African Vernacular Archives of Senior Women as Foundation Stones of Global Critical Sociology

Abstract

This article contributes to global sociology through the construction of African sociological vocabularies from Nguni vernacular terms in Southern Africa. We employ Toyin Falola’s concept of “ritual archives” to argue that the social practices of senior African women teach and promote the sociological imagination for a global sociology that moves beyond the confines set by the “founding fathers” of the discipline. We combine the women’s status in the African household with the general understanding of being umntu (person), uluntu (society), and ubuntu (humanity) to argue for a locally informed linguistic terms and vocabularies that could promote inclusive global sociology.

Introduction and background

During the Winter July 2023, some of us attended an International Sociological Association (ISA) World Congress XX in Melbourne, Australia where sociologists from all over the world gathered for a meeting entitled “Resurgent Authoritarianism: Sociology of New Entanglements of Regions, Politics and Economies.” Even though Africa certainly has had more than its share of such authoritarian entanglements, the poor representation at the meeting of African sociologists and sociologists from Africa throughout was striking. Those who regularly attended ISA conferences noted informally that it is normal to have few African sociologists due to lack of resources, especially to cover intercontinental travel expenses. Yet, the annual ISA 2023 program was hybrid, allowing online participation. This change that eliminated travel costs did not, however, improve the number of African sociologists attending the annual meeting.

Yet, we surmised there was more to this poor attendance from Africa than material factors alone and critically analyzed the papers at the annual meeting in terms of how the participants constructed sociological knowledge at the annual ISA conference itself. Apart from the presence of a few regular African academics who attended, the ISA knowledge content was so skewed that African sociology was almost a footnote. There was very little of interest regarding the production and reproduction of sociological knowledge on Africa. When we analyzed the content of the conference, we were struck with the use of so many sociological concepts that are of Western European origin such as anomie (Durkheim), gemeinschaft, gesellschaft, verstehen (Weber), and bourgeoisie (Marx). Indeed, even the term sociology is derived from the combination of the Latin word socius (companion) with the Greek word logos (speech or reason), highlighting the field’s origin in Western European modernity predicated on reason alone in the public sphere, sweeping the rest into the private sphere. In addition, this modernity’s universal claims whitewashed the Western European origins of almost all the sociological terms we employ in our analyses.

In thinking what we could present from Africa at this conference in the future, we observed how the sociological concepts we employ today have been constructed: almost all are predicated on the history of Western experiences alone and tend to be exclusively of English, French, or German origin. As such, these concepts do not have much valence in explaining social phenomena outside of Western Europe. Turning to Africa, we argue here that we need to generate African sociological concepts based on local experiences that capture local social realities much better than the pre-existing European ones. There have indeed been many local and non-Western interventions that support such a change in orientation. Locally, one needs to mention, for instance, calls by the South African “#MustFallMovement” in 2015–2017 when university students’ demands of #FeeMustFall #DecolonisetheCurriuclum #RhodesMustFall #RhodesSoWhite #EndRapeCulture #Leister shocked the South African academy, reviving the calls to decolonize knowledge globally. The critical spotlight was placed on the Western-framed colonial, imperial and misogynistic cultures in the curriculum, in addition to stratified physical spaces and demographic representations. These growing number (of mainly) African students in the South African academy demanded to be a part of the local, national, and global history of the future; they wanted their social realities as they experienced them to be reflected in the curriculum and visual architecture of the university. Such African presence, we contend, can only be constructed first by critically evaluating the knowledge we produce to assess if it is indeed predicated on our own experiences and if it is not, to focus on the local knowledge we have inherited to eventually generate an inclusive globalized society of the future, one that also encompasses African concepts.

