Research
Beyond Communitarianism in African Philosophy and Anthropology
The study builds on the experiences of ordinary people to examine the validity of African communitarianism. It aims to usher in a new era of African studies that utilize the experiences of ordinary people and move beyond the academic stagnation of communitarian thought. African philosophers and anthropologists have long championed communitarianism as the definitive system representing the African way of life. In post-colonial Africa, this has resulted in the development of diverse communitarian theories in ethics, politics, epistemology, anthropology, and personhood. For example, the community is viewed as the foundation of personhood, as reflected in sayings like ‘a person is a person through others.’ The prevailing reaction to Western ideologies in these studies is that communitarianism provides Africans with a sense of identity in contrast to individualism. The research challenges these assumptions by examining African experiences and proposing theories that extend beyond communitarianism.
