African Cultural Context Research Articles

Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion (review)

Reviewed by: Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion Tresa Randall Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion. By Susan Manning. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. pp. 296. $34.95 cloth. Susan Manning offers a meticulously researched theoretical examination of race, sexuality, gender, spectatorship, and reception in American theatre dance. Manning calls upon critical race theory and queer theory to interrogate the relationships between two distinct, if overlapping, forms of American dance in the mid-twentieth century: modern dance and Negro dance (Manning uses the anachronistic term for what was later called black dance and African American dance). As she argues, Negro dance and modern dance were mutually constitutive categories, forged through interdependent representations of blackness and whiteness. Modern dance occupied a space of white cultural privilege, in which the unmarked white body could speak universally, while the black bodies of Negro dancers remained marked as different. Throughout the book, Manning is clear about her revisionist intent. With postmodern challenges to stable representations of race, gender, and sexuality in mind, she looks back to the 1930s through the 1960s, and questions how spectators from various social locations constructed meaning of danced representations. Theorizing spectatorship as a series of sociohistorical encounters, she proposes that "cross-viewing"—when spectators from various social locations observe each other observing performance—creates the potential for social change. Manning's study consolidates previous studies of gender, sexuality, and race in dance. The field of dance studies has seen an explosion of work on early twentieth-century dance over the last two decades by authors such as Ramsay Burt, Julia Foulkes, Thomas DeFrantz, Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, Linda Tomko, and Mark Franko, who have replaced celebratory biographies of major figures with examinations of the social, historical, and political contexts of dance practices. In her 1993 study of Mary Wigman, Ecstasy and the Demon, Manning looked at gender and nationalism; here, she turns her attention to race and sexuality. Informing her analysis are primary sources such as reviews, photographs, audience surveys, video and film documentation, choreographic notes, oral histories, and a comprehensive survey of relevant periodicals. Describing almost twenty choreographic works and dance events, she weaves together biographical information on choreographers with information about patronage, venue, critical reception, and spectatorship. The book is organized into an introduction and four chapters, which proceed both chronologically and thematically. Chapters one and two describe the modern dance and leftist dance networks of the 1930s as they related to Negro dance, with emphasis on issues of representation, reception, and patronage. In these chapters Manning introduces the central contrast between "metaphorical minstrelsy" and "black self-representation" that informs much of her argument. "Metaphorical minstrelsy" is Manning's term for the way white modern dancers such as Helen Tamiris and Ted Shawn created danced representations of African American subjects. For example, Tamiris's Negro Spirituals (1928) presented abstractions of concepts such as slavery [End Page 771] and oppression in order to express solidarity with African Americans, while Shawn's Negro Spirituals (1933) used the music to represent emotionalism and religiosity. Edna Guy also staged dances to spirituals and used other black source material in "The First Negro Dance Recital in America" in 1931; pointing out the contrast with white modern dancers, though, Manning calls this "black self-representation" (30), for Guy framed her dances within the context of African American history and culture. As Manning demonstrates in later chapters, black self-representation as a convention gained currency among spectators and critics after 1940 with the work of Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, and later Alvin Ailey. In the 1930s, however, it was an emerging theatrical convention in dance that was not broadly legible; Guy and her contemporaries in Negro dance struggled to maintain patronage and to attract the attention of either the dance press or the African American press. Chapter three is central to Manning's reperiodization of both modern dance and Negro dance, for she demonstrates that after 1940, "the culturally marked body became the province of Negro dance, as modern dance deployed the newly privileged unmarked body" (118). The 1940s witnessed new credibility for the performance of diaspora among Negro dancers alongside redefinitions of whiteness with the rise of "mythic abstraction" as the...

What's Culture Got to Do with It? Prevention Programs for African American Adolescent Girls

This paper examines prevention programming for African American girls by placing the prevention process within the larger African and African American cultural context. We provide an overview of the theories and issues we consider most relevant to African American culture, including Africentric theory, ethnic identity, gender identity and relational theory, developmental issues, the community context, and historical considerations. Drawing from our own drug prevention work, we provide examples of how to incorporate culture into prevention programs to make them most relevant for the target population. We also summarize our own efforts to create culturally appropriate prevention interventions and their impact on the girls in our programs. We conclude with suggested directions for future research into culture-specific prevention programs.