Such local calls were predicated on the works of non-Western sociologists like Syed Fareed Alatas (2003) who argued against the “division of academic labor” between the global North and Global South, advocating for the use of concepts and categories that might disturb this “intellectual imperialism” (Alatas, 2000) that positions the “Other” as the data collection site with the West serving as the main source of theorization. We join his call by turning in this article to African experiences across time and space with the intent to construct sociological knowledge relevant beyond Western Europe. This article comprises three parts. The first section discusses the state of African sociology today, while section ‘Assessing the state of African sociology today’ focuses specifically on the significance of the African vernacular in building an alternate approach to studying society sociologically based on the Nguni concepts (ubuntu, uluntu, and umntu) in the Southern African region. The last section emphasizes the role of social actors in producing this knowledge, by highlighting the foundational role of senior women in African sociology.

Assessing the state of African sociology today

In the 1940s, Anton Lambede called for the creation of an African Academy comprised African intelligentsia that can understand the history of especially the oppression and liberation of African people while also presenting new formulations and inspirations for the hope of the future generations; he stated specifically that “[w]e need African Artists to interpret the spirit of Africa” (quoted in Masilela, 2000; XI, emphasis ours). Such an attempt advances beyond the formal “empiricism” that tends to define most sociological analyses based on limited Western philosophical and “historical imagination.” Their new orientation would employ sociological concepts of the vernacular to overcome “the epistemic crisis” that has challenged the African sociological enterprise in especially trying to overcome the perpetual, immutable colonial and apartheid influences (Adesina, 2002). Bernard Magubane (2000) opens his work on crisis in African Sociology by arguing that

[n]o subtlety of perception is required to determine that contemporary African sociology is in crisis. Each year brings forth a crop of books and articles on various aspects of African social life. They are mere produce, not as food for fought [and] dry as dust. (p. 1)

We address Magubane’s apt criticism by defining African Sociology as the totality of works encompassing sociological thinking that are generated and informed by the African ontological standpoint. African societies possess unique values, beliefs, ways of knowing, and languages that are different yet shared across the continent. The values of ubuntu philosophy, the clan system-defining family; rich spiritual life encompassing the cyclical nature of time inclusive of ancestors; the value of rural ritual systems and the centrality of women in organizing African household, are features enough to start theorizing from the local realities.

Historically, African sociology has been criticized for its “colonial hangover,” clinging to Western European-American canonical foundations of knowledge without locally contextualizing such knowledge in relation to African experiences (Gukurume and Maringira, 2020; Magoqwana and Adesina, 2020; Mangcu, 2016; Nyoka, 2013; Onwuzuruigbo, 2018; Sitas, 2014). This criticism of the discipline follows the long tradition of African sociologists of the continent that have tried to situate the continent within the social sciences (Mafeje, 1976; Mama, 2003; Mamdani, 2016; Mazrui, 2003; Zeleza, 2003). In addition, this approach is complemented in South Africa with debates especially concerning the strength of Marxist influences on sociological theorization (Ally, 2005; Jubber, 1983).

The calls for sociology to engage the African context to answer the questions facing the continent have long set up the foundation on how to “decolonize” the discipline (Adesina, 2002, 2006; Akinwowo, 1991; Hendricks, 2006; Mafeje, 1984; Magubane, 1971). The vision and subsequent call by Toyin Falola (2017) in the Ritual Archives define this endeavor cogently by drawing attention to the significance of knowledge embedded in rituals as follows:

Conglomeration of words as well as texts, ideas, symbols, shrines, images, performances, and indeed objects that document as well as speak to those religious experiences and practices that allow us to understand the African world through various bodies of philosophies, literatures, languages, histories and much more. By implication, ritual archives are huge, unbounded in scale and scope, storing tremendous amounts of data on both natural and supernatural agents, ancestors, gods, good and bad witches, life, death, festivals, and the interactions between the spiritual realms and earth-based human beings. (p. 703, emphasis ours)

As Falola defines and demarcates African knowledge in this manner, he no longer relies on Western-centric knowledge to understand the African context. In formulating, his Africa-centric conception, he is not imprisoned by the public sphere that spatially dominates Western European modernity. Falola moves beyond the public university walls and formalized libraries and formally certified “intellectual bodies”; he instead focuses as his site of theorizing on what happens in everyday life and in the private, often expressed by the use of the vernacular. Indeed, Sitas (2014) notes that the “most creative sociological thinking on the [African] continent occurred outside the university system—a system that was and continues to be incapable of absorbing and refining such ideas” (p. 460). Interestingly enough, Falola (2017) returns to the university setting after he perfects his vernacular in order to reform the dated, Western-based knowledge production system of the university; and argues for the “understanding of indigenous thought systems, and the insertion of the entire range of vernacular epistemologies into formal educational institutions” (p. 713).

