1. Country Report(s): The African Country Report(s) Team will
present their country report(s) to the class.
The team can expect to receive a team grade. Only team members who meet criteria A
are eligible to receive the team grade. The team grade will be based on the
perception and impact created by criteria B, C, D, and E.
A. Every team member has a speaking part.
B. The team should create and display visual or aural aids: (such as
maps, graphs, photos, use of PowerPoint, actual artifacts, music, dancing, etc.)
C. The team should consider the audience needs and interests by passing out to the
class audience something of value for everyone to take take home, or to take part in:
(such as handouts, food, skits, passport/visa/currency information, travel brochures,
etc.)
D. Your report should include a selection of items from both objective culture and
subjective culture. (Objective culture includes man-made articles visible to the
senses like clothing, food, tools, homes, and capitol cities; subjective culture includes
man-made articles like music, language, religion, political systems and methods of
socialization like schooling, child-rearing practices, and gender relations.
E. Pre-brief the instructor according to the guidelines in number 5 in the Country
Reports Link on the PSY 119 Course Home Page.
The class members should expect to respond by recognizing the elements of objective and
subjective culture unique to Africa or an African country or countries. As the
result of this country report and other country reports, class members should be able to
synthesize their findings in such a way as to compare and contrast specific objective and
subjective elements of culture found on each continent.
2. Africa is heavily influenced by its geography and by
its conquerors. The hunter-gatherers of Africa generate stories similar
to stories of hunter-gatherers in other parts of the world. Disease and
colonial influence have not been kind to the African continent. Africa
still suffers mightily from the Aids epidemic.
3. Margaret Meade is capable of writing sentence
structures that would make an English teacher groan. Consider reading
the difficult passages twice or consulting with others who are also reading
the same passages.
1A. The geography of Africa gave it a central position
amid the continents. Half of Africa lies north the equator and half lies
south of the equator. It is the "middle continent" beside the
Middle East, and relatively isolated from the world around it. Man is
indigenous to Africa, where he painted his body for religious purposes.
Cosmetics and their relationship to aesthetics originate in Africa.
Unlike other cultures, Africans have not gone beyond their continent to claim
others. The African family, with its strong moral code, and keen sense
of ancestry characterize traditional African values. Sons and daughters
of ones brothers and sisters are also one's own sons and daughters, and taking
responsibility for the nurture and upbringing by all is a reality. In
African thinking, the earth, fire, and water are given to women to produce
fecundity, whereas the air is reserved by God for His own use. African
women are not just homemakers, as they are frequently in the West.
Within cities, they are everywhere in business, and as involved in
negotiations as are men. Africa is a legacy of traditional Africanism
rooted in nature, Islamic tradition, and the Western influence. In the
seventh century AD, Islam with its five daily calls, "Prayer, prayer,
prayer is better than sleep" began affecting African values a thousand
years before colonialism arrived, via Britain and Portugal. Islam
brought influences of time and direction, since it is wrong to keep God
waiting, and since Muslims bow in the direction of Mecca. Half of Africa
is Muslim. Islam originates in the deserts of Arabia and is affected by
such sparse and demanding environmental elements. (Islamic paradise has
many rivers traversing it.) Deserts along the northern African coast
isolate it from European peoples. One way to consider life in Africa is to
consider life along the Nile, the world's longest river. Was its
influence once even more vast? Would not the Amazon have drained the
Andean mountain chain into the Nile? See 3. below.
1B. Sometimes thought to be the cradle of human life
itself, today the African family continues to endure, amid a variety of
cultures which have come and gone. The African contribution to an
emerging world culture is yet to be determined. From a Grecco-Roman
point of view, the most powerful European influence on Africa ended when
Cleopatra of Egypt - the twelfth of the Ptolemy line of rulers ended her own
life after having been mistress to Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, and born
their children. She was schooled in nine languages, Latin not
included. Her Egyptian wealth funded the conquering of Gaul by Caesar
Augustus (son of Caesar) and the development of the Roman Empire, as a means
of preserving the independence of Egypt. The 19th Century was one of
European domination, so that Europeans caused 120,000 Egyptians to lose their
lives building a Suez Canal. Climate and environment helped Europeans
decide to dwell in the southern and eastern African regions. For
settlement and colonization purposes, Britain offered Jewish groups portions
of Uganda at the onset of the twentieth century, an offer which if taken,
might have dramatically changed the course of history. Colonization
followed upon the heels of industrialization, and provided an outlet for those
escaping the squalor of the European factory. White settlers brought an
obsession for possession and power. In some sense, Africans are
non-original Islamic peoples, seduced by Western influences. Clothing in
Africa reflects the three styles of society - African, Islamic, and
Western. In Nairobi, the guard of the king's grave is today dressed in
the European uniform of the very powers denounced by the Nairobi people.
