In social identity theory, the in-Christ identity is understood as primarily a socially directed process in which people categorise themselves relative to other groups. Intergroup behaviour would cause them to discriminate against the so-called ‘outgroup’, favouring the so-called ‘ingroup’. Although social identity complexity theory has moved beyond single ingroup-outgroup categorisation, it is a question if social identity theories can fully account for the in-Christ identity, especially within an African context. In African religious identity, identity is linked to both the community (...) and the ruling deities, which are perceived to be real entities that intervene in human affairs and identity, presupposing a supernaturalistic epistemology. Contribution: In this contribution, the naturalistic epistemological underpinnings of social identity theories are reconsidered in light of a supernatural aspect that is argued to be constitutive of the 1st century in-Christ identity as well as the African Christian identity. Amid current approaches to the in-Christ identity, which is mainly a Pauline concept, some of the main Pauline texts that have bearing on the in-Christ identity are revisited in light of current theories and epistemologies on identity. (shrink)

One of the most pressing issues in the urban ghettos of the Cape Flats is that of gangsterism and the discourse of power and powerlessness that is its lifeblood. Media coverage over the past two years was littered with news on gangsterism as the City of Cape Town struggles to contain what some labelled a pandemic. It is a pandemic that is closely tied to a deprivation trap of poverty, marginalisation, isolation, unemployment and, ultimately, powerlessness. The latter concept of powerlessness (...) and its interplay with these factors constituted the main thrust of this article as it explores the concept of power as deeply relational with the economic, psycho-social and spiritual dimensions. It is proposed that Kingdom power challenges the status quo within such contexts and offers the church an alternative framework within which to engage prophetically. (shrink)

South Africa remains one of the most unequal societies in the world and any discussion around poverty and the church's response cannot exclude this reality. This article attempts to analyse the response of wealthy, 'majority white' suburban congregations in the southern suburbs of Cape Town to issues of poverty and inequality. This is attempted through the lense of restorative justice, which is broadly explored and defined through a threefold perspective of reconciliation, reparations and restitution. The first part explores a description (...) of the basic features of poverty and inequality in South Africa today, followed by a discussion on restorative justice. This is followed by the case study, which gives the views of clergy and lay leaders with regard to their congregations' perspectives and responses to poverty and inequality within the context of restorative justice. Findings from the case study begin to plot a tentative 'way forward' as to how our reality can more constructively be engaged from the perspective of congregational involvement in reconstruction of our society. (shrink)

The findings of an empirical study entitled ‘Meeting the challenge of poverty and inequality in the Cape Metropole: Factors impacting the mobilisation of congregations in their response to poverty and injustice’ reaffirm that the majority of congregations are still largely operating within a ‘relief and welfare’ paradigm with regard to poverty. In attempting to analyse the hindrances to churches’ mobilisation in addressing poverty from a holistic perspective, it became clear that, while there were common challenges, several other intersectional issues also (...) play a role with regard to engagement. This article, therefore, analyses and discusses how these factors have an impact on the mobilisation of local congregations in their response to the twin challenge of poverty and inequality. (shrink)

This book offers a critical feminist perspective on the widely debated topic of transitional justice and forgiveness. Louise Du Toit examines the phenomenon of rape with a feminist philosophical discourse concerning women’s or ‘feminine’ subjectivity and selfhood. She demonstrates how the hierarchical dichotomy of male active versus female passive sexuality – which obscures the true nature of rape – is embedded in the dominant western symbolic frame. Through a Hegelian and phenomenological reading of first-person accounts by rape victims, she (...) excavates an understanding of rape that also starts to open up a way out of the denial and destruction of female sexual subjectivity. (shrink)

South Africa remains a divided community on many levels: socially, racially and socioeconomically. This is no more evident than in the recent protests - most notably waged on university campuses and on the streets in the past year. This, the article argues, is closely related to the need to reclaim the notion of power by those who feel they remain relegated to the social and economic peripheries after over 20 years of democracy. While 'theology and development' praxis has been most (...) closely associated in a post-apartheid era with welfare and charity approaches or pragmatic interaction with state and civil society, what has not been sufficiently addressed is the notion of power which once dominated ecclesiastical discourses. This is the proverbial 'elephant in the room', which the article argues must once again be revisited and re-engaged - both within scholarly reflection and within church practice - in order to address these divides. (shrink)