Falola’s new orientation is complemented by Karanja Kaita Carrol (2014: 258), Nigerian African sociologist Akinshola Akinwowo (1986, 1991, 1999), and Jimi O. Adesina (2002). While Carrol argues for an “African-centered sociology” with its epistemological and worldviews firmly grounded in the African world sense, Akinwowo challenges the employment of the “borrowed idiom” from the West in doing so. Devoting most of his academic life to trying to answer the question “What is the nature of African Sociology?” Akinwowo (1999: 12) focuses on criticizing the colonial and “civilizing mission” of the social sciences among African societies. He thus employs vernacular language to integrate sociological thought into African ordinary everyday life with the intent to “decolonize” the subject while also building an “indigenous sociology.” Jimi O. Adesina in turn finetunes Akinwowo’s attempt “to do sociology in the vernacular” by cautioning that if such an epistemological move stays at the level of language translation without decolonizing the existing power structure in sociology, it cannot help but place African sociology at the margins of the discipline. After all, nothing was “vernacular” about Western sociology based on the “particular context” of Western European thinkers. He states the following (Adesina, 2002):

Western Sociology is deeply idiographic in its discourse and origin. We cannot understand Weber or Durkheim outside of the particular social context in which they wrote. It is, therefore, important to recognize what is idiographic about Western Sociology – regardless of the attempts to substitute it for global sociology. Insights rooted in other idiographic contexts cannot therefore be defined as indigenous sociology or worst still “teaching sociology in the vernacular” which has been the dominant response to attempts to infuse non-western discourses in global Sociology. (p. 91)

Adesina’s emphasis on critically situating African sociology as part of global sociology is indeed the right trajectory to follow in making significant theoretical and conceptual contributions to the study of society. As such, we move away from the theoretical domination of a parochial sociology embedded in Western European modernity that has determined the concepts, values, and categories defining the so-called “mainstream” sociological enterprise even today. In doing so, we epistemologically leave the tightrope of Western-centric sociology behind to concentrate on the global knowledge production system, thereby reintegrating African sociology back in the field, theorizing and coding categories based on their own terms. Indeed, this is how the vernacular can be employed to transform and integrate African sociology to global sociology.

Vernacular use of uluntu as society and usapho as family

We employ the fundamental concepts of uluntu (society) and usapho (family) to demonstrate the possibilities of the vernacular when building an African sociological vocabulary that is informed by the local context but is nevertheless global in its interpretation. These two concepts are not “translated” from its Western depictions but excavated historically and philosophically to produce repertoires of meaning in African societies. The idea of society as uluntu is bound at three levels by the concept of the person (umntu), community (abantu) and humanity at large (ubuntu). This linkage of society with the person, community and humanity alleviates the recent debates in the field regarding the individualized conception of society (Dubet, 2021) in the 21st-century American and French sociology, but fails to theoretically move beyond the confines of the West in doing so thereby still remaining parochial in his re-conception of society. ¹ Gurminder Bhambra (2011) fares better with her conception of “connected histories” to decolonize and decenter the Western imagination of universal sociological theory that currently tends to “add and stir” different African different voices without any distinctive African flavor. Instead, Bhambra proposes to move beyond Europe to develop a truly global sociology interconnecting the world as it has always been.