Africans reject imported opulence.
1C. Today on the southern tip of Africa, South Africa
hoards the majority of the world's diamond supply through the DeBeers
Cartel. DeBeers is outlawed and can have no office in the United States
because it violates antitrust law by cornering the diamond supply. Yet
American brides are the primary market for its product, and the diamonds
released for sale are dependent upon the expected number of such brides.
Most other African nations channel their diamonds through DeBeers. In
Nigeria, lawless banditry drives families from land where diamonds can be
mined. Resident children and adults are made to have a leg or an arm or
a hand amputated. Since this can have a desultory effect on the image of
the diamond (and its sales) DeBeers itself has a stake in seeing law and order
restored throughout the African continent.
1D. South America is believed to have broken free from
Africa's western edge and drifted westward. The South American cultures
occur on a continent no longer near the edges of the plates of the earth which
produce earthquakes and volcanoes. The traditional African view is that
animals have souls, both holy and profane. Springs and valleys could be
sacred, and mountains could touch the gods. Christianity brought a god
separated from man and in his own heaven, and animals would lose their
souls. Africans had known that animals were their brothers and sisters
in nature. The white hunter brought elephanticide - the slaughter of
animals. Capitalism kills for commercial returns. Science wants no
more elephants than nature can support. We now adorn our homes with what
Africans would regard as our dead brothers and sisters.
1E. The deal struck with the Twentieth Century is not
kind to Africa. Nature played a religious function in Africa. Only
the forest remains as the place to escape modern forces. The Mau Mau
therefore escaped to the forest. The dog is, today, used to hunt out the
Mau Mau, and is not "man's best friend." The forest itself has
no place to run and a new ecological imbalance is at hand as the forest, once
sacred, is now being cut down to become the furniture and the
profit margin of the entrepreneur. Africa does not have a dead sea, but
it is beginning to have dead rivers. Drought is one of the dread forces
of displacement in Africa, as is civil strife, and disease. Rudyard
Kippling proclaimed the White Man's Burden to be colonization. But
colonization has to be replaced by Africans taking their own future into their
own hands. Senegal is attempting reforestation, perhaps to little, but
not too late. Can this Garden of Eden be recreated, and can the
spiritual values be rekindled in time to avert an ecological nightmare?
The Nile remains the birthplace of Moses, equally regarded as important to
Islamic and Western traditions.
2.
Joseph Campbell, you'll recall, talked about hero-myths and about storytelling,
two themes which pervade many
cultures. Stories are a great way to help human beings make the transition
from one stage of human development to another stage. There are at least
two 20th century hero/villain stories that have influenced cultures other than
those in which these heroes or villains have themselves lived. The story of Ghandi
is an important one in 20th century history, and it begins in Africa, and in
England, before reaching its finale in Asia. Ghandi was the sort of
nonviolent leader who influenced Martin Luther King in America. Ghandi is
an Indian Hindu, trained as an English barrister (lawyer) who begins the process
of de-colonializing India by taking his fight first to South Africa. We'll
watch excerpts from "Ghandi" that pertain to his experience in South
Africa. Still later in this course, we observe the consequences upon
peace, and culture which are the result of the aberrant philosophies of Adolph
Hitler. Interestingly, the Jewish state in Israel and its conflicting
cultural relations with its Islamic neighbors, could well have been played out
in Africa. British colonizers had proposed near the beginning of the 20th
century that Jewish people be permitted to establish themselves in Kenya and
neighboring states, but this idea was rejected by Jewish leaders of that time.