The technological virtual converges with our contemporary existence in a multitude of ways, which suggests a need to interrogate the question of the virtual existentially. Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenological account of embodiment is invaluable in this regard because the virtual is encountered from the basis of the facticity of the embodied individual – a facticity that is closely related to perception and motor intentionality. The current article argues that these characteristics of the body-subject should be taken into consideration in order to (...) develop a clearer description of the virtual. However, beyond an embodied account that relates to early technologies, Merleau-Ponty also presents through his concept of the flesh a novel avenue for the ontological investigation of the virtual. The flesh describes the intertwining of the body-subject and the world, which is suggestive of a new account of the individual’s sensibility in relation to the virtual. An original concept is suggested to describe the existential-ontological structure of the virtual: The embodied screen. The embodied screen as neologism presents an alternative conceptualisation of the coincidence of the body-subject (who understands the world spatially) with the virtual (as non-spatial). By tracing imaginative signification and embodied habitude in terms of the virtual, this article suggests certain existential implications of the virtual for contemporary being. (shrink)

When allocating scarce healthcare resources, the expected benefits of alternative allocations matter. But, there are different kinds of benefits. Some are direct benefits to the recipient of the resource such as the health improvements of receiving treatment. Others are indirect benefits to third parties such as the economic gains from having a healthier workforce. This article considers whether only the direct benefits of alternative healthcare resource allocations are relevant to allocation decisions, or whether indirect benefits are relevant too. First, we (...) distinguish different conceptions of direct and indirect benefits and argue that only a recipient conception could be morally relevant. We analyze four arguments for thinking that indirect benefits should not count and argue that none is successful in showing that the indirectness of a benefit is a good reason not to count it. We conclude that direct and indirect benefits should be evaluated in the same way. (shrink)

Faith-based Organisations have been at the forefront of a growing interest of the intersection between religion and development. Their value has been recognised as both pragmatic and, perhaps more contentiously, also 'spiritual' in nature because of advantages arising from faith itself. For many FBOs, religion is far more than an 'essential component of identity … it is a source of well-being'. In this manner, FBOs challenge the modernist assumptions of traditional development theory, which view the spiritual and physical domains as (...) separate. In fact, for some FBOs, 'spiritual faith provides the fuel for action'. This paper reports on an aspect of the empirical findings of a South African study and explores both the way in which Christian FBOs understand their Christian identity and the way in which they articulate this through their use of scripture as a motivating or an envisioning tool. (shrink)

Health policy is only one part of social policy. Although spending administered by the health sector constitutes a sizeable fraction of total state spending in most countries, other sectors such as education and transportation also represent major portions of national budgets. Additionally, though health is one important aspect of economic and social activity, people pursue many other goals in their social and economic lives. Similarly, direct benefits—those that are immediate results of health policy choices—are only a small portion of the (...) overall impact of health policy. This chapter considers what weight health policy should give to its “spill-over effects,” namely non-health and indirect benefits. (shrink)

The virtual has become the latest rostrum for ideological heteronormativity; it increasingly plays host to an insidious rhetoric of unjustifiably fixed and oppositional gender binaries that exhort heterosexuality as a norm. Conservative political and religious groups, as well as consumerist advertising, utilise digital technology to reinforce cast-in-stone and adversarial social perspectives for manipulative and exploitative ends. Contrastingly, the virtual may be mobilised to support and facilitate queering in contemporary societies and may positively counter such fixed ideological heteronormative categories of social (...) life. Crucial in this transformative account of the virtual is the body, which is for Merleau-Ponty the horizon of engagement with the world as a condition for perception and performativity. Queer perspectives may, in turn, overcome the oversight of Merleau-Ponty (as critically suggested by Judith Butler and Iris Marion Young) regarding the specific gendered characteristics of the body itself, and allows for an expanded embodied and queer conceptualisation of the virtual. A transformative vision of the virtual entails therefore a rethinking of our understanding of digital technology through (a) the phenomenology of the body-subject and (b) queer theory. I argue that the idea of the body as entirely discursive or performative (per queer theory) needs to be adjusted by explicating the foundational ontological characteristics of the body-subject’s encounter of the virtual. (shrink)