Uluntu

This is the theoretical context within which we can employ the key tenets of the African sociological vocabularies such as uluntu to reimagine the future sociology, a return to society that is not centered on hegemonic patriarchal modern cultures but instead on a liberatory inclusive society that celebrates difference. ² The historicization of uluntu demonstrates one of the many different ways in which Africa can contribute to the global reimagination of society, especially taking into account its connections with nature and the environment. This is in counter-opposition to the Western conception that not only totally separates society from nature but approaches nature in an adversarial manner as a challenge to be conquered and subdued.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu (humanity) as a philosophy has been globally acknowledged as one of the distinctive African ways of being in the world. Rarely in African sociology have we employed such a concept in analyzing the production and reproduction of African societies in African terms. It is time to reinsert this concept into sociology to challenge and counter the still hegemonic, West-centric, individualizing, rights based, and neoliberal formulations of society. Ubuntu has rarely been used sociologically to understand the nature of society in Africa due to Western-centric biases that inherently assume that true “objective and scientific” analysis can only be conducted from the standpoint of the developed, advanced countries of the West. The continent’s “underdeveloped” status combined with its colonial legacy that undermines political leadership has positioned Africa as an impossible place to learn from. Yet, the use of the vernacular to unearth the hidden histories and philosophical understandings of particular societies is not unique to sociology, but has already been undertaken by many scholars in philosophy and anthropology. A case in point is the work of Ntongela Masilela on literature in South Africa, arguing that anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggles were first forged by oral and vernacular ways of being and knowing. Indeed, he further notes that “[t]he vernacular press was instrumental in facilitating the historical transition from tradition to modernity” (Masilela, 2009: 2). Masilela continues to point out that in the Nguni societies (Xhosa, Swazi, Zulu, Ndebele) of southern Africa as well as many other societies across the African continent, Ubuntu comprises a significant part of their belief system and epistemic formulations.

Uluntu as society beyond the individualization of life

This Nguni understanding of society derives from the “collectivity” of people (abantu). It is different from the concept of the nation (isizwe) that tends to be used interchangeably with uluntu in IsiXhosa.

Umntu (person)

The linkage of uluntu back to its Nguni meaning reveals that the survival and wellbeing of a person (umntu) is inherently interconnected to the collectivity abantu; the construction of personhood in turn depends on the acknowledgment of their being by the community. This is dramatically different from the Western depiction of society as just a “collection of individuals.” In the alternate African formulation, Tisani (2018) notes that “[a] person is an individual but is also her/his family or clan, forebears and living, as well as the living dead” (p. 25; emphases ours). Hence, the African uluntu expands spatially to cover the living family or clan, and temporally to include the living dead, namely our ancestors. African philosophers also agree that what makes one human extends beyond the “body” or the “mind” to include the “spiritual” way of being (Gyekye, 1978; Menkiti, 2004; Wiredu, 1992). The person’s duty and responsibility to the community is essential in defining what a being comprises beyond one’s life. Indeed, to be human today stretches beyond biological determinants to address social characteristics such as gender, race, sexuality, nationality, and class.

It is significant to note that across the African continent umntu is not gendered. Kiros (2020; 5) specifically notes that the nature of being was non-gendered from the time of Ancient Egyptians onward. The concept of being that derives from nun (a matter that traced the creation of being) was not included among many of the categories in use today; this concept was also based almost exclusively on physical traits of being. This historical tracing of Egyptian systems of being is significant since it also closely relates to other African ways of being, including ntu. The latter is produced as a mythical explanation of the evolution of the “Bantu” world, as descendants of Ntu negotiate concepts of being from other parts of West Africa. As Amadiume argues (2006),

. . . both Igbo and Hausa languages and also Yoruba, in contrast to the English use of Man to speak for all, use the non-gendered collective terms (Nmadu, person and Ndi-Nmadu, people in Igbo; Mutum, person and Mutane, people in Hausa; Enyan, person in Yoruba) that support our aspiration to inclusive human dignity, equality and social justice. (p. 7; emphasis ours)

This non-gendered being (umntu) is part of community of persons (abantu). The latter meanings have been spoilt by the missionary and anthropological explanations of bantu, especially in trying to trace the linguistic origins of the African people below the Republic of Congo (former Zaire). Hence, in South African political landscape, the word (bantu) is full of derogatory meanings such as “natives” or “tribal people” with their “peculiar” ways of being. ³

