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FirstView articles

Contents

Page 1 of 5

AFRICA GENERAL

Scholarly Review Essay

  • African Philosophy: Rethinking the Ethics of Development and Human Well-being in the Twenty-First Century

  • Chika C. Mba
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    09 May 2025, pp. 1-10
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  • Towards the end of his book, African Philosophical Adventures, John Murungi laments the injurious impact of Western epistemological hegemony on the humanity and well-being of non-Western peoples and societies, especially Africans. He describes the ensuing situation as a crisis about what it means to be called human or to have the right to exist as human in the twenty-first century: Today, human rights are in a state of crisis and this crisis is fundamentally the crisis of being human. … [The] planetary mode of being has fallen under the tyrannical regime of Euro-Western anthropology. The voice of African anthropology, as is the case with other non-Euro-Western voices of anthropology, remains muted. Africans, particularly, have been reduced to beggars in matters of hermeneutics and understanding of being human. They have been compelled and are even today compelled to look up to Euro-West for assistance in self-understanding. In matters that pertain to self-understanding they look for foreign aid. …Having been voided of what they [Africans] are and of the ability for self-understanding they are compelled to look outside themselves to make sense of themselves. (142–43)

EAST AFRICA

Book Review

Book Review

WEST AFRICA

Book Review

Book Review

AFRICA GENERAL

Book Review

EASTERN AND SOUTHERN AFRICA

Book Review

AFRICA GENERAL

Book Review

SOUTHERN AFRICA

Book Review

EAST AFRICA

Book Review

AFRICA GENERAL

Book Review

Scholarly Review Essay

  • Building the City from Below: Toward a Citizen-Centered City-Making

  • Jeffrey W. Paller
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    21 March 2025, pp. 1-9
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  • In his book Seeing Like a State, James Scott writes, “We have repeatedly observed the natural and social failures of thin, formulaic simplifications imposed through the agency of state power” (1998, 309). State and top-down planning lacks mētis, or the common sense and practical experience that people on the ground possess of their everyday environments. Instead, Scott proposes a focus on practical knowledge, which “depends on an exceptionally close and astute observation of the environment” (1998, 324).

SOUTHERN AFRICA

Book Review

AFRICA GENERAL

Book Review

SOUTHERN AFRICA

Book Review

Corrigendum

AFRICA GENERAL

Book Review

SOUTHERN AFRICA

Book Review

Film Review

SOUTH AFRICA

Book Review

Page 1 of 5