Philosophy of technology was not initially considered a consolidated field of inquiry. However, under the influence of sociology and pragmatist philosophy, something resembling a consensus has emerged in a field previously marked by a lack of agreement amongst its practitioners. This has given the field a greater sense of structure and yielded interesting research. However, the loss of the earlier “messy” state has resulted in a limitation of the field’s scope and methodology that precludes an encompassing view of the problematic (...) issues inherent in the question of technology. It is argued that the heterodox disunity and diversity of earlier philosophy of technology was not a mark of theoretical immaturity but was necessitated by the field’s complex subject matter. It is further argued that philosophy of technology should return to its pluralistic role as a meta-analytical structure linking insights from different fields of research. (shrink)

This article represents a response to ‘the problem of women and African philosophy', which refers mainly to the absence of strong women's and feminist voices within the discipline of African philosophy. I investigate the possibility that African women are not so much excluded from the institutionalized discipline of philosophy, as preferring fiction as a genre for intellectual expression. This hypothesis can be supported by some feminists who read the absolute prioritisation of abstraction and generalization over the concrete and the particular (...) as a masculine and western oppressive strategy. Attention to the concrete and the unique which is made possible by literature more readily than by philosophy, could thus operate as a form of political resistance in certain contexts. If fiction is currently the preferred form of intellectual expression of African women, it is crucial that the community of professional philosophers in a context like South Africa should come to terms with the relevance of such a preference for philosophy's self-conception, and it should work to make these intellectual contributions philosophically fruitful. In the process, we may entertain the hope that philosophy itself will move closer to its root or source as ‘love of wisdom'. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 27 (4) 2008: pp. 413-429. (shrink)

In this article the authors discuss in broad strokes the work of two theorists, namely Nigerian sociologist Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí and Argentinian philosopher Maria Lugones to argue that a specific logic of sexualisation accompanied, permeated and coloured the colonial project of racialising the ‘native’. The sexual wound which to a great extent explains the abjection of the racialised body, is a key aspect of the colony and should therefore also be a central theme in any properly critical discourse on decolonisation in (...) Africa. After drawing on Oyĕwùmí and Lugones to make their central argument, the authors apply this framework to the problem of sexual violence in South Africa. Understanding the nature of the sexual-racial wound of coloniality will not only ensure that the problem of sexual violence gets properly addressed as a central question of decolonisation, but will also suggest new ways of concretely addressing the problem. In particular, the dominant discourse needs to shift away from the ‘emasculated man’ trope and towards a critical feminist decoloniality which views the radical dehumanisation of native woman as key to colonial violence understood as a world-destructive. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the question of whether having pets is morally permissible. However, I do so indirectly by considering three objections to the practice of having pets — what I shall call the ‘restriction of freedom objection’, the ‘property objection’, and the ‘dependency objection’. The restriction of freedom objection is dismissed relatively easily. The property objection also fails to show that having pets is morally impermissible. However, my consideration of this second objection does lead to the conclusion that (...) we ought to aim at changing existing legal systems and the majority of people's attitudes towards pets such that they (pets) are no longer considered to be the personal property of the humans in whose homes they are kept. But, while it is clear that we ought to aim at ending the practice of owning pets, it is not clear whether we ought to aim at ending the practice of keeping pets. Indeed, I do not to reach a definitive conclusion about the cogency of the dependency objection. However, I argue that this lack of clarity is of little concern at this time as our present moral obligations to pets are quite clear. (shrink)

