1.3 Time to think again
1.3.3 Secondary guides, counterpoint views, and cautions
The significance of Schutz's work for our present concerns should begin to be apparent as we look back on the two opening vignettes. When, for example, we from the Global North or West go to work on African development issues, how can we be sure we are in territory that is adequately accounted for on our "maps?" (My Zimbabwean bishop appeared to understand that supplies and equipment constituted a real lay training program, or at least were adequate enough for him not to be concerned about what that program would teach.) What if our sending organizations give directions and make evaluations using another "map?" (The European mining investors seemed to understand that financial and production data were real enough indicators for them to make adequate decisions about their employee's performance. What had I overlooked by concentrating on imparting ideas and what did they miss by never seeing the environment that was earning them money?) While Schutz undoubtedly did not have such international development policymaking and practice situations in mind when he wrote and taught, much of what he said is remarkably relevant to the case study that follows.
what we think we already know. And we will need to be reminded of potential obstacles along the way.
For instance, this amount of thinking about thinking highlights terminology problems.
One major scholarly quandary concerns using specific designations to identify types of thinkers such as "Africans" and "Westerners." Thus far we have talked mostly about the Global North or West and the Global South. But as the work unfolds, more specific terminology will also be necessary in certain spots. By using such designations, however, are we simultaneously assigning immutable characteristics to entire sets of people?
Westerners know there are substantive differences between the ways Americans and Europeans experience life; isn't it reasonable and fair to expect that someone from West Africa will experience life differently from someone living in the southern portion of the continent? Yet, Americans and Europeans seem easily to commiserate about differences experienced when interacting with people from the African continent generally. What can we make of this?
Sometimes this dilemma is termed the "essentialist" debate and the dangers of essentialist thinking include latching on to ideologies; constructing grand narratives about the way the world works; and imposing overarching viewpoints on everyone.11 Ultimately, essentialism can lead to racism and other divisive attitudes that can adversely affect our
115 Robin Horton asserts that Westerners are generally unfamiliar with the bases of our own theoretical thinking.
Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West: Selected Theoretical Papers in Magic, Religion, and Science (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 199.
The origins of this term seem to lie with Pan-Africanists and black nationalists who, in attempting to unite people from various African heritages, suggested that there are qualities supposedly shared by all blacks.
Danny Postel, "Is Race Real?" How Does Identity Matter?" The Chronicle of Higher Education 48 (2002): 3:
http://chronicle.com/free/v48/I30/30a01001htm. Well known Africanists and anthropologists, John and Jean Comaroff, are particularly concerned about the dangers of this approach.
understanding about what and whom we encounter in cross-cultural living and working situations.117
In response, some analysts acknowledge differences without prescribing restrictive labels by talking in terms of worldviews. Marshall, for example, discusses the separate conceptual worlds of religion and development. Willis, in exploring the relationship between religion and international development in the Canadian academic arena, defines "worldview"
as "the composite set of beliefs, values, and convictions that influence how a person views the world."118 Westerner Harold Turner has sketched out a general conception of how Africans might perceive life, terming this a "primal" worldview.119 And Leo Apostel sees things similarly although he speaks of principles rather than worldviews. Such fluid and encompassing designations allow scholars to suggest broad outlines in the ways people experience life.
Still they are Western-devised schemes and how African scholars judge them varies.
Some generally agree. Kwame Bediako, for example, affirms what he calls Turner's six- featured framework, placing special emphasis on the final point—the unity of the whole—as being key to the entire structure.1""1 Others, such as Okot p'Bitek, do not appear overly concerned with terminology and categorization. p'Bitek insists that differing viewpoints or
As if this tension weren't complex enough, non-essentialist thinking can also elicit racism charges. Appiah's critique of essentialism that contends "race" is a superimposed construct has, itself, been charged with unintentionally but potentially leading to racial and ethnic cleansing. Postel, "Is Race Real?" 3.
