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Guidelines on psychosocial interventions in postconflict areas commonly mention that interventions should be based on local needs and be built on culture-specific expertise. This paper is based on a dissociative cult, the Kiyang-yang (KYY), in Guinea Bissau. In a previous article, we used a refined definition of the concept of idiom of distress to analyze the dissociative behavior displayed in KYY as a symbolic language addressing politically dangerous truths. This paper uses the concept of “collective trauma processing” to analyze how the idiom offered the local population a pathway to mitigate the consequences of protracted and widespread political violence. The paper first argues that the field of psychotraumatology lacks a comprehensive ecological theory on trauma. Moreover, within clinical psychology and psychiatry, little attention is paid to local cultural healing mechanisms addressing traumatic stress. This paper is an effort to study such mechanisms in their own right. To compare trauma processing mechanisms across the globe, we propose to analyze trauma processing mechanisms with the help of a comprehensive model discerning five ontological dimensions that are considered to be involved in suffering and are addressed in healing approaches. Our paper describes similarities and differences between psychological healing traditions and collective trauma processing within the West African context of Guinea Bissau. We will illustrate how the KYY movement uses the idiom of dissociation as both a collective expression of distress and as a vehicle to process social suffering and traumatic stress as a circular phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People in different cultures have different concepts of the person that underlie self-understanding and self-representation. These concepts influence many aspects of individuals’ life experience, including illness and expectations toward recovery. Psychotherapies aim to promote adaptive change in experience and behavior. This goal is embedded in a social and cultural context that promotes or sanctions a particular notion of personhood. If every system of psychotherapy depends on implicit models of personhood, which varies cross-culturally, then the goals and methods of therapeutic change must consider the cultural concept of the person. This paper reviews cultural concepts of the person in relation to communal values, practices, and systems of thought observed across many African cultural contexts. It presents a practical framework that can inform therapists working with African clients. Many African cultures promote a relational-oriented personhood, in which an individual manifests his or her personhood through connections to three distinct forms of agency: (a) spiritual agency, including God, ancestors, and spirits that influence the person; (b) social agency, including the family, the clan, and the community, with extension to humanity; and (c) self-agency, which is responsible for the person’s inner experience. This distinctive form of personhood underlies concepts of the “normal” person, understandings of mental illness, help-seeking behavior, and clients’ needs and expectations. Implications of this cultural concept of the person for psychotherapy with African clients are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British government’s recent threat to withhold aid from African governments that do not reform legislation banning homosexuality has generated a lot of resentment from African countries where homosexuality is still illegal. With supposedly different social norms and values, Africa’s anti-gay stance is largely seen as being precipitated by its cultural values. Whilst Britain and, more recently, the US and Canada, have all determined that the issue of homosexuality lies at the heart of human rights, many African countries have stressed that it boils down to cultural values and social norms, a notion which many Africans believe Western governments have failed to appreciate.The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into this issue. It examines whether patterns of particular culture are really incompatible with admitted standards of human rights. The paper also dwells on the debate raging over universal human rights and cultural differences. It concludes that the culture of transnational modernity, one that specifies procedures for collaborative decision-making, conceptions of global social justice, and definitions of gender and sexual roles, stands at risk if it fails to take into account cultural specificity in some regions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino and other critical voices to argue that education in Africa is victim of a resilient colonial and colonizing epistemology, which takes the form of science as ideology and hegemony. Postcolonial African elite justify the resilience of this epistemology and the education it inspires with rhetoric on the need to be competitive internationally. The outcome is often a devaluation of African creativity, agency and value systems, and an internalized sense of inadequacy. Education has become a compulsion for Africans to ‘lighten their darkness’ both physically and metaphorically in the interest of and for the gratification of colonizing and hegemonic others. The paper calls for paying more attention to popular systems of knowledge, in which reality is larger than logic. It calls for listening to ordinary men and women who, like p’Bitek’s Lawino, are challenging the prescriptive gaze and grip of emasculated elite. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the indigenisation of social work gathering momentum, the lens of universalism and relativism can highlight some critical social justice concerns. Sociocultural beliefs around human rights and gender equality, reproductive health and traditional fostering, among others, pose unprecedented dilemmas for social workers in Africa and indigenous societies globally. Furthermore, the blind pursuit of indigenisation can reinforce discriminatory and oppressive beliefs and practices. To rectify this, developing ethical decision-making screens and additional research promoting indigenous cultural competency within the social justice goal of social work is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experiences of diverse people present challenges and opportunities for knowledge production. The knowledge base undergirding social work has been found to be dominated by Anglo-American cultural values assumed to be universally applicable. The relevant texts on social work knowledge were examined. The analysis revealed that culture is the cornerstone of any society’s response to social problems, that the hegemony of Eurocentric paradigms remain intact, that there is complicity with the coloniality of power in knowledge production resulting in epistemic injustice, and that decolonisation and indigenisation are critical