For instance, when one asks, “who are you?” (ungubani) in Nguni cultures, this is not a simple question of asking your name. It instead means “who are your people?” “where do you come from (origins)” or “where is your umbilical cord buried?” The last question establishes a symbolic tie between the person and their birthplace since the umbilical cord is buried at the location where the baby is born. It is precisely these different social formations bound in place and time that produce the sociological imagination which then links us globally; the denial of these interconnected meanings threatens the very existence of the discipline of sociology. Likewise, when one answers the question of “who am I?” (ndingubani—singular), this conjoins the community with the people who have died before one’s existence. This means that you become a part of the collective that is bound up in an individual. For instance, upon her visit to Ghana as an African American researcher, Cynthia B. Dillard learns about this question from an elderly woman trader in the streets of West Africa, and it haunts her to trace back her ancestry. She later notes that (Dillard, 2012) “[t]his is fundamental to African cosmology, one that is based on understanding one’s place, space and purpose in time through the recognition of common or communal destiny: I am because we are” (p. 8). The latter concept of ubuntu refers to the most famous African value system/philosophy/worldview that many are familiar with, one that is also directly linked to the concept of uluntu (the people/society).

The links between uluntu (society), ubuntu (humanity), and isintu (ways of being) are fundamental in challenging the growing individualizing notions of society as a mere collective of “individual identities” after the Western European mode. Uluntu is made up of abantu (people/persons) that are interconnected through different relational and sometimes complementary co-existence. If one must understand society as the collective community beyond the “self” and “other” as Nyerere once noted (Nyerere, 1987: 10), then we need to “draw from its traditional heritage the recognition of ‘society’ as an extension of the basic family within the limits of the tribe, nor, indeed, of the nation.”

Isintu (tradition/custom or a humane way of being)

Isintu is a way of conducting oneself in relation to others and their surroundings. The mention of ngesintu implies that there is a certain expected way of being and relating to others. The use instead of umntu akanabuntu reveals that the person does not have deep empathy or compassion toward others. In short, while ubuntu and umntu can mean different things depending on the particular context, they still underscore the humane, relational orientation that shapes social interactions. This approach is very different from the English utterance “So and so is an Animal” in referring to an unpleasant behavior or cruelty; in this way of existence, the community actually grants “personhood” to the individual (Menkiti, 2004). That is why it was common in South Africa during the apartheid struggle to hear songs that referred to umlungu (White European) literally as “no person” (ayingomntu lamlungu). Other African people also employ such references to whiteness by stating ayingomntu lamntu, that (the person is no human). This level of taking and granting personhood is intertwined with an ontological recognition that defines and thereby unites Africans across the globe. For example, the expectation to greet and acknowledge someone’s presence/existence is taken for granted in many parts of the world. Indeed, throughout our travels on different continents, we have found that African people will look at each other and nod even if they do not know one another. This can be interpreted as indicating belonging to common motherhood in Africa (motherland) that is shared across different parts of the world.

Isintu is not limited to person-to-person relations, however. It also defines our relationship with the environment. Most African clan names within the Nguni communities are connected to the animal kingdom through their ancestors. For instance, those who are called ooNdlovu (Elephant Clan) would treat elephants as totems, admiring them. Likewise, the oJola (clan) would not even consider killing a particular kind of snake because the snake is treated as a family member. We can list almost all the clan identities in different Nguni customs that carefully trace their lineage with and links to the animal kingdom, which is ironic since most Westerners think that African people do not care about either the environment or climate change when these are actually embedded within their lives.

The holistic approach of African cosmologies is indeed directly tied to a healthy environment and a balanced conduct of rituals that bring good fortune and good health to the living. As such, it is the perfect panacea in the contemporary search for “return of society,” enabling us to draw upon such a complex but interconnected formulation that has existed for thousands of years. Since “biology” does not determine your positionality in the family or society in Africa, considering African family systems as part of the broader society eliminates the use of terms like “orphan” or “illegitimate children,” terms that do not exist in many African vocabularies. This new orientation derives from how the origins of the family are initially defined – family responsibility and status in Africa is constructed outside blood or biology. Uluntu can thus be employed to negotiate similarities and differences.

