IK101 Indigenous African Knowledge
(Ethnopsychology 1)
SOME ITEMS COVERED IN THE COURSE
- Abnormal Psychology, covering subjects e.g. Power and psychology, psychology as ideological, ways of knowing ourselves, psychology as politics, and a South African Ethno Psychology.
- Psychology: An African Perspective: The knowing subject: The self in traditional psychology, Indigenous Psychologies; Do we need an African-based psychology?; an African Metaphysical system.
- Communal life and personhood; the family community.
- Sociocultural approaches to psychology: Dialogism and African conceptions of the self.
- Psychoanalysis and critical psychology: What is, and what is no, psychoanalysis?
- Essentialist psychoanalysis: Opportunities and dangers.
- Pragmatic psychoanalysis: Questioning subjectivity and history
- Cultural psychoanalysis: Working inside and alongside its discourse.
- Marxism and Ethnopsychology: Social theory, and a theory of the social.
- Psychology and the regulation of gender: Re-theorising gender difference.
- Foucault, disciplinary power and the critical pre-history of psychology: Psychology as disciplinary apparatus, disciplinary power.
- Governmentality and technologies of subjectivity.
- Feminist Ethnopsychology in South Africa: Feminism in an African context, Prospects and challenges for feminist theory and practice in Africa: Focus on HIV/Aids.
- Critical reflections on community and psychology in South Africa: Thinking about Communities, Africanist community practice.
- The role of collective action in the prevention of HIV/Aids in South Africa: What do we mean by ‘critical’ health psychology?; What are the drivers of social change?; How does participation in collective action impact on the sexual health of a community?
- South African psychology and racism: Historical determinants and future prospects: Psychology and racism prior to 1994; Psychology and racism: Post-1994.
- About Black Psychology: The birth of black US-American psychology.
- Forms of practice: Activity Theory as a framework for psychological research and practice in developing societies: The irrelevance of psychology; Activity Theory.
- Participating Action Research and local knowledge in community context.
- Community Psychology: Emotional processes in political subjects.
- Human development in ‘underdeveloped’ contexts.
- Liberation psychology: Emancipation and utopia; Modernity and its ills; The psychology of oppression.
- Student Practical through using various trance-states, and understanding practical implications of metaphysical and spiritual realms, especially in the African Culture, including possessions and other events.
COURSE OBJECTIVESTHE AIM OF THIS COURSE IS TO TEACH YOU
- Ethnopsychology begins by rejecting the assumption that there can be such a thing as a neutral presentation of objective facts. Students will learn the traditional assumptions about the truthfulness of certain psychological ideas.
- Ethnopsychology seeks to clear spaces for those who have been silenced, ignored, explained away, pathologised, marginalized or otherwise oppressed.
- How do we think beyond the categories we were taught to think with? Students will learn how psychology and power might be linked. By the end of the course you should be able to: Critically discuss the context of psychology in developing societies; distinguish between indigenous psychology and indigenisation; define worldviews and the four dimensions of worldviews; illustrate the counselling and healthcare implications of the notions of worldviews, and critically discuss the core components of an African metaphysical system, including a critical appraisal of the notion of a person-in-community.
- Practical regression and various trance states as used by Sangomas, Hypnotherapists, Meditators etc., a deep spiritual understanding, and methods for spirit-de-possession, curses, muti and other.
16 Classroom Hours
60 Course Assignment Hours
20 Book & Home Study Hours
20 Case Studies
Thesis : Minimum 6000 Words
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