Beyond Disciplines: African Perspectives on Theory and Method
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Beyond Disciplines: African Perspectives on Theory and Method
To what extent can we go beyond disciplinary boundaries to produce knowledge on Africa that has emancipatory and transformational power? Beyond Disciplines: African Perspectives on Theory and Method, attempts to address this question. Among the critical issues covered by contributors to the book include the limitations of Eurocentric approaches on illuminating and explaining African social contexts; the value of critical African scholarship to our understanding of the continent’s political economy of development; the descriptive, explanatory, and predictive potency of interpretivist emancipatory approaches vis-à-vis positivist developmental ones; the significance of gender power analysis for understanding women’s experiences of violent extremism; application of social science research across research communities on the critical issue of environmentalism; as well as theorising the confluence of internal displacement, weaponisation and agency of women and violent extremism. The book, authored by scholars from multiple disciplinary backgrounds based at institutions across three continents, underscores the imperative value of transformational epistemologies for Africa and demonstrates that the generation of such epistemologies is contingent upon collaborative knowledge-production projects across epistemic communities.
Shadrack Wanjala Nasong’o, PhD, is a Professor of International Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His research interest lies in democratisation, identity politics, social conflict, governance and development. Nasong’o has been honoured with the Rhodes College’s Clarence Day Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity, and the Ali Mazrui Award for Research and Scholarly Excellence from the University of Texas at Austin.
Eka Ikpe, PhD, is a Reader and Director, African Leadership Centre at King’s College London. Her themes of interest include developmentalism, industrial development and structural transformation, peacebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction and the economic costs of conflict and creative economies.
Gender, Science and Technology: Perspectives from Africa (Printed)
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Gender, Science and Technology: Perspectives from Africa (Printed)
This sixth volume of the CODESRIA Gender Series is a collection of discourses, perspectives, practices and policies on the role of the female gender in science and technology, particularly in the African context. Although widely advocated as the indisputable foundation for political and economic power in the modern world, science and technology remains marked by various layers and dimensions of gender inequality that work to the disadvantage of girls and women. Despite the fact that a lot of awareness has been created, and gender issues are now more readily acknowledged by various development initiatives in Africa, participation in science and technology still remains a hurdle as far as girls and women are concerned. A common theme that runs through the book is how feminine identities, ideologies of domesticity and gender stereotypes, and the inadequacy or lack of clear policies facilitate the invisibility of women in science and technology. This notwithstanding, women have never ceased devising clever and ingenious ways that would enable them to master nature, from the margins. The book provides a window onto the current state of female participation in science and technology in Africa, along with an analysis of the historical backgrounds, current educational and professional contexts, and prospects for the future. While it is evident that more research needs to be done, with more groups in different regions, this volume brings together a rich and inspiring collection of qualitative insights on gender, science and technology in Africa. The CODESRIA Gender Series acknowledges the need to challenge the masculinities underpinning the structures of repression that target women. The series aims to keep alive and nourish African social science research with insightful research and debates that challenge conventional wisdom, structures and ideologies that are narrowly informed by caricatures of gender realities. It strives to showcase the best in African gender research and provide a platform for emerging new talents to flower.
Indigenous Knowledge System and Intellectual Property Rights in the Twenty-first Century:Perspectives from Southern Africa (Printed)
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Indigenous Knowledge System and Intellectual Property Rights in the Twenty-first Century:Perspectives from Southern Africa (Printed)
This volume discusses a number of issues on the contested nature of intellectual property rights (IPR) and Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) in the context of Southern Africa. The issues addressed include the protection of folklore, IKS in a digital era, the valuation and safeguard of heritage sites, the need for appropriate IKS legislation, community based control of natural resources and the role played by traditional music in the maintenance of community. It is this extensive exploration of IKS from the vantage points of communication and culture, and explored in terms of policy, cultural survival, international as well as intra-national politics, economics, philosophy and ethics that makes this empirical grounded collection of papers unique, a distinctive contribution to the literature and ’cause’ of IKS. The specific IKS-related issues raised and dealt with in this volume are generic in the sense that the very same issues are being contested in different parts of the world. In this respect, this book highlights the particular as a means of comprehending the universal.