Within the ethnic-reasoning position, which has gained momentum in recent years, it is argued that in the in-Christ identity there exists no dichotomy between natural, physical relationships and constructed, made-up relationships. Ethnicity is viewed as fluid and changeable and as including the category of religion, which is understood as involving a nation's culture and their cultic and ritualistic practices. Yet, it is a question whether these notions are compatible with the way in which the in-Christ identity is portrayed, especially by (...) Paul. In terms of the theological way in which ethnicity and even religious practices are portrayed, they rather belong to the domain of humanness or human conduct, and thus to the anthropological domain. In contrast, believers' relation to Abraham and their new mode of identity in the S/spirit is portrayed as being in contrast with the anthropological domain or the domain of 'flesh', which includes things such as ethnicity, human conduct and even religious practices. This tension between divine identity and human or natural identity in the New Testament is accounted for and applied to the ethnic-reasoning position, which also influences the way in which the in-Christ identity finds cultural expression in the lives of present-day readers. (shrink)

It is not surprising that in a time of intensified ecological awareness a new appreciation of nature and the inanimate world arises. Two examples are panpsychism and deep incarnation. Consciousness studies flourish and are related to nature, the animal world and inorganic nature. A metaphysics of consciousness emerges, of which panpsychism is a good example. Panpsychism or panconsciousness or speculative realism endows all matter with a form of consciousness, energy and experience. The consciousness question is increasingly linked to the quantum (...) world, which offers some option in bridging mind and reality, consciousness and matter. In this regard Kauffman's notion of 'triad' is referred to as well as the implied idea of cosmic mind. This is related to the notion of 'deep incarnation' as introduced by Gregersen. Some analogical links are made between panpsychism and deep incarnation. (shrink)

Given the long‐standing controversy about whether the brain‐dead should be considered alive in an irreversible coma or dead despite displaying apparent signs of life, the ethical and policy issues posed when family members insist on continued treatment are not as simple as commentators have claimed. In this article, we consider the kind of policy that should be adopted to manage a family's insistence that their brain‐dead loved one continues to receive supportive care. We argue that while it would be ethically (...) inappropriate to continue to devote scarce acute care resources to such patients in a hospital setting, it may not be ethically inappropriate for patients to receive these resources in certain other settings. Thus, if a family insists on continuing to care for their brain‐dead loved at their home, we should not, from a policy perspective, interfere with the family's wishes. We also argue that healthcare professionals should make some effort to facilitate the transfer of brain‐dead patients to these other settings when families insist on continued treatment despite being informed about the lack of any potential for recovery of consciousness. Our arguments are strengthened by the fact that patients in a persistent vegetative state, who, when correctly diagnosed, also have no potential for recovery of consciousness, are routinely transferred from hospitals to nursing homes or long‐term care facilities where they continue to be ventilated, tube fed and to receive other supportive care. We also briefly explore the question of who should be responsible for the costs of such treatment at the long‐term care facility. (shrink)

Recent developments within literary theory challenge the theological assumption that specific words can act as ‘transcendental signifiers’, claiming supra‐linguistic origin and divine authority. Within the postmodern theology of Mark Taylor this challenge is taken up in such a way as to obliterate the idea of divine revelation within language. However, this article contends that this position, which claims to be absolutely ‘post‐revelational’ results in self‐contradictory statements, hidden and unacknowledged forms of foundationalism, and a disregard for the radically other and different. (...) Karl Barth also addresses the problem of the radical relativity of words, but without denying the influence of divine revelation within language. Taking the nature of the ‘true Word’ as being radically Christological, Barth claims the miraculous nature of transcendence‐within‐language. However, this divine presence within the Word of God remains hidden, and thus does not inaugurate a violent miracle, whereby human language in all its relativity would be trivialized. Instead of claiming to have abolished transcendent foundations in the light of the challenge of relativism, as Taylor does, this article claims that Barth openly advocates a non‐violent, subtle form of transcendent foundationalism for theology, and thus maintains both the relativity of language and divine revelation as the ‘Word of God’. (shrink)

