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Afrocentrism is a worldview that centered on the history of people of African descent or a biased view that favors it over non-African civilizations. It is in some respects a response to Eurocentric attitudes about African people and their historical contributions. It seeks to counter what it sees as mistakes and ideas perpetuated by the racist philosophical underpinnings of Western academic disciplines as they developed during and since Europe's Early Renaissance as justifying rationales for the enslavement of other peoples, in order to enable more accurate accounts of not only African but all people's contributions to world history. Afrocentricity deals primarily with self-determination and African agency and is a pan-African point of view for the study of culture, philosophy, and history.
Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga, previously known as Ron Karenga, is an American activist, author and professor of Africana studies, best known as the creator of the pan-African and African-American holiday of Kwanzaa.
Black studies or Africana studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field that primarily focuses on the study of the history, culture, and politics of the peoples of the African diaspora and Africa. The field includes scholars of African-American, Afro-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, Afro-European, Afro-Asian, African Australian, and African literature, history, politics, and religion as well as those from disciplines, such as sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, education, and many other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. The field also uses various types of research methods.
Womanism is a term originating from the work of African American author Alice Walker in her 1983 book In Search of Our Mother's Garden, denoting a movement within feminism, primarily championed by Black feminists. Walker coined the term "womanist" in the short story Coming Apart in 1979. Her initial use of the term evolved to envelop a spectrum of issues and perspectives facing black women and others.
Mary R. Lefkowitz is an American scholar of Classics. She is the Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where she previously worked from 1959 to 2005. She has published ten books over the course of her career.
Afrocentricity is an academic theory and approach to scholarship that seeks to center the experiences and peoples of Africa and the African diaspora within their own historical, cultural, and sociological contexts. First developed as a systematized methodology by Molefi Kete Asante in 1980, he drew inspiration from a number of African and African diaspora intellectuals including Cheikh Anta Diop, George James, Harold Cruse, Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and W. E. B. Du Bois. The Temple Circle, also known as the Temple School of Thought, Temple Circle of Afrocentricity, or Temple School of Afrocentricity, was an early group of Africologists during the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped to further develop Afrocentricity, which is based on concepts of agency, centeredness, location, and orientation.
Molefi Kete Asante is an American professor and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies. He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies.
The Africana Cultures and Policy Studies Institute (ACPSI) is a professional policy studies organization that promotes an academic analysis of Africana cultures and policies under the rubric of various disciplines commonly referred to as Africana studies, Black studies, or Africology. This Institute provides the opportunity for an intellectual community to examine and explain global linkages, interactions, identities, transformations, redemptions, and dilemmas of African people in the Diaspora. ACPSI uses the dissemination of scholarship to encourage the development of policies that benefit the quality of life for all African people in the Diaspora.
Melanin theory is a set of pseudoscientific claims made by some proponents of Afrocentrism, which holds that black people, including ancient Egyptians, have superior mental, physical, and paranormal powers because they have higher levels of melanin, the primary skin pigment in humans.
Black orientalism is an intellectual and cultural movement found primarily within African-American circles. While similar to the general movement of Orientalism in its negative outlook upon Western Asian – especially Arab – culture and religion, it differs in both its emphasis upon the role of the Arab slave trade and the Coolie slave trade in the historic relationship between Africa and the Arab – and greater Muslim – world, as well as a lack of colonial promotion over the Middle East region as was promoted by European orientalism in the same region. The term "black orientalism" was first used by Kenyan academic Ali Mazrui in his critique of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s documentary Wonders of the African World. Supporters of this movement include writers such as Chinweizu.
Afrocentric education refers to a pedagogical approach to education designed to empower people of the African diaspora with educational modes in contact and in line with the cultural assumptions common in their communities. A central premise behind it is that many Africans have been subjugated by having their awareness of themselves limited and by being indoctrinated with ideas that work against them and their cultures.
"Africana womanism" is a term coined in the late 1980s by Clenora Hudson-Weems, intended as an ideology applicable to all women of African descent. It is grounded in African culture and Afrocentrism and focuses on the experiences, struggles, needs, and desires of Africana women of the African diaspora. It distinguishes itself from feminism, or Alice Walker's womanism. Africana womanism pays more attention to and focuses more on the realities and the injustices in society in regard to race.
Black psychology, also known as African-American psychology and African/Black psychology, is a scientific field that focuses on how people of African descent know and experience the world. The field, particularly in the United States, largely emerged as a result of the lack of understanding of the psychology of Black people under traditional, Westernized notions of psychology. Overall, the field combines perspectives from both Black studies and traditional psychology encapsulating a range of definitions and approaches while simultaneously proposing its own framework of understanding.
Marimba Ani is an anthropologist and African Studies scholar best known for her work Yurugu, a comprehensive critique of European thought and culture, and her coining of the term "Maafa" for the African holocaust.
Asiacentrism is an ethnocentric and economic perspective that regards Asia to be either superior, central, or unique relative to other regions. This ideological stance may take the form of ascribing to Asia significance or supremacy at the cost of the rest of the world. The concept arose in the context of a projected Asian Century, the expected economic and cultural dominance of Asia in the 21st century, in the 1990s.
Ronald L. Jackson II is an American academic and author. He is Past President of the National Communication Association and a professor of communication, culture, and media, and a former dean of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati.
Aboubacry Moussa Lam, also known as Boubacar Lam, was born in 1953 and is a Peul Senegalese historian, disciple of Cheikh Anta Diop, who was his primary advisor on his major work, De l'Origine Égyptienne des Peuls, and a professor of Egyptology in the Department of History at the Cheikh Anta Diop University. Lam has been credited with being the most important Diop scholar and being "most helpful and inspiring in defining the nature of the Afrocentric school of thought." Boubacar has been active in seeking to recenter Africans back in their own historical and social context. Lam was also a signatory to an appeal to preserve the Timbuktu Manuscripts. In January 2018, he was listed as a writer and lecturer at Dakar University as well as a participant in the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA)'s and the Global Book Alliance (GBA)'s African Publishers and Other Book Industry Stakeholders Regional Meeting.
Ogotemmeli was the Dogon elder and hogon who narrated the cosmogony, cosmology and symbols of the Dogon people to French anthropologist Marcel Griaule during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, that went on to be documented and adapted by contemporary scholars. A lot of what is known about the Dogon religion, cosmogony and symbolism came from Griaule's work, which in turn came from Ogotemmeli—who taught it to him.
Katherine Olukemi Bankole-Medina is a professor of history and chair of the Department of History, Geography and Global Studies at Coppin State University. She specialises in histories of African American enslavement from a medical humanities perspective.
Nah Dove is an author, lecturer and scholar in African-American studies. She has lived in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Canada, the UK, and in the US, where she is an assistant professor instruction in the department of Africology and African American studies at the college of liberal arts, Temple University, Philadelphia.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 Asante, Molefi Kete (2008). "The Pursuit of Africology: On the Creation and Sustaining of Black Studies". International Journal of Africana Studies. 14 (1): 317–328. doi:10.4135/9781412982696.N22. ISBN 9780761928409. S2CID 132662366.
- 1 2 Conyers, Jr., James L. (May 1, 2004). "The Evolution Of Africology: An Afrocentric Appraisal" (PDF). Journal of Black Studies. 34 (5): 643–644, 646–648. doi:10.1177/0021934703259257. JSTOR 3180921. S2CID 145790776.
- 1 2 Conyers, Jr., James L. (Oct 15, 2018). "Research Methods In Africana Studies". Africana Methodology: A Social Study of Research, Triangulation and Meta-theory. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 201–204. ISBN 9781527519404.