Article

The Etiology of Evil in the Shona Traditional Religion

August 2010
Studies on Ethno-Medicine 4(2):111-119

DOI:10.1080/09735070.2010.11886368

Authors:

University of Zimbabwe

The notion of "directing evil" implies that the occurrence of evil is not something that just happens but something that has a 'direction' and a 'director'. This is the common sense pattern of thinking that most people subscribe to, especially on matters that relate to the bad, as well as the good things. Naturally humans prefer to predict, prevent and avert evil, and if that is not possible they like to explain and understand it and place it within a certain order and context. The paper thus explores the basic structures along which the evil of illness and disability is perceived and directed and what implications this may have for professional contacts with ill and disabled persons.

A Reflection on the Necessity for an ‘Ontological Turn’ in African Studies with Reference to the Ecologies of Knowledge Production

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Jun 2015

Peter Kankonde

Abstract We are currently witnessing an increased diversification of the field of academic knowledge production where more and more, forms of knowledge kept at periphery for centuries are claiming recognition at centre stage. This reality has pushed scholars to question the impact and lasting legacies of historical processes of racism and colonialism still embedded in mainstream academic knowledge production. This translates today into a major critic of the social science methodologies, critiqued as “master’s tools” serving to reproduce contested coloniality of academic knowledge in most non-Western regions today. In Africa this debate is framed as knowledge decolonial option looking particularly at what forms and whose knowledge is legitimised, reproduced, and for what purpose through the current education structure and what socio-political and cultural functions it plays. This is the debate this paper contributes to. It suggests an ontological turn in order to move from an emphasis on the identities of the producers to focus instead on the knowledge production process itself. The main argument is that there is indeed a timely necessity to advance an ontologically relevant Africanist scholarship that gives a sympathetic theological reading of the African lived experience. As a methodology and scholarly language, ontology constitutes a neutral ground in knowledge production, validation and consumption debates that needs to be taken seriously as it allows scholars to take into account the lived worlds people inhabit and the correlating ways of Being and knowing. The paper highlights particularly the current issues of misreading, misrepresentations as well as the need to avoid reading African realities with external interpretative and explanative lenses. Keywords: Ontological Turn, coloniality, African, Cosmology

Myths and Beliefs about the Acquisition of Taeniasis and Cysticercosis amongst the Xhosa University Students in South Africa

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2012

The main inhabitants of the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa are the Xhosa people. Myths and beliefs are part of every culture. This paper focuses on the myths about the acquisition of Cysticercosis and Taeniasis amongst the Xhosa university students in the field of health promotion. The research was a cross-sectional survey. A convenience sample was used. The sample was a group of students in one class, an intact group. Data were collected through a questionnaire from the first year Health Promotion Education (HPE) class in the Faculty of Health Sciences at a public university in South Africa. This university is geographically located in the tribal land of the Xhosa people. Although the population consisted of 70 first year HPE students, only 66 students voluntarily took part in the study: 19 males and 47 females. The data were manually analysed and percentages were computed. The results indicated that there were several myths and beliefs about the acquisition of Cysticercosis and Taeniasis amongst the Xhosa people. These myths were highly entrenched in the belief system and the students brought these myths and beliefs to the university. Such myths and beliefs were found to hinder the acquisition of scientific knowledge about the ways in which Cysticercosis and Taeniasis are contracted. Inclusion of scientifically correct ideas in school curricula and training health educators with scientifically correct conceptions and their active role in eradicating myths in villages ought to be considered as a matter of priority.

General Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement

Article

Full-text available

Jan 1966
Psychol Monogr

Julian B. Rotter

The effects of reward or reinforcement on preceding behavior depend in part on whether the person perceives the reward as contingent on his own behavior or independent of it. Acquisition and performance differ in situations perceived as determined by skill versus chance. Persons may also differ in generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. This report summarizes several experiments which define group differences in behavior when Ss perceive reinforcement as contingent on their behavior versus chance or experimenter control. The report also describes the development of tests of individual differences in a generalized belief in internal-external control and provides reliability, discriminant validity and normative data for 1 test, along with a description of the results of several studies of construct validity.

Definitions of health and illness in the light of American social structure

Article