A comparative perspective for functional application of scientific temper in southern Africa
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2013
TITLE AUTHOR(S): H.Du Plessis
KEYWORDS: COLONIALISM, INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS, POST-COLONIAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT, SOUTHERN AFRICA
DEPARTMENT: Impact Centre (IC), Impact Centre (PRESS), Impact Centre (CC)
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 7607
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/3081
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/3081
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
In celebration of the launch of a journal in India that will be dedicated to the advancement of the notion of scientific temper, it is apt to reflect on the possibilities of the impact that such a notion is likely to have once introduced in countries other than in India. In a country like South Africa, which has its historical, emotional as well as political links with India established through the ideas of great statesmen such as Mahatma Gandhi, one finds similarities as well as differences in its historical development and post-liberation governance practices. A striking communality is that both countries were subjugated to British colonial rule. Both countries went through post-colonial changes that required new governance structures subject to new regulations and policies. New leaders keen to provide policies appropriate to serve the indigenous society. As a result the new policies were infused with each country's respective cultural worldviews and histories. One similarity of action between the two countries is the idealised protection of peoples indigenous knowledge systems. A striking difference, however, is the national efforts to protect people's knowledge, identified as 'scientific temper' in India, and the wide ranging, culturally embedded perception of people's inability of being 'rational' in Africa with the resultant disregard for African knowledge systems. This paper will explore this socio-political divide created through the subconscious 'acceptance' of people's apparent inability of being 'rational' in Africa against the endorsement of a nation's ability of 'being rational' through a constitutional obligation towards maintaining scientific temper in India.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Indigenous knowledge systems and academic institutions in South Africa
- Micro-finance in rural communities in Southern Africa: country and pilot site case studies, policy issues and recommendations
- Environmental education, ethics and action in southern Africa
- PRODDER: the Southern Africa development directory 2000
- DFIDSA poverty workshops and seminars
- Toward a sustainable transport and communication sector in Southern Africa
- Rural people first: challenges for the 21st century: opening address to the Free State Sedimosang Rural Development Initiative
- Strategies for effecting engagement on IKS (indigenous knowledge systems)
- Recovering the basis for effective transformation and development of South Africa
- On global security: a suggested interpretation for Southern Africa
- PRODDER: the Southern Africa development directory 2001
- What went wrong?: a perspective on the first five years of land redistribution in South Africa, with homily for the next five
- Food security in southern Africa: causes and responses from the region
- Migration in southern Africa: theoretical, methodological and policy issues
- Democracy in southern Africa: moving beyond a difficult legacy
- Food security in southern Africa: causes and responses from across the region: workshop report
- The underlying solutions to the food crisis in the southern Africa region
- Towards identifying the vulnerability of HIV/AIDS affected households to food insecurity: the RVAC-UNAIDS experience: challenges and opportunities
- Secular savages, religious natives: inventions of religion in colonial southern Africa
- Confronting the region: a profile of southern Africa