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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | African Ideology and Belief: A Survey |
| Author: | MacGaffey, Wyatt |
| Year: | 1981 |
| Periodical: | African Studies Review |
| Volume: | 24 |
| Issue: | 2-3 |
| Period: | June-September |
| Pages: | 227-274 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Africa |
| Subjects: | world view ideologies Politics and Government Religion and Witchcraft Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/523905 |
| Abstract: | This paper surveys the state of research on ideology and belief in Africa. It concentrates on the anthropological perspective of the relationship of ideology and belief, as stimulated by anthropologists' confrontations with African developments. The paper presents three major arguments or themes: 1) it contends that the distinction between ideology and belief is invidious and should be transcended; 2) it documents that the study of these phenomena in Africa, whether labeled cultural superstructure or labeled ideology and belief, has become increasingly a historical rather than a mythological science; 3) that although the models of society constructed by its members and the models constructed by outside observers are, as Lévi-Strauss says (1967:274), phenomena of the same order, the models belong to different cultures, meet different requirements, cannot be reconciled, and should not be confused, although they often have been in the past, in African studies in particular. Sections: Introduction - Theoretical perspective - Ideology and political change - Ideology in the colonial period: European - Ideology in the colonial period: African - European ideology in the post-colonial period - Modern African thought - Coda - Postscript. Notes, ref. |
