Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Witchdoctors Are Not Wrong...: M.S. Tembo


The African indigenous epistemology has been impugned, despised, and denigrated since the advent of European colonialism. The Western or Eurocentric view has consistently and widely used the pejorative terms "witchdoctor" and "superstition" when describing, referring to, and in the majority of cases dismissing elements of African indigenous world view. The twin concepts of witchdoctor and superstition have been used to negatively portray virtually all elements of African epistemology in the process destabilizing, seriously compromising, and in some cases destroying African individual physical and mental well-being. The paper will argue that the discipline of psychology has the potential to play a very useful role in the lives of Africans. Modern psychology can achieve this by formally incorporating and integrating the positive non-African elements of individual psychology with those emanating from the indigenous African epistemology of individual behavior, world view, and conception of well-being. Specific examples will be cited to support this contention.

LINK: HERE

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