to trample on the people’s freedoms and justice, especially in the 2000s. Surprisingly, the AICs did not call them out over these transgressions but instead became a formidable source of support for the former liberation movement, now the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU PF). By interrogating the ambivalence of AICs in politics with the aid of the concepts of the theodicy of legitimation and the theodicy of liberation, this chapter illuminates our understanding of religion as both a hegemonic and counterhegemonic force in economic, social, and political conflicts. The chapter argues that, while AICs played a pivotal liberating role in the fight against colonialism, they failed to separate principles of social justice from regimes and personalities, thus contributing to the legitimation and perpetuation of the ZANU PF regime. The phenomenon remains systematically understudied
The Ambivalence of African Independent/Initiated Churches in Colonial and Postcolonial Politics
Get PDFAfrican Independent or Initiated Churches (AICs) are churches founded by Africans in the 1930s as a challenge to the marginalization, discrimination, and injustice African people were experiencing from the mission churches and the oppression of the colonial regime. The mission of both AICs and nationalists included fighting for justice, democracy, and the independence of African states. In Zimbabwe, the nationalists became the leaders of the independent state, but eventually they began to trample on the people’s freedoms and justice, especially in the 2000s. Surprisingly, the AICs did not call them out over these transgressions but instead became a formidable source of support for the former liberation movement, now the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU PF). By interrogating the ambivalence of AICs in politics with the aid of the concepts of the theodicy of legitimation and the theodicy of liberation, this chapter illuminates our understanding of religion as both a hegemonic and counterhegemonic force in economic, social, and political conflicts. The chapter argues that, while AICs played a pivotal liberating role in the fight against colonialism, they failed to separate principles of social justice from regimes and personalities, thus contributing to the legitimation and perpetuation of the ZANU PF regime. The phenomenon remains systematically understudied
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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