Uluntu as the articulation of difference and belonging in society

Negotiating difference and belonging generates one of the biggest challenges in the 21st century as people often reduce it to mere “identity politics.” We think it is in this context that African sociology can help us by sharing the different experiences of people rather than seeking to build “one world” without differences; African societies tend to embrace, legitimize, and humanize those who are different. For instance, when one employs the example of iveza ndlebe (the “so-called illegitimate child”) or isizana nanina (the child conceived by the mother before the marriage and introduced as part of the new family), these two forms of defining children in the African household stretch the umbilical cord to belong to not only the grandmother (uMakhulu) but also to the mother since the child takes on the mother’s last name. As such, the African sense of belonging (clan name) and ritual identities come from the side of the mother, forming a matrilineal system. Still, there are ritual performances to introduce (ukwaziswa) the child to the father’s house if the need arises, such as in the case of sickness and ill health. ⁴

In Africa, twin children can be of different genders, but they are treated the same even during the rites of passage for the boy child. This follows the logic of “sameness in difference,” but by privileging function in doing so. Twins are regarded as the same person but different; this does not mean, however, that they are rank ordered, with one less than or inferior to the other. This is exactly why the second female twin would go through the whole process of ukwaluka (Xhosa male initiation) and conduct the process of ukulingiswa (the twin sister also performs without the actual circumcision) as part of ukukhapha (to accompany/bring about) the peer and sibling ritually. This ritual thus recognizes the twins as one yet different; it also implies that the concepts of belonging and difference are not necessarily based on physical characteristics or qualities alone as they often are in the West.

Such difference is embraced and respected in African society, thereby positively contributing to the community at large on one hand and avoiding the “wrath of ancestors” ⁵ on the other hand. When a child is born into the mothers’ house, it means there are limitations of duty and function as intlabi (the one who carries the spear in the father’s house) unless the ritual of introductions (ukwazisa) and welcome (ukwamkelwa) are performed for the men carrying the spear for the fathers’ ancestors to acknowledge him. This means that the mother’s child can be the one who carries the spear to the father’s house (intlabi) in the mother’s home rather than at the home of the father. Hence, there are ways to ensure that the person feels at home and welcome by giving them limited responsibilities even when they do not belong to the family. As such, uluntu enables a society to be both, that is, different with belonging rather than fearing difference.

A global sociology grounded in the African world view and its conceptual frame can be easily actualized because the concept of uluntu is based on the perception of the nature of reality/being as “interconnected, interrelated and interdependent” (Carrol, 2014: 259). Oyewumi (1997) argues in addition that this “world sense” of the African people is grounded on a “cyclical nature of time” (Tisani, 2018) as opposed to the Western linear understanding of time and relations. Indeed, in Africa, life does not begin at birth, and death is not the end of life; African people also believe in the existence of the living dead (ancestors) and especially in their ability to affect the health and wealth of the community. This is why many Indigenous people of Africa share beliefs about life being more than the physical existence of the body (Gyekye, 1992); they also connect to the spirit and isithunzi (the shadow) that defines the soul. Reframing global sociology along the epistemic and ontological foundations of African people would necessitate the articulation of African conceptual and philosophical frameworks that can better engage the intellectual contributions of Africa to the world. In arguing for African sociological knowledge frameworks, we agree with Van Den Berghe (1964) who stated that

I do not imply that Africa, because of its idiosyncrasies, requires the development of a special brand of sociology. Rather like, Balandier, Gluckman, Mitchell, Kuper, Godfrey and Monica Wilson and others, I should like to suggest that African societies, through their pluralism and rapid rate of change, challenge the much of conventional [Western-centric] structural and functional anthropology and sociology, and call for a more adequate approach. (p. 11)

There is thus the need to develop sociological concepts based on African values, beliefs, and languages. After all, in asking bigger questions such as “what holds the society together,” we had to study the impact of industrialization and French Revolution in European societies through the aid of some German and Euro-American sociological concepts that ended up defining some of the “universal” systemic thinking we employ in sociology today. This is why Masilela (2009) notes that “[t]he importance of intellectual integrity in reconstructing African cultural history cannot possibly be overemphasized in the context of the present profound crisis of Africa in relation to modernity” (p. 1). Indeed, the act ought not be one of direct translation from Western modernity into the African context or the mere insertion of the African ways of being as empirical data for the West to process. Instead, what is needed is the development from African philosophy of conceptual tools that engage and complement the defining conceptual values of the discipline.

