There has been the recurrent suspicion that community, harmony, cohesion, and similar relational goods as understood in the African ethical tradition threaten to occlude difference. Often, it has been Western defenders of liberty who have raised the concern that these characteristically sub-Saharan values fail to account adequately for individuality, although some contemporary African thinkers have expressed the same concern. In this chapter, I provide a certain understanding of the sub-Saharan value of communal relationship and demonstrate that it entails a substantial (...) allowance for difference. I aim to show that African thinkers need not appeal to, say, characteristically Euro-American values of authenticity or autonomy to make sense of why individuals should not be pressured to conform to a group’s norms regarding sex and gender. A key illustration involves homosexuality. (shrink)

In this book I argue that school integration is not a proxy for educational justice. I demonstrate that the evidence consistently shows the opposite is more typically the case. I then articulate and defend the idea of voluntary separation, which describes the effort to redefine, reclaim and redirect what it means to educate under preexisting conditions of segregation. In doing so, I further demonstrate how voluntary separation is consistent with the liberal democratic requirements of equality and citizenship. The position I (...) defend is not opposed to integration but rather is a justified response to the daily experience of frustration and disappointment with a system that has failed members of marginalized groups for too long. I argue that most voluntary separation experiments in education, far from being motivated by a sense of racial, cultural or religious exclusion, are in fact driven among other things by a desire for a quality education, not to mention community membership and self respect. As such, voluntary separation represents a morally robust pragmatic strategy that is able to answer liberal challenges concerning involuntary stratification, ethnocentrism and democratic deliberation. (shrink)

In this study, the idea of the local African community as a social structure ensuring the security of its members is presented. An understanding of the concept of security is first briefly discussed, followed by the meaning of the concept of the local African community. The chapter also makes an a priori distinction between what one can call “moderate” and “radical” types of communal life and two case studies exemplifying them are presented. The chapter aims to analyze the trade off, (...) in terms of provision of security, including economic security, by local communities, for the shaping of a democratic political culture in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most importantly, however, this chapter also highlights the rationality that underpins the seemingly low-quality democratic political activities of members of local African communities. (shrink)

The growing interest in Africa as well as concerns about negative deviant behaviors and ethnic structures necessitates examination of the effect of ethnic expectations on behavior of employees. In this study we leverage insight from ethnos oblige theory to propose that centralization of ethnic norms moderates the relationship between benevolence expectations and negative deviant behavior. Using a cross-sectional design and data from two countries as well as moderation and cross-cultural analytic techniques, we find support for three-way interactions where the relationship (...) between benevolence and negative deviant behavior is moderated by centralization and culture. We discuss the implications of the findings which support the dynamic perspective of management in Africa. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider how the discourse on global epistemic justice might be approached differently if some contributions from the African philosophical place are taken seriously. To be specific, I argue that the debate on global justice broadly has not been global. I cite as an example, the exclusion or marginalisation of African philosophy, what it has contributed and what it may yet contribute to the global epistemic edifice. I point out that this exclusion is a case of epistemic (...) injustice. I observe that the absence of a philosophical technique that prevails on philosophers to engage with others from other traditions might be responsible for this epistemic lopsidedness and marginalisation. I go beyond the re-statement of this problem of marginalisation of African philosophy to point out relevant doctrines from the African place. I show how they are united under the methodological and ideological disposition of conversationalism. I argue that this ideology might be a better model for realising the goal of global epistemic justice which is the overcoming of all forms of exclusions and lopsidedness in global epistemic discourses through fair allocation of intellectual spaces. (shrink)

Pearce's "African Philosophy and the Sociological Thesis" makes very interesting reading. Why it is interesting is not because it advances the frontiers of philosophical discourse in Africa or globally but because it shows that certain unwarranted dispositions die hard and that deliberate ignorance, if that is what is displayed, is hard to cure. In this article the author comments on the following contentions made by Pearce: (1) philosophy has no social relevance and/or responsibility; (2) philosophy is purely a linguistic activity (...) concerned with analysis of concepts and examination; (3) philosophy derives from religion; (4) because African philosophy cannot supplant world philosophy, it lacks locus and legitimacy; (5) African philosophy pursues intellectual apartheid through an ethnophilosophical agenda; and (6) African philosophy is vulnerable to the Sociological Thesis and is voided by it. The author's rebuttal consists of a critical and analytic examination of Pearce's views, counterfactual illustrations, and elicitation of enthymemic presuppositions. (shrink)

In this thesis, I use a close reading of the silent films of Charlie Chaplin to examine a question of listening posed by Jean-Luc Nancy, “Is listening something of which philosophy is capable” (Nancy 2007:1)? Drawing on the work of Nancy, Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Spivak, I consider a claim that philosophy has failed to address the topic of listening because a logocentric tradition claims speech as primary. In response to Derrida’s deconstruction of logocentrism, Nancy complicates the problem of listening (...) by distinguishing between l’écoute and l’entente. L’écoute is an attending to and answering the demand of the other and l’entente is an understanding directed inward toward a subject. Nancy could deconstruct an undervalued position of l’écoute, making listening essential to speech. I argue, Nancy rather asks what kind of listening philosophy is capable of. To examine this question, I focus on the peculiarly dialogical figure derived from Chaplin that communicates meaning without using speech. This discussion illustrates how Chaplin, in the role of a silent figure, listens to himself (il s’écoute) as other. Chaplin’s listening is Nancean resonance, a movement in which a subject refers back to itself as another subject, in constant motion of spatial and temporal non-presence. For Nancy, listening is a self’s relationship to itself, but without immediate self-presence. Moving in resonance, Chaplin makes the subject as other as he refers back to himself as other. I argue that Chaplin, through silent dialogue with himself by way of the other, makes his listening listened to. Chaplin refused to make his character speak because he believed speech would change the way in which his work would be listened to. In this way, Chaplin makes people laugh by making himself understood (se fait entendre) as he makes himself listened to (se fait écouter). In answer to Nancy’s question, I conclude philosophy is capable of meeting the demand of listening as both l’entente and l’écoute when it listens as Chaplin listens. (shrink)

Although U.S. colleges and universities continue to discuss creative ways to increase the number of African American collegians participating in study abroad, this research is limited when revealing the unique perspectives of African American collegians who have studied abroad. Traditionally an emphasis on program success has been placed on the quantity of study abroad participants rather than the quality of African American student support and engagement; the personal reflections through the lens of African American race and identity are often overlooked. (...) A series of culturally responsive, guided interviews were conducted with African American collegians from a variety of institutions across the United States, to learn their perspectives on their study abroad experiences. This research reveals that culturally responsive mentoring and guidance are valuable in helping African American collegians deconstruct or make sense out of their study abroad experiences, both during and upon reentry. Also, African American collegians use the method of finding "home abroad" as an important coping tool for support, social adjustment, and cultural validation. Combined, these findings suggest that African American collegians who have studied abroad benefit from culturally guided reflection and learning experiences in which their race and identity are taken into consideration. (shrink)