Social Sciences and Cultural Studies for the Transformative Development of Postcolonial Africa: (Transformative Development for Postcolonial Africa)

This open access edited volume brings together a multidisciplinary team of social scientists and cultural experts to investigate the concept of transformative development. Contributors discuss the transformative development vision with a focus on the social sciences and cultural studies. In doing so, they explore new development paradigms for Africa in the context of Covid-19, the role of myths in the psychological transformation of Africa, the correlation between discourses on cultures in Africa and the development of the continent, interactions between Indigenous knowledge and Western innovations, and new movements in the arts, handicrafts, and even postmodern Afropop. Going beyond traditional emphases on economic and industrial progress, the authors gathered here ultimately develop new analytical frameworks that align with African realities and priorities in order to promote the decolonisation of the African minds, which remains a work in progress. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Table of Contents:
TABLE OF CONTENTS Notes on Editors and Contributors Editors’ Preface PART ONE: INTRODUCTION AND A TRANSFORMATIVE DEVELOPMENT VISION Introduction Alain Cyr Pangop Kameni, David Simo, Esaïe Djomo, Godfrey B. Tangwa and Aloysius Ngefac A transformative development vision for postcolonial Africa: Focus on Social Sciences and Cultural Studies Aloysius Ngefac PART TWO: VOICES OF SOCIAL SCIENTISTS AND HUMANITIES EXPERTS Glimpses of transversal research in African Studies: a new roadmap for postcolonial African nations Alain Cyr Pangop Kameni Towards a new paradigm for African development in the context of the Covid-19 Pandemic Godfrey B. Tangwa The Pragmatics of myths and the psychological transformation of Africa Divine Che Neba Which humanities for the development of postcolonial Africa? Esaie Djomo Climate Change Politics, Justice and Solution: An Ecolinguistic Appraisal of the Cameroonian Perspective Julius Angwah Ethnic Diversity and the Problem of National Unity in Cameroon: A Historical Perspective, 1961-2016 René Ngek Monteh PART THREE: VOICES OF CULTURAL EXPERTS Discourses on Culture in Africa: Paradigms and Challenges David Simo Grassfield Cultural Attractions of Mezam Division in Cameroon: Imprints of Indigenous Knowledge Faced with Western Innovations Yvette Akwa Neba & Ojuku Tiafack The production of arts and handicrafts for the transformative development of postcolonial Africa: The case of the Nweh ethnic group in Cameroon Norah Aziamin Asongu Post-modernist Afropop music and transformative development Joseph Nkwain Index

About the Author :
Alain Cyr Pangop Kameni is Professor of African Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Dschang, Cameroon. His research interests include media, identity, and elections in Africa; writing and publishing in Cameroon; and literary representations of the African peri-urban. David Simo is Professor of German and Cultural Studies at the University of Yaounde I, Cameroon. He is interested in postcolonial theory and in connections between cultural globalization and African literary history. Esaïe Djomo is Professor of German and Cultural Studies at the University of Dschang, Cameroon. His interests center around audiovisual German culture in Cameroon. Godfrey Tangwa is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Yaounde I, Cameroon. His research interests center on epistemology, metaphysics, and bioethics as they relate to African philosophy. Aloysius Ngefac is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Yaounde I, Cameroon. He is the founder and general coordinator of TRANG (Transformative Research and Networking Group). He has published several books related to his research interests in sociolinguistics, world Englishes, postcolonial pragmatics, creolistics, transformative research, and transformative development.

Review :
The essays that have been assembled into this volume, unique in its combined multilateral perspective and assertive style, collectively offer scholars in the social sciences and humanities a valiant and neatly paved multilateral approach to the concept of development in post-colonial Africa, with the latter’s rich and ever emerging cultural undercurrents as a pathfinder. With a scan of both past and present-day African experiences that would serve as indicators for the future, the collection is an enriching guide to the issues that revolve around the stagnation in the development of the African continent over three quarters of a century post-colonially, and will, therefore, be of interest to both scholars and students of African studies and development studies, stakeholders of African development, and policy-makers. This volume is a timely contribution to ongoing discussions about development in postcolonial Africa. Drawing on a range of disciplinary perspectives from the social sciences, humanities, and cultural studies, this group of African scholars interrogate inherited models of progress and propose a roadmap for development that is both contextually grounded in a number of case studies and conceptually foregrounding. The emphasis on transformative development—understood as a holistic and multidimensional process—allows for critical engagement with questions of identity, nationhood, knowledge production, and institutional reform. By centering African experiences and perspectives, the book invites reconsideration of Eurocentric dominant narratives and provides analytical tools for rethinking development in theory and practice. This book will be of use to scholars, policymakers, and anyone committed to Africa’s future.