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Cultural Synthesis in Africa
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10539 |
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CULTURE
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| Issue
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2 / 1986 |
8,546 Words |
| Author
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Ali A. Mazrui
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The interplay of Africa's indigenous cultures with Islam on one side and Western civilization on the other has had political and economic ramifications. But in the final analysis the central process of the triple heritage has been cultural and civilization.
Civilization may be defined as a culture which has endured, expanded, innovated and been elevated to new moral sensibilities. An interviewer once asked India's Mahatma Gandhi: "What do you think of Western civilization?" The Mahatma is reported to have replied, "I didn't know they had any!" it was presumably the West's "moral sensibilities" which Mahatma Gandhi was questioning when he queried whether the West had as yet evolved a civilization.
But by the other criteria of the concept of "civilization," especially that of innovation, the Western world surely scores rather high in the last three or four centuries of human history. For our purposes, the world "civilization" can be applied to the Western, Islamic, as well as indigenous legacies, provided we always bear in mind that the term is always relative and somewhat hyperbolic.
A number of stages can be discerned in the evolution of the triple heritage at this cultural level. Initially, there is the simple phenomenon of culture contact - two systems of values being introduced to each other and beginning to be aware of each other's peculiarities.
In African history this was followed by culture conflict, as the two or three legacies began to clash with each other as they discovered areas of incompatibility and mutual incoherence.
Thirdly, comes the stage of culture conquest as one legacy establishes a clear ascendancy and sometimes effectively compels the more vulnerable culture to surrender.
There then follow a period of cultural confusion. Among the members of the subordinate or vulnerable culture the choice is between cultural surrender, cultural alienation and ruthlessness, or cultural revival and the resurrection of the original authenticity.
But is there really no other choice apart from either surrender, alienation or revival? In reality there is a fourth possible outcome - cultural coalescence or integration, a fusion of two or more cultures into a new mixed legacy.
Where is Africa as the twentieth century approaches its end? Insofar as Western culture is concerned, most of the Africa has certainly gone beyond the minimal stage of culture contact. The West has declared its presence in the continent in such varied ways that Africa has gone beyond the stage of a minimal introduction to western power and at least some of the Western institutions.
Virtually every African has seen a motorcar and may have heard a transistor radio; many Africans have dealt with white people either as administrators, missionaries, tourists, teachers or passersby. In any case, much of Africa has been dealing with regular policemen, tax collectors, the cash economy and sometimes even Western shirts and shoes. There is little doubt that the bulk of the continent has been sufficiently penetrated by the West as to have gone beyond the stage
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