The historiography of African religions and religions in Africa presents a remarkable shift from the study of 'Africa as Object' to 'Africa as Subject'; thus translating the subject from obscurity into the global community of the academic study of religion. This book presents a unique multidisciplinary exploration of African traditions in the study of religion in Africa and the new African diaspora. The book is structured under three main sections - Emerging trends in the teaching of African Religions; Indigenous Thought and Spirituality; and Christianity; Hinduism and Islam. Contributors drawn from diverse African and global contexts situate current scholarly traditions of the study of African religions within the purview of academic encounter and exchanges with non-African scholars and non-African contexts. African scholars enrich the study of religions from their respective academic and methodological orientations. Jacob Kehinde Olupona stands out as a pioneer in the socio-scientific interpretation of African indigenous religion and religions in Africa. This book is to his honour and marks his immense contribution to an emerging field of study and research.
#2590934 in Books Palgrave Macmillan 2007-07-24 2007-06-26Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.50 x .75 x 5.50l; .95 #File Name: 1403977399264 pages
Review
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful. a challenging; thought provoking readBy Elevate DifferenceWith its heavy subject matter and dense academese; Jennifer Harvey's Whiteness and Morality is anything but an easy beach read. Despite the inaccessibility of some of the prose; Harvey does manage to make a startlingly compelling argument: that white Americans are caught in the midst of a moral crisis because they unfairly benefit from the white supremacist infrastructure of America. She also argues that white people of America can only atone for their "sins" (and those of their ancestors) by paying out reparations to Native and African Americans.Harvey; an Assistant Professor of Religion at Drake University; does give a brief history of the horrors of slavery; genocide; displacement and colonialization that blacks and indigenous nations suffered at the hands of whites. However; she focuses primarily on how racism and white supremacy hurt white people; delineating the ethical quandaries that white people confront when they (actively or passively) collude with racism. She even goes so far as to say that white people are "peoples whose humanity and moral self-hood have been deeply and fundamentally marred by whiteness" and questions whether or not the United States should even be allowed to exist because of its history of bloody oppression.Harvey points out the fallacy in arguments for establishing a "color-blind" society because race does not have a biological basis; she writes; "this response is unacceptable because it evades the challenge of justice. To understand race as socially constructed neither makes white supremacy evaporate; nor causes my white skin to cease having real meaning in my social worlds."The book is a little short on information about the current reparations movement and practical advice on what non-racist whites can do to ameliorate current race relations. However; there are many other books on the market that can fill in the gaps. If you want a challenging; thought provoking read; break out your dictionary and your yellow highlighter pen and curl up with Whiteness and Morality.