What's Culture Got to Do with It? Prevention Programs for African American Adolescent Girls

This paper examines prevention programming for African American girls by placing the prevention process within the larger African and African American cultural context. We provide an overview of the theories and issues we consider most relevant to African American culture, including Africentric theory, ethnic identity, gender identity and relational theory, developmental issues, the community context, and historical considerations. Drawing from our own drug prevention work, we provide examples of how to incorporate culture into prevention programs to make them most relevant for the target population. We also summarize our own efforts to create culturally appropriate prevention interventions and their impact on the girls in our programs. We conclude with suggested directions for future research into culture-specific prevention programs.

Contested Translations: The Gospel versus Foreign Missionaries in John Munonye's Obi

A thematically significant scene early in John Munonye's Obi recounts missionary priest's first in village of Umudiobia, which is on topic of polygamy. This he condemns as rock on which many a man's faith has foundered beyond rescue, warning that he [will] not tolerate a thing like that in this parish (61). When catechist/translator hesitates and subsequently rephrases his words into some unspecific caution against betraying Lord, Fr. George rebukes him, telling him Translate what I said and don't preach your own sermon (62). This contest between foreigner and indigene neatly dramatizes what is essentially a sub-textual conflict between Gospel and how is translated into with which is coming into contact and foreign missionaries trying to impose their European interpretations onto African context. The clash between mission Christianity and indigenous is a recurring theme in postcolonial African fiction. This theme can be found at heart of novels by writers as ethnically, nationally, and religiously diverse as John Munonye, Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, T. M. Aluko, Kenjo Jumbam, Onoura Nzekwu, Mongo Beti, T. Obinkaram Echewa, Timothy Wangusa, Francis Selormey, and Dominic Mulaisho. Critical readers tend to discuss these novels as dramatic explorations of fundamental incompatibility of Christianity with indigenous culture. However, I believe in most instances these conflicts are dramatizations at textual level of a sub-textual contest not between Gospel and indigenous but rather between Gospel and missionary, and most often take form of a struggle between foreigner and indigene over authority to interpret or re-express Gospel message into various African cultural contexts. Ngugi's The River Between, for instance, among other things situates Gospel between missionary and indigenous attitudes towards sexuality. Jumbam's The White Man of God, in turn, raises issue of Gospel and European versus indigenous notions of sin and punishment, while Nzekwu's Blade Among Boys questions Roman Catholic demand for priestly celibacy in a with strong philoprogenative priorities. These novels often include sincere African converts in conflict not with Gospel message, but rather with missionaries over just what that message teaches and demands of them. It is, in essence, a contesting of translations: translations at level of cultural forms of universal truths of Gospel Lamin Sanneh represents most contemporary missiologists and contextual theologians when he describes evangelization in terms of translating message. The Gospel, they all agree, is something apart from but is never encountered outside of culture. As John Evangelist so eloquently expressed it: beginning was Word; Word was with God and Word was God [...]. The Word was true light that enlightens all men (1.1, 9). Christians hold that truth of Gospel message is both universal and eternal; is not something that varies from to or age to age. However, as John also observed, the Word was made flesh, he lived among us (1.14). Humans live in a physical world where environmental factors (in broadest sense) such as climate, geography, natural resources, worldview, social and political organization, and modes of production and economic activity all contribute to shaping those cultural forms that people create in order to impose order and meaning on daily existence. Jesus entered world at a particular time and place in history, that is, a particular cultural context. In order to address his immediate listeners meaningfully he had to address them in their own cultural setting, speaking to and through their particular cultural forms. Consequently, as Robert Schreiter puts it, from beginning Gospel has never come to a people in pure form: it is already embedded in less-than-pure culture of messenger, whether that messenger be Jesus living as an Aramaic Jew two thousand years ago or contemporary European missionary (New Catholicity 71). …

Sustainability and sustainable construction: the African context

The scope of Africa's developmental problems and a dramatically different worldview from that of the West requires a different approach to sustainability in Africa. The context of poverty and rapid urbanization suggests that sustainable urban development should be the focus of sustainable construction in Africa. However, it is argued this should be undertaken in a way that is relevant to the African cultural context, possibly through the inclusion of the values and worldview of traditional Africa in the definition and principles of sustainability. Using the understanding of interconnectedness as expressed by the cultural concept of Ubuntu, some principles are suggested for an African concept of sustainability that can inform the Western sustainability model and make it relevant to Africa. La nature des problèmes de développement en Afrique ainsi que le point de vue mondial radicalement divergent de celui de l'occident exigent une attitude différente en ce qui concerne le principe de durabilité en Afrique. La pauvreté et l'urbanisation rapide laissent à penser que le développement urbain durable devrait être au centre des principes de construction durable en Afrique. On prétend toutefois que cette évolution devrait se faire d'une manière telle qu'elle corresponde au contexte culturel africain, en incluant éventuellement les valeurs et le point de vue mondial de l'Afrique traditionnelle quant à la définition et aux principes de durabilité. Sur la base du principe d'interconnexité tel qu'il a été exprimé selon le concept culturel d'Ubuntu, cette communication suggère un certain nombre de principes pour un concept africain de la durabilité qui puisse contribuer au modèle occidental de durabilité et l'adapter à l'Afrique.