As linked to uluntu, ubuntu is one of the most recognized tools by African philosophers in “decolonizing and re-centering” (Tamale, 2020: 225) consciousness beyond idealizing the romanticization of the African pre-colonial past. African sociological enterprise ought to center the community beyond the individualization that tends to define the neoliberal patriarchal systems today. The search and calls for a distinctive sociology of African societies were first heard from the anti-apartheid liberation fighter, a Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) leader Robert Sobukwe in the University of Fort Hare also in the 1940s. The call by Black South African sociologist Xolela Mangcu (2016: 55) is pertinent in this context:

It has always been my feeling that if it is the intention of the Trustees of this College to make it an African college or university, as I have been informed it is, then the Department of African Studies must be more highly and more rapidly developed. Fort Hare must become the center of African studies to which students in African studies must come from all over Africa. We should also have a department of economics and a department of sociology. A nation to be a nation needs specialists in these things. (Quoting Sobukwe from Mangcu, (2016: 55))

This was a call that was placed due to the dominant trend in African sociology of relying entirely on white Westerners to define and explain their own African societies. Mangcu (2016) noted, for instance, that(p. 55)

Historically, South African sociology has been a conversation among White academics about how to analyze Black society. From its origins in Afrikaans universities as part and parcel of the system of colonial and apartheid domination, to its role in generating critiques of that system through class theory, and the less influential Weberian and liberal schools, the discipline never had Black thinkers as its central sources.

The deep intellectual traditions based on the concept of common personhood among the African people need to form the foundations of African sociological thought that will in turn employ indigenous languages to define the terms of interconnectedness and distinction. The principle of writing about African futures necessitate not only the infusion of religious and intellectual practices, but also the use of “historical imagination” (Masilela, 2000: xvii); indeed, this theme runs through the thoughts of many African leaders who have later contributed to liberation movements across the continent. A case in point is Tiyo Soga who is considered the father of African nationalism in South Africa (Mangcu, 2016; Masilela, 2000); he was already centering the vernacular in his articulation of the making of African society, one that included the Black world globally. As Masilela described (2009),

In his writings, written in both Xhosa and English, Tiyo Soga left a rich cultural legacy to future generations of Xhosa intellectuals as to what their historical vision should be in their preoccupation with the making of African modernities. It needs to be emphasized that it was this extraordinary intellectual, the first one in South Africa perhaps in all of Africa, to postulate the historical idea that the making of African modernities must be linked to the making of black modernities in the African diaspora. (p. 3)

We need to follow on the path set by Soga that does not translate and mimic the ideas, norms, values, and behavior of the West, but instead draws upon the Indigenous richness of African lives and conceptions. Ubuntu and uluntu (society) as connected to abantu (people) can help us recenter African sociologies back to the African world sense and ontologies. These values shared by many African societies in the continent are important in designing vocabularies despite the linguistic differences. In reference to Ubuntu as a continental experience and African philosophy, Mutumbo Nkulu-N’Sengha (2001) states it well as quoted in full by Tamale (2020) below:

Interdependence and compassion are the bedrock of which communities are built. The Baganda of Uganda refer to it as Obuntu bulamu, the Baluba of Central Africa as Bumuntu, the Shona of Zimbabwe as Hunhu, the Yoruba of Nigeria as Iwapele, and, in Tanzania it is embodied in the Kiswahili term Ujamaa. (p. 223)

The importance of taking into account relationships and community to define the person (umntu) ought to be central in not only how we study the sociology of African societies, but also all societies across the globe that also embed the person within the larger spatial and historical context.

