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The Death of Isintu in Contemporary Technological Era: The Ethics of Sex Robots Among the Ndebele of Matabo
Abstract
In industrial and social setting in Africa, machines and technological devices are gradually replacing human beings. Sex robots are replacing the need for other human beings for intimacy. People no longer need other human beings to indulge in sexual pleasure. Using Isintu ethics, I interrogate the ethical challenges that emanate from the substitution of human beings with technological devices. Isintu thrives on human-to-human relations; when human relationships suffer, Isintu suffers. Isintu is linked to the concept of umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (a person is a person because of other people). The chapter concludes that the Ndebele of Matabo are not yet culturally ready for sex robots.
... This creates an array of ethical issues, not only because the answers are sometimes inaccurate, but also regarding the copyright of the sources used for the compilation of the answers. Other ethical issues that are related to AI pertain to data surveillance [17], consumerisation caused by social media [18], sexual and reproductive technologies [19][20][21][22], and the negative implications for job creation [23]. According to Prabhakaran, Mitchell, Gebru, and Gabriel [13], AI models can be "biased, unfair, or unethical". ...
... It also provides "an ethic of inclusiveness" as a constructive principle to overcome the divisive heritage of colonialism [25]. Papers by Chirongoma and Mutsvedu [26], Sande [27] and Moyo [20] are only three recent examples of scholarly research that use Ubuntu to provide an African perspective on a variety of ethical issues in the digital era, such as the impact of ICT on human relationships, religion and even moral issues concerning the use of sex robots. ...
Although there has been interest in the ethical aspects of information systems (IS) since the 1980s, various authors have recently lamented the fact that not enough research has been done in the area and that ethics is often ignored in the IS industry. When one searches for research on the decolonisation and Africanisation of IS ethics, few outputs can be found. The main research question that this article addresses is: How can African knowledge systems and ways of knowing inform and enrich IS ethics? The main aim of the article is to identify appropriate ethical insights, borrowed from Ubuntu-informed ethics, information ethics and business ethics to serve as pointers for Ubuntu IS ethics. The study is a conceptual study which follows a philosophical approach. The research is a rudimentary attempt to enrich IS ethical theory from an African viewpoint. The most important contribution of the paper is the proposal of a root for an Ubuntu-based IS ethic which could be used to counteract the hegemony of Eurocentric values embedded in information and communication technology.
... This is why isintu at times refers to an ancient way of doing things or the ancient wisdom of doing things. Moyo (2021), Bongela (2016) and Xeketwane (2018)'s definitions of isintu as the "way of the people", drive this point home. This is because the Oxford English dictionary (n.d., definition 1) defines 'way' as "a method, style, or manner of doing something; an optional or alternative form of action". ...
... This is because the Oxford English dictionary (n.d., definition 1) defines 'way' as "a method, style, or manner of doing something; an optional or alternative form of action". Henceforth isintu refers to 'a manner of doing' underpinned by the philosophy of ubuntu (Moyo, 2021). ...
Distinctly African health-promoting human occupations are under-researched in occupational therapy. Many occupational therapy interventions used in South Africa have been developed elsewhere and may be inaccessible to many. African dance that produces neurogenic tremors (ADNT) is an occupation that may already be accessible to many, and a potential resource for health and could be used in occupational therapy. Research Question: What is the nature and enactment of ADNT? Aim: The study aimed to explore, describe and explain the nature and enactment of ADNT among professional dancers in Cape Town, South Africa. Research objectives: To explore the perceived temporal, spatial and sociocultural conditions conducive for ADNT. To describe and explain the enactment of ADNT in terms of format, pace, and the sequence of steps involved in performing African dance repertoires that are known to produce neurogenic tremors. To describe the experience of those who participate in ADNT by exploring the subjective effect it has had on stress levels or during stressful periods. Methodology: Case study methodology was used. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation were the data collection methods used. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse the data. Findings: Four themes emerged from the study (1) Triggers: Improvisation, Energy and pushing beyond limits. (2) Essence of self: Embodying Africa through dance. (3) Leaving and returning to the body and (4) Creatures of the soil: Connected to the ground and beyond…for health. Discussion: ADNT is healing, relational, transcendent, and contextually situated. It facilitates self-acceptance (ubuwena) through embodying Africa (KwaNtu) and holds potential to promote social cohesion (ubuntu). It is mainly enacted through improvisation (on and off-stage), through which socio-historical-cultural intergenerational resources (isintu) embedded within, are tapped into. ADNT offers opportunities for connectedness with the self, other people, as well as with transcendent beings. Conclusion: This study has illuminated the nature of ADNT as an extraordinary human occupation that offers participants instances of personal and collective meaning-making, healing, and transcendence. Transcendence is proposed as a source of personal and shared meaning.
... Questions around designer babies, transhumanist projects, posthumanist transformations, humanoid sex robots and industrial robots (Andorno and Yamin 2019;Atanasoski and Vora 2020;Ball 2017, January 8;Doring, Rohangis Mohseni, and Walter 2020;Knoppers and Keiderman 2019;Masterson 2022;Melillo 2021;Moyo 2021;Nhemachena 2021b;Pang and Ho 2016;Peeters and Haselager 2021) are all aspects that design anthropology needs to deal with as it grapples with the emergent futures and with what is on the horizons of the twenty-first century. In a world that is populated by such hybrid intelligent entities, the anthropos ceases to be the sole subject of anthropological research, and humans cease to be the sole designers in the world. ...