Recent rape law reform is most saliently characterised by a turn to gender neutrality in its definition of the crime of rape. The few possible advantages of a gender neutral approach to rape are offset by a series of disadvantages regarding gender justice when viewed from a feminist perspective. Formal gender neutrality does not safeguard against the effective influence of pervasive and enduring symbolic constructions pertaining to male and female sexuality and of a normalised hierarchical binary constructed between the two (...) sexes, in particular where sexual relations are concerned. Such efficacy may impede justice for both male and female victims of rape. The question about the place of sexual difference or rather sexual specificity within feminist theories of justice should be considered anew in light of this critical analysis of gender neutrality in rape law. (shrink)

A fundamental valuation of present day technology requires an investigation of its supporting metaphysics. Although technology ostensibly is the exact opposite of any kind of metaphysics, its metaphysical foundations, which co-determine its influence on values and worldview formation, can be indicated. Western technology is reconsidered from the perspective of Heidegger's critique on technology. Technology need not determine values in a deterministic way. We are challenged as created co-creators to give a human face to technology. Africa can be considered relatively free (...) of the influence of high technology. The way technology is imbedded in African metaphysics, myth and worldview is investigated from the perspectives of life force and ubuntu. Although the African example may be foreign to Westerners, it proves that it is possible to live in a technological world without losing the values indispensable to humanity. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.22(2) 2003: 173–183. (shrink)

In this contribution, an overview of the distinct ways in which the interplay between knowledge, values, and beliefs took shape in the South African context since 1948 is offered. This is framed against the background of the paleontological significance of South Africa and an appreciation of indigenous knowledge systems, but also of the ideological distortion of knowledge and education during the apartheid era through the legacy of neo-Calvinism. The overview includes references to discourse on human rationality, on the use of (...) social sciences in theological reflection, on the teaching of evolution in public schools, on science and religion, and on religion and ecology. The essay concludes with a survey of some of the major voices regarding the interface between religion and science in South Africa. (shrink)

This paper explores how we could approach the decolonising of the debate on sexual violence within the South African post-colony. For this purpose, a historical event is analysed: two presbytery hearings of 1843 and 1845, both involving Xhosa convert John Beck Balfour, at the Scottish mission station of Burnshill based in Xhosaland (later called British Caffraria). The hearings involve (extra-)marital and sexual behaviour. Walter Mignolo’s notions of border thinking and colonial difference, further complicated with the idea of colonial-sexual differentiation, are (...) employed to show aspects of what is at stake in a decolonising reading of Xhosa convert sexual behaviour. (shrink)

The main claim in this article is that the traditionally Western and currently dominant understandings of the figures of “Nature” and “Animal” underlie and structure different forms of oppression and should be critically confronted. The racial-sexual subjugation of the colonized African draws symbolically on the older Western symbolic subjugations of Animal and Woman. In the Great Chain of Being of Western metaphysics it is Woman’s sexual body that links humans to the domain of the animal, and Man’s intellect that distinguishes (...) and separates humans from that same domain. Situated in the border between human and Animal, Woman merges with the chaos and fleshiness of Animal and Nature. With the emergence of race as a category of classification and colonial justification, the African is placed at the furthest remove from Western Man, the epitome of reasonable humanity. African Woman, in particular, is seen as the Animal Other. The colonial-“civilizing” project thus institutes a certain flight from Nat... (shrink)

A case has been made by various authors that the normative and processual notion of personhood found in African philosophy is discriminatory: it has been labelled as sexist, ableist and anti-queer. Within the anti-queer critique, one area that has not been specifically addressed in the literature is whether this notion of personhood is biased against people who identify as non-binary with respect to gender. This includes people who are gender fluid and gender neutral, among others. In this article, we argue (...) that the binary conception of gender is deeply connected to a colonial agenda, and does not accurately fit extra-colonial gender conceptions. Through an analysis of extra-colonial language and logic, read together with the flexibility inherent in the processual notion of personhood (on our reading), we argue that binaries do not sit comfortably with extra-colonial African thinking, and as such, processual and normative personhood can be understood in a way that embraces non-binary individuals. Further, the standards for achieving personhood are set by and achieved within the community, so a community which recognises and celebrates non-binary individuals can set up a framework for them to achieve personhood. Accordingly, normative personhood in African thought is found not to exclude those of non-binary gender. This reading saves the normative approach from some of the critiques levelled against it, as well as: i) enhancing consistency in an African world view; ii) strengthening the decolonial agenda; and iii) showing normative personhood to be fairer and more inclusive. (shrink)

Jessica du Toit wonders if our relationship with our pets can be morally defended.

