Secularization and Development in Africa: A Terrific Facade

1
Mustapha Hashim Kurfi
Mustapha Hashim Kurfi
1 Boston University

Send Message

To: Author

GJHSS Volume 13 Issue C6

Article Fingerprint

ReserarchID

OB94A

Secularization and Development in Africa: A Terrific Facade Banner
  • English
  • Afrikaans
  • Albanian
  • Amharic
  • Arabic
  • Armenian
  • Azerbaijani
  • Basque
  • Belarusian
  • Bengali
  • Bosnian
  • Bulgarian
  • Catalan
  • Cebuano
  • Chichewa
  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional)
  • Corsican
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Esperanto
  • Estonian
  • Filipino
  • Finnish
  • French
  • Frisian
  • Galician
  • Georgian
  • German
  • Greek
  • Gujarati
  • Haitian Creole
  • Hausa
  • Hawaiian
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hmong
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Igbo
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Javanese
  • Kannada
  • Kazakh
  • Khmer
  • Korean
  • Kurdish (Kurmanji)
  • Kyrgyz
  • Lao
  • Latin
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Luxembourgish
  • Macedonian
  • Malagasy
  • Malay
  • Malayalam
  • Maltese
  • Maori
  • Marathi
  • Mongolian
  • Myanmar (Burmese)
  • Nepali
  • Norwegian
  • Pashto
  • Persian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Punjabi
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Samoan
  • Scots Gaelic
  • Serbian
  • Sesotho
  • Shona
  • Sindhi
  • Sinhala
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Somali
  • Spanish
  • Sundanese
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Tajik
  • Tamil
  • Telugu
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Urdu
  • Uzbek
  • Vietnamese
  • Welsh
  • Xhosa
  • Yiddish
  • Yoruba
  • Zulu

This article highlights secularization debate; identifying its major variants; critiquing the idea with particular reference to Peter Berger’s rendition; and presenting his recent position on the debate. The paper then provides a snapshot of development from the Western perspective, examining the relationship between religion and development, showing how it differs from an African perspective. The paper argues that,the Western models of development are not compatible with Africa because they are alien, incompatible with the norms and values of most Africans, and notably, neglect or relegate several important aspects of the people’s culture, including the role of religion in development.Thus, when African leaders embrace and applaud the Western-based idea of secularized development at the expense of the subalterns, who do not feel the impacts of these superficial developments, it becomes a terrific façade. The article concludes by proposing a bottom-up approach to development conception and implementation in non-Western society, notably Africa, asserting that it has to beconsidered as a process compatible with the people’s realities, reflecting their values, including religion and culture generally.

23 Cites in Articles

References

  1. James Beckford (2003). Social Theory and Religion.
  2. L Berger,Peter (1967). The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion.
  3. N Garden City Unknown Title.
  4. L Berger,Peter (1999). The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent, Religion and World Politics.
  5. D Washington (1993). James Turner Johnson and George Weigel, Just War and the Gulf War (Washington DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991), 169 pp., $16.95 cloth.
  6. Gerrie Tar,Haar (2010). ) has demonstrated how religious leaders utilize local resources to fight poverty. Also, several faith-related agencies have done creditably well in the fight against many social ills including poverty, violence against women, illiteracy, etc.
  7. L Berger,Peter (2001). Reflections on the Sociology of Religion Today.
  8. Bompani Barbara,Maria Frahm-Arp (2010). Development and Politics From Below: Exploring Religious Spaces in the African State.
  9. Jose Casanova (1994). Public Religions in the Modern World.
  10. Mark Chaves (1994). Secularization as Declining Religious Authority.
  11. Fenella Cannell (2010). The Anthropology of Secularism.
  12. Schutz Dorothea (2010). Remaking Society from Within: Extraversion and the Social Forms of Female Muslim Activism in Urban Mali.
  13. Graveling Elizabeth (2010). Marshalling the Powers: The Challenge of Everyday Religion for Development.
  14. Durkheim Emile (1982). The Rules of Sociological Method.
  15. Ter Gerrie,Haar (2010). The Mbuliuli Principle: What is in a Name?.
  16. Philip Gorski,Ateş Altınordu (2008). After Secularization?.
  17. Michael Hughey (1979). The idea of secularization in the works of max weber: A theoretical outline.
  18. Karl Marx (1957). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels On Religion.
  19. Martin Riesebrodt (2010). The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion.
  20. R Stark (1999). Bringing Theory Back In.
  21. Max Weber (2009). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: with Other Writings on the Rise of the West.
  22. Max Weber (2011). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
  23. R Warner (1993). Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States.

Funding

No external funding was declared for this work.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

No ethics committee approval was required for this article type.

Data Availability

Not applicable for this article.

Mustapha Hashim Kurfi. 2013. \u201cSecularization and Development in Africa: A Terrific Facade\u201d. Global Journal of Human-Social Science - C: Sociology & Culture GJHSS-C Volume 13 (GJHSS Volume 13 Issue C6): .

Download Citation

Issue Cover
GJHSS Volume 13 Issue C6
Pg. 15- 19
Journal Specifications

Crossref Journal DOI 10.17406/GJHSS

Print ISSN 0975-587X

e-ISSN 2249-460X

Classification
Not Found
Version of record

v1.2

Issue date

November 13, 2013

Language

English

Experiance in AR

The methods for personal identification and authentication are no exception.

Read in 3D

The methods for personal identification and authentication are no exception.

Article Matrices
Total Views: 4666
Total Downloads: 2307
2026 Trends
Research Identity (RIN)
Related Research

Published Article

This article highlights secularization debate; identifying its major variants; critiquing the idea with particular reference to Peter Berger’s rendition; and presenting his recent position on the debate. The paper then provides a snapshot of development from the Western perspective, examining the relationship between religion and development, showing how it differs from an African perspective. The paper argues that,the Western models of development are not compatible with Africa because they are alien, incompatible with the norms and values of most Africans, and notably, neglect or relegate several important aspects of the people’s culture, including the role of religion in development.Thus, when African leaders embrace and applaud the Western-based idea of secularized development at the expense of the subalterns, who do not feel the impacts of these superficial developments, it becomes a terrific façade. The article concludes by proposing a bottom-up approach to development conception and implementation in non-Western society, notably Africa, asserting that it has to beconsidered as a process compatible with the people’s realities, reflecting their values, including religion and culture generally.

Our website is actively being updated, and changes may occur frequently. Please clear your browser cache if needed. For feedback or error reporting, please email [email protected]
×

This Page is Under Development

We are currently updating this article page for a better experience.

Request Access

Please fill out the form below to request access to this research paper. Your request will be reviewed by the editorial or author team.
X

Quote and Order Details

Contact Person

Invoice Address

Notes or Comments

This is the heading

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.

High-quality academic research articles on global topics and journals.

Secularization and Development in Africa: A Terrific Facade

Mustapha Hashim Kurfi
Mustapha Hashim Kurfi Boston University

Research Journals