Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinarity in African Studies
Theology and the Other Sciences
In: Religion and TheologySearch for other papers by Elias K. Bongmba in
Current site
Google Scholar
In this essay, I discuss the importance of interdisciplinary approach to African theology and argue that in light of the challenges raised by the health care crisis, theologians, as well as other Africanists need to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the questions they raise and the solutions they propose to those questions.
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2
Thomas Benson, “Five Arguments against Interdisciplinary Studies,” in Interdisciplinarity: Essays from the Literature (ed. W.H. Newell; New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1998), 103–108.
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William Newell, “The Case for Interdisciplinary Studies: Response to Professor Benson’s Five Arguments,” in Interdisciplinarity: Essays from the Literature (ed. W.H. Newell; New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1998), 109–122.
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James R. Cochrane, “The Language that Difference Makes: Translating Religion and Health,” Practical Matters 4 (2011): 5–6. See Paul Ricoeur, Reflections on the Just (trans. David Pellauer; Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 107–120.
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Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, “The Disciplinary, Interdisciplinary and Global Dimensions of African Studies,” International Journal of African Renaissance Studies – Multi-, Inter- and Transdisciplinarity 1, no. 2 (2006), 198.
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Zeleza, “Disciplinary, Interdisciplinary and Global Dimensions,” 198.
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Zeleza, “Disciplinary, Interdisciplinary and Global Dimensions,” 198.
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L. Hunt, “The Virtues of Interdisciplinarity,” Eighteenth Century Studies 28, no. 1 (1994): 1–7.
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10
Christopher Fyfe, African Studies since 1945 (London: Longman, 1976).
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W.G. Martin and M.O. West, eds., Out of One, Many Africans: Reconstructing the Study and Meaning of Africa (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
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W.G. Martin and M.O. West, “A Future with a Past: Resurrecting the Study of Africa in the Post-Africanist Era,” Africa Today 44, no. 3 (1997): 309–326.
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Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
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V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1988); See also V.Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1994); Paul T. Zeleza, Manufacturing African Studies and Crises (Dakar: CODESRIA, 1997); P.T. Zeleza, and A. Olukoshi, eds., African Universities in the Twenty-First Century, 2 vols. (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2004).
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27
Elias K. Bongmba, “The Study of African Religions: A Sketch of the Past and Prospects for the Future,” in The Study of Africa, Vol. 1: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters (ed. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza; Dakar: CODESRIA, 2006), 338–374.
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28
Richard Elphick, The Equality of Believers: Protestant Missionaries and the Racial Politics of South Africa (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2012), 18–20.
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29
Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa: 1450–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 265.
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30
Bengt Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1961); David Barrett, Schism and Renewal (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1968).
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Placide Tempels, Bantu Philosophy (Paris: Présence africaine, 1969).
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Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, “Zande Theology,” in Sudan Notes & Records, Volume XIX Part 1 (1936): 1–48. See also idem, Social Anthropology and Other Essays (New York, N.Y.: The Free Press, 1964), 288–329.
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35
Evans-Pritchard, “Zande Theology,” 1–2. See Mgr. C.R. Lagae, Les Azande ou Niam-Niam: l’organisation Zande, croyances religieuses et magiques, coutumes familiales (Bibliothèque-Congo 18; Bruxelles: Vromant, 1926); Captain J.E.T. Philipps, M.C., “Observations on Some Aspects of Religion Among the Azande (Niam-Niam) of Equatorial Africa,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 56 (1926): 171–187.
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38
Michael Singleton, “Theology, ‘Zande Theology’ and Secular Theology” in Zande Themes: Essays Presented to Sit Edward Evans-Pritchard (eds. André Singer and Brian V. Street; Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972), 131.
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39
Singleton, Zande Themes, 131–132. Other scholars shared Evans-Pritchard’s conviction that Zande thought was unsystematic, a view that was shared widely. Godfrey Lienhardt expressed similar concerns about the Shilluk people of South Sudan, see R. Godfrey Lienhardt, “Modes of Thought,” in The Institutions of Primitive Society: A Series of Broadcast Talks (E.E. Evans-Pritchard, et al.; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), 101–102; Malinowski said a similar thing when he said: “language in its primitive forms ought to be regarded and studied against the background of human activities and as a mode of human behavior in practical matters … language originally among primitive, non-civilised peoples was never used as a mere mirror of reflected thought … it is a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection,” B. Malinowski, cited in Singleton, Zande Themes, 138.