In their efforts to dissuade Africans from engaging fruitfully on matters of design, including design anthropology, colonialists dismissed the indigenes as only capable of designing witchcraft and sorcery for which they were sadly famed in colonial anthropology. Arguing that twenty-first century African universities need to include design anthropology in the curriculum, this paper contends that the future of anthropology, and of Africa, lies in design as is evident in discourses and practices on designer babies, designer humanoid sex robots, industrial robots, designer robotic spouses, synthetic biology, Artificial Intelligence, human enhancements, nanofabrication, biohacking, gene and genome editing, reverse engineering and rewiring humans, gene and genome deletion, social designs and so on. Drawing on autoethnography and extensive literature review, the paper argues that design anthropology is increasingly becoming relevant in a world that is rethinking modernist designs which are at the core of the Anthropocene. Put differently, design anthropology enables [African] graduates to engage with contemporary, empirical issues of design in a twenty-first-century world where the discipline can only survive by shifting focus from an obsession with sterile discourses about, inter alia, the past and present of African witchcraft, culture, society and sorcery. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Questions around designer babies, transhumanist projects, posthumanist transformations, humanoid sex robots and industrial robots (Andorno and Yamin 2019;Atanasoski and Vora 2020;Ball 2017, January 8;Doring, Rohangis Mohseni, and Walter 2020;Knoppers and Keiderman 2019;Masterson 2022;Melillo 2021;Moyo 2021;Nhemachena 2021b;Pang and Ho 2016;Peeters and Haselager 2021) are all aspects that design anthropology needs to deal with as it grapples with the emergent futures and with what is on the horizons of the twenty-first century. In a world that is populated by such hybrid intelligent entities, the anthropos ceases to be the sole subject of anthropological research, and humans cease to be the sole designers in the world. ...
One of the dark sides of information technology artefacts is the phenomenon that Western value systems are often built deeply into software programs without any realisation that these applications do not necessarily reflect indigenous value systems. When these systems are rolled out without adaptation to African and other indigenous environments, it may have unintended consequences by enforcing cultural constructs that are typical of the Global North onto communities in the Global South. Consequently, these information systems constitute a new form of coloniality, namely digital coloniality. The main research question that this article addresses is: How does the sub-Saharan African philosophy of Ubuntu bring the concept of digital coloniality to light? The main aim of the article is to define the concepts of digital colonialism and digital coloniality, to provide clear examples thereof and to provide some guidelines for corrective interventions and future theorisation on the phenomenon. The research is a conceptual study and concludes that the intended enforcement of Eurocentric software to maintain a postcolonial state can be regarded as digital colonialism. While unintended, the use of global software in indigenous communities can also often have negative effects.
Kroeze, J. H. (2024). Digital coloniality: An Ubuntu perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 36(2), Article 6, pp. 175-215. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/sjis/vol36/iss2/6.
This essay examines African understandings of life, sickness, death, and life after death by concentrating on the Ndebele people of Matabo in Zimbabwe who are part of the Nguni people of Southern Africa and who have a strong Zulu cultural basis. For the Ndebele of Matabo, dying is a physical, medical, and spiritual phenomenon. Healing through medicine is always prioritized when there is a sickness, but all medical treatment is subordinate to the spiritual world. The Ndebele understand that when people eventually die, despite medical attention, it is a sign that the spiritual world is more powerful than the medical world. Those who die are said to have responded to a call from their ancestors. For them, death is a transition from the world of the living living to the world of the living dead. This essay will briefly explore the African Ndebele concepts of life, death, the ritualization and medicalization of death and dying, and life after death. It will argue that, for the Ndebele, death is not a medical phenomenon but a response to a calling by ancestors to the spiritual world at the fulfilment of one’s time on earth as determined by the abaphansi. Death, therefore, is ritualized, not medicalized.
This book reveals that the way we perceive sex robots is how we perceive ourselves, overcoming the false human/non-human binary. From Greek myths, to the film Ex Machina, to Japanese technology, non-human sexuality has been at the heart of culture. In Sex Robots, the history of this culture is explored. This text sheds new light on what the sex robot represents and signifies, examining its philosophical implications within the context of today's society. This volume will be of interest to scholars of technology, cultural studies, the social sciences and philosophy.
Jason Lee is Professor and Head of the Leicester Media School within the Faculty of Technology at De Montfort University, UK. Lee is the editor/author of 20 books with work translated into 16 languages. His books include: Pervasive Perversions(2005); Celebrity, Paedophilia, and Ideology in American Culture (2009); and Cultures of Addiction (2012).
Philosophy in Africa has for more than a decade now been dominated by the discussion of one compound question, namely, is there an African philosophy, and if there is, what is it? The first part of the question has generally been unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. Dispute has been primarily over the second part of the question as various specimens of African philosophy presented do not seem to pass muster. Those of us who refuse to accept certain specimens as philosophy have generally been rather illogically said also to deny an affirmative answer to the first part of the question. In a paper presented at the International Symposium in Memory of Dr William Amo, the Ghanaian philosopher who taught in German universities in the early part of the eighteenth century, Professor Odera Oruka identified four trends, perhaps more appropriately approaches, in current African philosophy.
Wordprocessed copy. Thesis (M. Th.)--University of South Africa, 2003. Includes bibliographical references.
Four Trends in current African Philosophy
- O H Oruka
Healing in African Traditional Religion: Examining the Implications for HIV Within the Context of Zimbabwe
- T Shoko
Four Trends in current African Philosophy
- OH Oruka
- PH Coetzee
- APJ Roux
Healing in African Traditional Religion: Examining the Implications for HIV Within the Context of Zimbabwe
- T Shoko
- E Chitando
- C Klagba