{"title":"Maasai perspectives on modernity: narratives of evolution, nature and culture","authors":"Van Wijngaarden","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2020.1850303","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The narrative of evolutionist modernity is a former scientific theory which has fuelled and legitimized deeply harmful imperialist hierarchies, but increasingly influences how Maasai make sense of modernity. Borrowing from narratology and building on twelve years of intermittent ethnography in East-African Maasailand, I respond to recent calls for cognitive justice. Firstly, I contribute to insight in how Maasai, as Indigenous Southern people, conceptualize key scientific concepts such as modernity, as to further the availability of their understandings as partners in the dialogue of theory building. I especially regard continuities and shifts in their uses of nature/culture and Culture/culture dichotomies. Secondly, I disclose, question and deconstruct the continued centralization of Eurocentric narratives and modernist assumptions in academic sense-making, as this unreflexively denies the gradual difference and continued entanglements of scientific, ex-scientific and non-scientific narratives, and the need to include Southern experiences and knowledges to make science a truly global knowledge system.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2020-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical African Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2020.1850303","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
The narrative of evolutionist modernity is a former scientific theory which has fuelled and legitimized deeply harmful imperialist hierarchies, but increasingly influences how Maasai make sense of modernity. Borrowing from narratology and building on twelve years of intermittent ethnography in East-African Maasailand, I respond to recent calls for cognitive justice. Firstly, I contribute to insight in how Maasai, as Indigenous Southern people, conceptualize key scientific concepts such as modernity, as to further the availability of their understandings as partners in the dialogue of theory building. I especially regard continuities and shifts in their uses of nature/culture and Culture/culture dichotomies. Secondly, I disclose, question and deconstruct the continued centralization of Eurocentric narratives and modernist assumptions in academic sense-making, as this unreflexively denies the gradual difference and continued entanglements of scientific, ex-scientific and non-scientific narratives, and the need to include Southern experiences and knowledges to make science a truly global knowledge system.
期刊介绍:
Critical African Studies seeks to return Africanist scholarship to the heart of theoretical innovation within each of its constituent disciplines, including Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, History, Law and Economics. We offer authors a more flexible publishing platform than other journals, allowing them greater space to develop empirical discussions alongside theoretical and conceptual engagements. We aim to publish scholarly articles that offer both innovative empirical contributions, grounded in original fieldwork, and also innovative theoretical engagements. This speaks to our broader intention to promote the deployment of thorough empirical work for the purposes of sophisticated theoretical innovation. We invite contributions that meet the aims of the journal, including special issue proposals that offer fresh empirical and theoretical insights into African Studies debates.