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40
E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956).
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47
Raymond Firth, “Problem and Assumption in an Anthropological Study of Religion,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 89, no. 2 (Jul–Dec. 1959): 129.
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Edith Turner, “Theology and the Anthropological Study of Spirit Events in an Iñupiat Village,” in Explorations in Anthropology and Theology (eds. Frank A. Salamone and Walter Randolph Adams; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1997), 70.
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Victor Turner, “Symbolic Studies,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 4 (1995): 146.
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60
Cathernine A. Odora Hoppers, “Center for African Renaissance Studies, the Academy, the State and Civil Society: Methodlogical Implications of Transdisciplinarity and the African Perspective,” International Journal of African Renaissance Studies, 1, no. 1 (2006): 7–32.
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David Tracy, “Comparative Theology,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 14 (ed. Mircea Eliade; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan, 1987), 446–455.
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Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 230.
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Repko, Interdisciplinary Research, 1–48; John A. Grim, “Indigenous Lifeways and Knowing the World,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (eds. Philip Clayton and Zachory Simpson; Oxford; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1–34.
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73
Steven Feierman and John M. Janzen, “African Religions,” in Science and Religion Around the World (eds. John Hedley Brooke and Ronald L. Numbers; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2011), 245.
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74
David Westerlund, African Indigenous Religions and Disease Causation. From Spiritual Beings to Living Humans (Studies on Religion in Africa 28; Leiden; Boston, Mass.: Brill, 2006), 209–215. Also see David Westerlund, “Religion, Illness, and Healing,” in Wiley-Blackwell Companion to African Religions (ed. E.K. Bongmba; Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2012), 443–456.
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75
Elochukwu Uzukwu, God, Spirit, and Human Wholeness: Appropriating Faith and Culture in West African Style (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2012), 10–12.
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81
Steven Feireman and John M. Janzen, “African Religions,” 237–238.
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82
Collins Airhibenbuwa, “Framing an African-Centered Discourse on Global Health; Centralising Identity and Culture in Theorising Health Behaviour,” in The Study of Africa Vol. 1: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters (ed. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza; Dakar: CODESRIA, 2006), 375–392.
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85
Olivier, “In Search of Common Ground,” 8. See also G. Herdt and S. Lindenbaum, eds., The Time of AIDS: Social Analysis, Theory, and Method (London: Sage Publications, 1992).
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86
Cochrane, Schmid, and Cutts, eds., When Religion and Health Align, xxiv. See publications on religion and health, especially Harold G. Koenig, Dana E. King, Verna Benner Carson, eds., Handbook of Religion and Health (2nd ed.; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2012), especially its chapter on “A History of Religion, Medicine, and Health Care,” 15–34.
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87
Olivier, “In Search of Common Ground,” 2; Cochrane, “The Language that Difference Makes,” 5–6.
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Cochrane, “The Language that Difference Makes,” 10. See UNAIDS, “Partnership with Faith-Based Organisations: UNAIDS Strategic framework” (Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, 2009). I thank Olivier for this reference. See also WHO–CIFA, “NGO mapping” in Olivier, “Search of Common Ground,” 2.
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91
Frank Dimmock and Tali Cassidy, “Maintaining and Strengthening African Religious Health Assets: Challenges facing Christian Health Associations in the Next Decade,” in When Religion and Health Align: Mobilising Religious Health Assets for Transformation (eds. James R. Cochrane, Barbara Schmid, and Teresa Cutts; Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2011).
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Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinarity in African Studies
Theology and the Other Sciences
In: Religion and TheologySearch for other papers by Elias K. Bongmba in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
In this essay, I discuss the importance of interdisciplinary approach to African theology and argue that in light of the challenges raised by the health care crisis, theologians, as well as other Africanists need to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the questions they raise and the solutions they propose to those questions.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 495 | 148 | 9 |
| Full Text Views | 203 | 1 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 50 | 0 | 0 |
