African Communitarianism Research Articles

What is African Communitarianism? Against Consensus as a regulative ideal

abstractIn this essay, an attempt is made to re-present African Communitarianism as a discursive formation between the individual and community. It is a view which eschews the dominant position of many Africanist scholars on the primacy of the community over the individual in the ‘individual-community’ debate in contemporary Africanist discourse. The relationship between the individual and community is dialogical for the identity of the individual and the community is dependent on this constitutive formation. The individual is not prior to the community and neither is the community prior to the individual. Contemporaneity explains this dialogic relationship and to argue otherwise threatens the individual’s subjectivity to a vanishing point, or simply, to deny the individual a presence. On this Rajectory, the politics of common good within the African value system can neither be described nor represented through consensus or unanimity but through a realist perspectivism or a worldview not held in abstraction from living Raditions, cultures, and values that characterize the people(s) of sub-Saharan Africa.

Individualism and community consciousness in contemporary Africa: A complementary reflection

The contemporary Africa is witnessing a subtle encroachment of Western styled socio-political cum economic individualism. This indiscriminate assimilation of values has invariably led to the gradual eroding and bastardization of her once cherished communal approach to life. This paper critically examines the foregoing existential realities of our time and recommends a complementary reconstructive treatment of African communitarianism taking into cognizance all the strands of African colonial experience in pursuit of a synthesis. Sophia: An African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 8(1) 2005:59-64 Keywords: Keywords:

Social justice and the Ethics of development in post‐apartheid South Africa

Abstract This paper explores the meaning of social justice and development in post‐apartheid South Africa. It begins with social justice as a process of equalisation, presenting some evidence of the challenge and explaining the difficulty of achieving racial equality. Recognition of changes in national development strategy in the post‐apartheid era, and their implications for inequality, leads to discussion of alternative development ethics, which involves reconsideration of what stands for the good life. The possibility of a combination of traditional African communitarianism and the ethic of care is explored, as a basis for an alternative conception of the good. Some impediments to the realisation of such a vision are identified.

Social Justice and the Ethics of Development in Post-apartheid South Africa

This paper explores the meaning of social justice and development in post-apartheid South Africa. It begins with social justice as a process of equalisation, presenting some evidence of the challenge and explaining the difficulty of achieving racial equality. Recognition of changes in national development strategy in the post-apartheid era, and their implications for inequality, leads to discussion of alternative development ethics, which involves reconsideration of what stands for the good life. The possibility of a combination of traditional African communitarianism and the ethic of care is explored, as a basis for an alternative conception of the good. Some impediments to the realisation of such a vision are identified.