imperatives towards the achievement of global cognitive justice. A contrapuntal epistemology of social work is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although culture is frequently advanced as a key obstacle to children’s rights in Africa, the reality of people’s lives shows that the outlook of many communities incorporates both local and global values. This is becoming particularly evident in the case of female genital cutting which is being adapted by practising communities or abandoned altogether despite the fact that it is informed by deeply rooted socio-cultural ideologies. Hence, this article seeks to explore the various ways communities in Africa are trying to adapt long-held values while also maintaining the essence of their culture with regards to female genital cutting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on recent developments in clinical ethnopsychiatry theorized by the French psychologist Tobie Nathan, as understood and practised by a member of his clinical research team. Alongside Western psychological theories, Nathan’s approach sets out to include, within its clinical research setting, cultural and religious theories and healing practices related to unhappiness and disease. All such theories, regardless of the culture or civilization they belong to, are regarded as potentially valid and also as possible therapeutic tools. In this perspective, Nathan criticizes the concepts of representation or belief and prefers to talk about objects and theories. To illustrate his unique approach to therapy, the treatment of a Cameroon immigrant teenager and her family, conducted at the University clinic founded by Nathan, is extensively presented in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Relevance in social work must be rooted in the local social environment. This article restates African perspectives on the importance of culturally relevant social work practice and education, given the assault on social work indigenization, by responding to some of the negative evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The words of political elites have the potential to play a significant role in the constitution and proliferation of racist discourse, especially when this discourse has the nuanced linguistic characteristics of 'new racism'. This article examines the political rhetoric deployed in the articulation and defence of contentious government policy on Sudanese humanitarian refugee quotas in media interviews. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, we analyse a corpus of seven political interviews and identify a number of pervasive discursive features. These include descriptions, categories and multidimensional causal narratives that characterize the Sudanese as young, violent (i.e. gang members) and uneducated; the construction of 'culture as cause' narrative; and the differential orientation to the term race. Through our analysis, we show how causal inference and category description function multifariously in political discourse, contending with situated issues of policy justification, accusations of racism and the allocation of blame which exclusively rests with African refugees. The role of causal formulations in racist discourse is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under apartheid, the mainstream Afrikaans media served as vehicles for the ideology of apartheid. Since democratization, they have attempted to rid themselves of this ideological baggage, and instead embraced a free-market ideology in which race has ostensibly disappeared. This repositioning has seemingly benefited the Afrikaans media sector, with an increase of the number and type of media, operating under the proclaimed banner of non-racialism. The discourse within which this repositioning has taken place, is that of a celebratory consumerism coupled with acknowledgement of majority rule. Yet this apparent move away from ideology towards a market logic where consumers are addressed as individuals rather than racial or ethnic groups, obscured its role within post-apartheid identity politics. Afrikaans media constructed the Afrikaans language as a commodity that can be used to its speakers' economic advantage if they recognize the pragmatic necessity of acknowledging the political transformation in the country. At the same time, the economic status of Afrikaans speakers could provide a bargaining chip in the negotiation of minority language rights. Crucially, Afrikaans media are therefore playing an important role in creating a link between consumption and cultural identity - to their own strategic commercial advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Senegal is said to be a democratic model for Africa. This reputation was promoted by the former presidents Senghor and Diouf (both Socialist Party), and confirmed through the democratic change of government to the Senegalese Democratic Party under its leader Wade in 2000. Ostensibly, the successful democratization is reflected in the mass media sector, which has gone through a dynamic change since the end of the 1970s. In the course of the process of liberalization, pluralization and popularization, the market was segmented and media usage increased. The public sphere is established by political, religious, economic, media and regulation actors who compete for influence, control and ownership. One of the main characteristics of Senegalese media culture consists of multiple conflicts between these actors. In fact, the media played an important part in the democratization process and the development of civic responsibility, but at the same time these transformations paradoxically contributed to the undermining of foundations of democracy in the last 15 years. After a historic retrospect, the article describes the conflicting practices of the competing actors in the public sphere, and explains why these practices are responsible for the lack of credibility of mass media among the Senegalese population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of evangelical Christianity across the globe is characterized by both a high degree of similarity in liturgy, symbolism and methods of organization and communication, and at the same time a remarkable ability to plug in to local indigenous rituals, symbols and practices related to possession and magic, to disease and healing. This poses complex questions for understanding ethnicity and also cultural globalization, which are explored using contemporary and historical sources relating to South and West Africa and to Brazil. The ability of those evangelical churches which advertise their ability to transmit healing powers most insistently, to transpose healing from individual to community, to replace mystery with transparency, is set against their opportunistic and clientelistic political involvements and lack of transparency in their organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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