Softly Strong

This paper examines how exercise can be integrated into therapy with African American women. Factors that must be considered by the therapist include the client's: (1) attitude toward therapy, exercise, and physical health; (2) sociocconomic status; (3) diagnosis; (4) support system; (5) styles of coping with stress; (6) attitude toward self care; (7) body image; and (8) exposure to realistic role models who exercise. The therapist's sensitivity to an African American cultural context and toward exercise are also critical to successful therapy with African American women. Examples are discussed of using exercise in therapy and professional experiences with African American women. Recommendations are suggested.

The relationship between Marcia's ego identity statuses and selected personality variables in an African context

Marcia's operationalization of Erikson's identity construct, the four identity statuses, was used in a study on late adolescent males in an African cultural context. Identity statuses were determined for 110 first-year university students in relation to global identity, as well as occupation, religion and politics, the content areas of Marcia's original Identity Status Interview. Personality dimensions were measured by the High School Personality Questionnaire and the IPAT Anxiety Scale. Contrary to findings obtained in Western settings, adolescents in the foreclosure status (global identity) displayed lower intelligence and concrete thinking patterns. Identity statuses relating to the individual content areas were both supportive and in conflict with findings obtained in Western studies, indicating possibly qualitative differences in an African situation.

Iron technology in East Africa: symbolism, science, and archaeology

Remaking knowledge about African iron technology historical and cultural contexts - excavating history, myth and ritual ethnoarchaeology and experiment in iron technology ethnoarchaeology and bricolage - engaging iron smelting a technological model of the Haya process comparative models - forging a history of Haya iron smelting dynamic models for an archaeology of iron technology models for the interpretation of space - smelting and forging an archaeology of African iron symbolism reading ideology in the archaeological record a history of landscape transformation - bringing the past up to the present.

The Cultural Factor in Bible Translation: A Study of Communicating the Word of God in a Central African Cultural Context

The Cultural Factor in Bible Translation: A Study of Communicating the Word of God in a Central African Cultural Context

Cannabis and Alcohol Usage Among the Plateau Tonga: An Observational Report of the Effects of Cultural Expectation

The relationships between set, setting, and the effects of smoking marijuana are discussed. Research is referred to which indicates that the relationship has not been substantially investigated. A brief account of contrasting experiences in European and African cultural contexts suggests that the cannabis experience is strongly influenced by social learning.

RELIGION AND DEVELOPMENT IN CHANGING AFRICA

AbstractIn the following pages we want to open up ideas, views, explanations being expressed in discussions, meetings and studies, and found in publications (mainly) from Africa on the place and function of religion in the modernization process taking place in this continent. We do realize that the field we try to cover is too vast, and we are . aware that by referring to Africa as a whole we cannot possibly include all the differences and varieties 'Africa' does encompass. Yet we do foster some hope that by classifying somehow the major emerging aspects and by making appropriate distinctions and some initial comments in a more general way, a frame of reference will emerge which will prove useful and helpful in analyzing and assessing more concrete local situations. After having presented some African remarks on 'Africa' and on 'Development', we want to focus attention on the views regarding the interrelationship of religion with development as seen from the African scene itself, however not without placing it in the wider context of African civilisation and culture, source and effect of religion.

The concept of ‘respect’ in African culture in the context of journalism practice: An Afrocentric intervention

For decades, since the debate about the role of the media in post-colonial Africa emerged, a distorted interpretation of the meaning of ‘respect’ in the African cultural context has persisted in academic discourse to the present day. The distorted view suggests that according to traditional African beliefs it is disrespectful to criticise authoritative figures. On this basis, in some African countries journalism students have opposed criticism of heads of states, arguing that it is un-African to do so. On the other hand, journalism academics and practitioners have condemned and dismissed the concept of ‘respect’ in African culture as undemocratic and inimical to the role of journalism as a tool for democracy. This article argues that a critical examination of the concept of ‘respect’ in the African cultural context reveals that historically, in traditional Africa, ‘respect’ was not equated to obsequiousness by the citizens in their encounter with power. Sycophancy and submission in the face of power were invoked in the name of a falsified version of African culture by postcolonial power-hungry dictators, who sought to entrench themselves by distorting African culture for self-serving purposes.