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Abstract
This article centers on an Urdu-language manual on lithography, published in 1924 by the Nizami Press in Budaun (United Provinces), to explore how a Muslim printer-publisher in a North Indian qaṣbah tried to reform educational methods in his trade. It introduces the Nizami Press (est. 1905) and compares the manual with similar European and Indian instructional handbooks. How did Indian printers and publishers learn their craft? What were the tools and materials used for lithographic printing in colonial India? And given the popularity of lithography, why were such manuals rarely published in Indian languages? By examining the material and technical aspects of the lithographic printing process explained in the Urdu manual, this article engages with larger scholarly debates revolving around knowledge production, pedagogy, and technological developments in South Asia. Furthermore, it analyzes the manual’s language to demonstrate how printers and publishers were engaged in discourses about nationalism, modernization, and social reform.
Abstract
The literature on Ubuntu is as prolific, as it is diverse. Over the past two decades the increasing attention has been devoted to Ubuntu in relation to African education. In recognising the richness of attention, which has thus been afforded to Ubuntu, this article attempts to offer something else. I consider the concept of Ubuntu as an African notion for education, in the same way that some Europeans describe bildung as education, and ta’dib, for some Muslims, means education. Hence, in this article, I firstly analyse the concept Ubuntu. Secondly, I show how Ubuntu relates to at least three meanings of education, namely, interdependent human action, deliberative inquiry, and socially responsive action. Finally, I make an argument for Ubuntu as a cosmopolitan practice, thus further enhancing its educational impetus before concluding with the rationale for Ubuntu, namely a cultivation of dignity.
Abstract
Using Samir Amin’s theories of worldwide value and historical materialism, this article seeks to show that capitalism is inherently racist, at least since the TransAtlantic enslavement, and that its proponents are perpetuating racism by using it as a tool to deepen economic divides, and to destroy solidarity between workers. The global health crisis of Covid-19 demonstrates the expendability of frontline workers, a large proportion of whom are Black people and has exasperated the economic injustice propagated by the capitalist model. The racist and exploitative structure is global, with a Center extracting rent from the Periphery, where political power and “corruptionists” collude with global corporations. In low-intensity democracies such as the US, paid elections at best will lead to politicians making superficial discursive changes at Superstructure level, whereas the racist Base remains the same. Movements such as Black Lives Matter can be shaped and contained through manipulation of media. To change the Base, this article argues the need for “delinking” of the Periphery from the monopoly economy, and rehabilitation of Marxism through creation of a new global organization – a new Internationale of Workers, or a new Bandung. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in Spring 2022 adds a layer of complexity to the international situation (as it is opening for discourses that are strengthening the monopoly economy worldwide, e.g., in arms manufacturing), but may eventually lead to the demise of the autocratic-capitalist system in Russia, with international repercussions.
Abstract
This article is a reflection on the social processes that had taken place sixty years after the 1955 unprecedented historical meeting in Bandung organized by the nations and peoples of Africa and Asia to declare their right to reclaim their independence, which subsequently took place over several decades until the 1990s. But Bandung claimed more than regaining political independence to the extent that this had to be complemented by the reconstruction of the concerned societies, economically, socially and culturally. The right to education is a fundamental human right, which is inseparable from economic development and people’s aspirations to a full and a wholly authentic democracy. Even in the real existing world governed by capitalism, development must be holistic as economic progress must mean progress of society and individuals, and access to, and the effective exercise of, all individual and collective rights, and in all domains of social existence, including education.
Abstract
This article is the English version of a presentation delivered at the international symposium that was held on February 10–12, 2020, in Dakar (Senegal) in honor and memory of Professor Samir Amin. In what could be read as an autoethnography of more than four decades of observation and evolution the intellectual journey has been enriched from the status and experiences as students to adult academics with critical perspectives shaped the uBuntu-inspired life vision of Samir Amin. The journey of this global giant evolved with extraordinary consistency from childhood questioning social inequality to the global arena as the ultimate advocate of the marginalized everywhere. He inspired generations with his unsurpassed prolific knowledge production, his intellectual rigor and his humanity. The article also recognizes the role of his comrade and spouse, Isabelle Eynard Amin. Samir Amin’s unwavering commitment to the struggle to create a new world of equality and respect of our common humanity to achieve the highest level of human civilization. Beside the economy as the substructure articulated in Marxist analysis, formal education, as part of the superstructure, plays a more critical role than conceived by the classical Marxist and dependency theory as a critical tool for colonial and neo-colonial control. Indeed, formal education also contains the seed for possible social transformation.
Abstract
As societal and community institutions, schools operate within certain worldviews. These worldviews impact the aims and objectives of schooling and therefore influence the culture of the school and classroom, not to mention the content of the curriculum and teacher practices. In this paper I consider the “traditional” African worldview of Ubuntu as a framework or a foundation for schooling and education to combat the alienation and discrimination faced by many students in the schools in Western countries which are pushing neo-liberal objectives but that lead them to violence and increasingly, to radicalization. I look at the recent phenomenon of radicalization that makes societies and nations unsafe, and some of the push and pull factors that are increasingly attracting some students in the contemporary world to extremist actions. While the threat of Islamic terrorism seems to have subsided, the threats from extreme right-wing nationalist and alt-right groups is increasing at a fast pace (; ; ; ). I contrast the concept of Ubuntu with Western values of humanism and analyze the core values of the Ubuntu worldview in pedagogical practices. I conclude that present punitive measures are ineffective in preventing radicalization which poses a security threat to all nations, but that schooling has an important role to play in combating this phenomenon through a worldview that is not only humanistic but different in its very understanding of what a human being is and therefore, in preventing schools from alienating individuals and groups.
Abstract
The core question in this article is whether, or not, uBuntu and Humanism can simultaneously inform a pursuit of an equitably infused global epistemological orientation and, consequently, an equitably infused global (philosophy of) education. I argue that uBuntu and Humanism are not compatible at the very core of their ontological, axiological, and epistemological nature, and thus, might present an epistemological challenge to any attempt to develop an equitably infused global epistemological orientation and an equitably infused global (philosophy of) education. Moreover, I assume the broad etymological definition of philosophy as the ‘love of wisdom’ and that wisdom is a manifestation in uBuntu world, and consequently the love of such, and the resulting need to inquire into the compatibility, while recognizing potential incommensurability, between how wisdom is thought of by Western humanist-derived epistemologies and by uBuntu-derived epistemologies. At the center of the analysis is the nature of ‘human’ or ‘person’ since both Humanism and uBuntu are intrinsically bound to conceptualizations of personhood. Framed within the historical backdrop of the European Renaissance and the African Renaissance, the article comprises a critical historical outlook and analysis of primary and secondary sources of discourses on Humanism and uBuntu. Primary focus is on works of so-called classical thinkers such as Heidegger, Husserl, Cheikh Anta Diop, René Descartes, Frederick Nietzsche, Julius Nyerere, and John Mbiti. The key aim is to challenge scholars to work toward the equitable infusion of epistemologies inherent in these two terms, instead of continuing to see these terms as interchangeable, which essentially authenticates and perpetuates the imposition of humanism on non-humanist contexts. The African Renaissance might be the adequate space for such equitable placement of uBuntu as a source of global epistemologies alongside those emanating from Humanism.