118 Willis, "Like Ships Passing," 220.
11 "Primal," many scholars point out, is not to be mistaken for "primitive." Rather it denotes something that has come first. Anthony O. Balcomb, "Descartes Meets the Isangoma—The Encounter Between Modern and Indigenous Knowledge Systems Beyond Colonialism and Apartheid" (Paper presented at Indigenous Knowledge Conference, Sasakatoon, Saskatchewan, 2001), 3; Anthony O. Balcomb, "Science and the African Worldview—Rediscovering the Numinous, Re-Animating the Cosmos" (Paper presented at University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 2003), 7.
120 There is an entire center in Belgium named after Apostel and devoted to research and reflection on worldviews. It appears to have a decidedly scientific, rather than theological, bias. See www.vub.ac.be/CLEA.
121 Kwame Bediako, Jesus in Africa: The Christian Gospel in African History and Experience (Akropong- Akupem, Ghana: Regnum Africa, 2000), 87-89.
perceptions represent various societies' quests for meaning and that is the important point to remember. How a range of peoples address big questions about the purpose of life and the meaning of suffering, for instance, will vary. But the questions themselves are roughly the same.
Some have called these myths or world-views; others refer to them as ideologies...fanatics refer to them as Truth, as if these ideas are about verifiable or indisputable facts, or about the actual state of the matter. These fundamental ideas are concerned with meaning. The meaning of being alive
1 99
in the world. And meaning is wider in scope than is truth.
Similarly, Kwasi Wiredu does not dwell so much on the appropriateness or inappropriateness of charts and tables delineating differences. Rather, he says the best way to think about African thinking is to compare it with traditional Western folk thinking.123
Helping illuminate the ground of Western thinking, Samuel Huntington has drawn up a list of key characteristics or marks of Western culture. When presented alongside ways of articulating African thinking these marks begin to suggest where some discrepancies in worldviews may lie. Not only is the Western list much more terse than the descriptors contained in the two counterpart African lists. Some ideas appear quite at odds. For example, designating Western culture as individualist over against African cultures' collectivity prompts us to consider the extent to which a preference for individuality may or may not be normative worldwide.
122 Okot p'Bitek, "The Sociality of Self," in African Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Chukwudi Eze (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 73-74.
123 Kwasi Wiredu, "How Not to Compare African Thought with Western Thought," in Eze, African Philosophy, 193ff. A comparison with American folk thinking can be enlightening here. Slightly over 300 years ago and about 30 miles from where this is being written, our Christian Puritan forebears—the same who imported Calvin's work ethic as mentioned by Weber—were conducting the infamous Salem witch trials. For added perspective it helps to remember that serious Western involvement with the African continent only dates back some 400 years.
•IliilliiiiiiiislssMliiiiiiii^
Turner/Bediako primal worldview Zahan/Apostel African Huntington Western characteristics124 philosophical principles
(selected) '
cultural characteristics126
• Kinship with nature: people, • Humanity as basically and • The Greco-Roman legacy plants, and animals universally religious • Catholicism, Protestantism
• Humanity as innately weak • Humanity, rather than God or • European languages
and finite the spirits, at the center of the • Separation of spiritual and
• The world as populated by universe temporal authority
spirits and beings more • Religion as concerning • Rule of law powerful and lasting than matter: earth, sky, and the • Social pluralism
humans material universe • Representative bodies
• Humanity in relationship • A person is a person only by • Individualism with the protective spirit way of relationship with
world ancestors and family
• Belief in an afterlife • A person is made human by connected to or mediated the decisions of others
through the ancestors • Time as basically cyclic
• No sharp dichotomy between • Knowledge as acquired the physical and spiritual through initiation and ritual worlds; the entire universe is
a unified and spiritual system
Recognizing the intellectual pitfalls posed by over categorizing and designating, it should be clearly understood that the primary purpose of a case study closely examining African thought and experience is not to say anything definitive about that. Rather, it is to augment and illustrate the themes raised here about discrepancies in the ways that different people experience everyday life.