In this dissertation, I provide an account of the protections to which most captive non-human animals are morally entitled when they participate in health-related research. At least in the animal ethics literature, it is uncontroversial that the protections currently afforded to captive research animals are inadequate. This has much to do with the fact that most animals who serve as research participants are 1) sentient and, thus, have important morally considerable interests; 2) unable to provide informed consent to their research (...) participation; and 3) seriously harmed as a result of their participation. Unsurprisingly, then, a number of authors have proposed alternative sets of protections that they take to be appropriately responsive to the morally considerable interests of research animals. However, none of the alternatives proposed ensures the ethically appropriate treatment of research animals because all are demonstrably more permissive than the set of protections governing research involving children. This seems problematic given that most animal research participants, like most pediatric research participants, are sentient and unable to provide informed consent for their research participation, and, furthermore, that these are the very characteristics that render children vulnerable — and so entitled to additional protections — in the context of research. I examine a number of reasons that might be thought to justify the discrepancy between the protections afforded to these two groups of research participants, and argue that no non-speciesist justification is forthcoming. Consequently, we ought to reflect upon how the protections currently in place for pediatric research participants might be extended to most animal research participants. I argue that most pediatric research protections, when suitably amended to account for relevant differences between most children and animals, can and should be extended to most animal research participants. I also demonstrate that doing so would require that substantial changes are made to most extant animal research studies. Since this, in turn, would require a radical transformation of the research enterprise as we know it, I also gesture towards how we might get from where we currently are to a truly just research enterprise. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The technological virtual converges with our contemporary existence in a multitude of ways, which suggests a need to interrogate the question of the virtual existentially. Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenological account of embodiment is invaluable in this regard because the virtual is encountered from the basis of the facticity of the embodied individual – a facticity that is closely related to perception and motor intentionality. The current article argues that these characteristics of the body-subject should be taken into consideration in order (...) to develop a clearer description of the virtual. However, beyond an embodied account that relates to early technologies, Merleau-Ponty also presents through his concept of the flesh a novel avenue for the ontological investigation of the virtual. The flesh describes the intertwining of the body-subject and the world, which is suggestive of a new account of the individual’s sensibility in relation to the virtual. An original concept is suggested to describe the existential-ontological structure of the virtual: The embodied screen. The embodied screen as neologism presents an alternative conceptualisation of the coincidence of the body-subject (who understands the world spatially) with the virtual (as non-spatial). By tracing imaginative signification and embodied habitude in terms of the virtual, this article suggests certain existential implications of the virtual for contemporary being. (shrink)

The Radical New Perspective on Paul distinguishes between two subgroups of believers in Christ in Paul’s time: gentile believers and Jewish or Judaean believers. The same distinction is utilised in supporting contemporary Messianic Judaism, which presupposes an ongoing covenantal relationship between God and contemporary Jews that exists over and above Christianity. Many proponents of Christian Zionism, a Christian movement that envisions the Jews’ return to the land of Israel, utilise aspects of both the Radical New Perspective on Paul and Messianic (...) Judaism in support of their beliefs. Ironically, while the Radical New Perspective on Paul is a certain product of post-holocaust theology, Christian Zionism can be perceived as a perpetuation of a kind of imperial theology that brings injustice to Palestinian people, especially in view of a post-imperial South African context. While none of these connections are inevitable, to point out the relationship between these approaches to identity serves to rethink some of the preconceived notions behind them, as well as some of the (unintended) consequences that arise from them. (shrink)

Sara Kolmes has argued that the human ‘handlers’ of emotional support animals should have the sorts of body-like rights to those animals that people with prosthetics have to their prosthetics. In support of this conclusion, she argues that ESAs both function and feel like prosthetics, and that the disanalogies between ESAs and prosthetics are irrelevant to whether humans can have body-like rights to their ESAs. In response, we argue that Ms Kolmes has failed to show that ESAs are body-like in (...) the ways that paradigmatic prostheses are and that, even if they were, these similarities would be outweighed by a crucial dissimilarity that she underestimates. (shrink)

Social networking technologies have become a ubiquitous framework for social interaction, serving to organise much of the individual’s social life. Such technological structuring affects not merely the individual’s psyche (as a psychotechnics), it also affects broader aspects of society (as a socio-technics). While social networking technologies may serve to transform society in positive ways, such technologies also have the potential to significantly encroach upon and (re) construct individual and cultural meaning in ways that must be investigated. Erich Fromm, who psychoanalytically (...) describes humans as a product of their society and the economic systems within that society, may provide insight into the influence of social networking technologies in contemporary society. He sees the relationship between the individual and society as being in a constant state of dynamic change. Utilising Fromm’s psycho-societal insight, social networking technologies are shown to conflate and confuse the relation between Thanatos and Eros – the Thanatos of a lifeless and consumerist agenda-filled mechanisation, and the Eros associated with social engagement. Thanatos and Eros are tied together via social networking technologies. This results in, firstly, social networking technologies functioning predominantly to further capitalist agendas through the monetisation of these technologies – particularly in terms of linking commodity fetishism and the foundational social drive of the individual. Secondly, social networking technologies mechanise human action according to predictable behavioural paths through the use of these technologies, especially in terms of how socialisation is possible via these technologies (shaping how platonic and romantic relationships may take place in the contemporary world). Such a mechanisation of interpersonal engagement contrasts with Erich Fromm’s assertion that interpersonal relations (vis-à-vis love) are not “mere emotion”, but rather represent an interpersonal creative capacity and interplay. Fromm’s psycho-societal insights will show how contemporary individuals may take independent and responsible rational action to establish accountable and psychologically beneficial ways of engaging with others through social networking technologies. (shrink)

The parables of Jesus have historically been attributed with a plethora of interpretations. The first hearers of the parables of Jesus had native (emic) knowledge of the social realities embedded in the parables told by Jesus, that is, cultural scripts present in the parables that might not be apparent to modern readers. Because of this, the modern reader of a parable might not be aware of all the different cultural scripts in a given parable, especially if these scripts are not (...) specifically mentioned or explained by the gospel narrators. Using the parable of the Prodigal Son as an example, this study argues that there are voices in the parable most probably heard by its first hearers that modern hearers might not be aware of. These ‘muted’ voices not heard by modern readers of the parables often include the voices of women and other minority figures. In this study, a case is made for the possible value that a ‘realistic reading’ of familial parables could bring to the interpretation of the parables.Contribution: It is suggested that this reading can contribute to feminist biblical scholarship’s deconstruction and reconstruction of gender paradigms of Christian theology if the voices of women are ‘exhumed’ from or ‘unhidden’ within, patriarchal and androcentric texts. (shrink)

The need to decolonise the academy and academic writing requires that methodology for research be chosen carefully. The methodology of a study reflects the researcher's point of departure or worldview, as well as their belief system. The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has drastically influenced the functioning of higher education institutes, as well as how scholars plan and execute their research. This includes investigation into the global environmental crisis that is widely researched from various disciplines. These disciplines tend to (...) develop and favour different methodologies. The purpose of this presentation was to report on the inquiry into a suitable methodology to study social discourses about the environmental crisis. The methodologies investigated were an eco-linguistic approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, combined with eco-criticism, which was linked to the concept of an eco-sophy, using the framework of Dark Green Religion. The umbrella-concept of Dark Green Religion as a theoretical framework allows the comparison and incorporation of disparate methodologies as well as discourses. This framework also gives prominence to the role of religion in societal response to the environmental crisis. Due to the study being situated in an African context and striving to implement a decolonising discourse, some suggestions were made on decolonising research methodology in higher education. CONTRIBUTION: This article's contribution to new knowledge centred around situating current and new research in Africa in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and deliberating on the impact for future studies. The conclusion was drawn that the COVID-19 pandemic can be a catalyst for re-interpreting research methodology from a decolonised perspective. (shrink)