Matrilineal origins of uluntu as society and usapho as family

In basing the foundation of global sociology on the African vernacular, one significant difference from Western European modernity concerns its origins. We explore how the origins of the African concepts of uluntu (society) and usapho (family) are not patrilineal as they are in the West, but rather matrilineal, a conceptualization that dramatically alters the modern Western gendered order of things where women are still subservient to men in terms of power sharing. Hence, we argue that the first challenge for African Sociology is to start imagining a sociology that reanalyzes the positionality of women within the sociological canon. Doing so would start to center the social realities and histories of many African societies from the standpoint of women, thereby countering the universalized narratives that solely stereotype African women, portraying them only in relation to oppressive religious extremism and/or “conservative” traditional customs. Such consistent conceptual violence imposed on African women necessitates a revisit of the matriarchal histories of African societies to properly counter the hegemony of the “heteronormative [post-colonial] state” that seeks to marginalize women and female bodies globally (Alexander, 2005). Sylvia Tamale (2020: 229), in particular, shares the optimism of the concept of ubuntu for gender justice when she notes that “the core values of communitarianism, humanness and egalitarianism enshrined in ubuntu can be strategically deployed operationalize gender justice, albeit after a careful interrogation and historicization of the concept itself.”

Rather than uncritically accepting the hegemonic Western conceptions to explain the location of women in African societies, West African gender scholars have all theorized from the ground up through their “umbilical cord” (Mkhize and Ntsekhe, 2023). This challenge to the biologically centered conception of uluntu and usapho is based on Oyeronke Oyewumi’s (1997) conception of the “bio-logic(al)” to challenge the body-centered theorization that has dominated the social sciences while reducing everyone else in the world to be the “other.” Oyewumi (1997) further argues that “ . . . prior to the infusion of Western notions into Yoruba culture, the body was not the basis of social roles, inclusions, or exclusions; it was not the foundation of social thought and identity” (p. ix). We propose to focus on African matrifocal social realities to reimagine the sociological contributions from Africa, concentrating on women and their contributions in the African households and the meanings of society. Both Diop (1991) and Amadiume’s (1987) detailed ethnographic and archival works about African societies also highlight the matriarchal foundations of African societies. This astute observation was also confirmed by Oyewumi (1997) in her thick ethnographic work on Oy-Yoruba cultures. This is why Nkiru Nzegwu (2006) warns against “placing the father at the center of the family systems” in studying non-Western societies as she points out the conceptual and epistemic biases of social scientists that replicate the European colonial family models.

Questioning the basic analytical foundations of the gender category in Western cultures, Oyewumi studied the Yoruba society in Nigeria to conclude that “body reasoning” was not central to how this society was organized. Since social status and roles were not stratified by gender, the idea of powerless and oppressed African women was merely a Western invention that did not exist epistemologically. Yet these categories and “world views” were accepted as part of the indigenous Yoruba cultures by those Western missionaries and educators who benefited from the gendering of that society through education and religion. When Oyewumi instead conducted her long ethnographic study as part of the community, she tapped into the African oral traditions of knowledge, language, and archived material to conclude that seniority and age were the main tools of social organization in this society beyond gender; many women could access power and status based on their seniority and age. Research on the Igbo cultures in East Nigerian Societies by both Nkiru Nzegwu (2006) and Ifi Amadiume (1987, 1997) also produced similar results. All these thick theoretical and ethnographic works in West Africa have demonstrated the link between the age, seniority, and different identities of women in the African household as a distinctive factor in theorizing beyond “my father’s house.” They instead call for dual systems of power where both males and females understand their power and responsibility based on their age, seniority, and role in the household. This is why Amadiume (1987) challenges the proclamation that patriarchy is a part and parcel of the foundation of all African societies. Later, three African feminist scholars from Southern Africa (Magadla et al., 2021) noted similar patterns regarding how women negotiated and occupied power in Southern Africa. They specifically employed the famous Mandela family relations and especially the contestations of “seniority” between Mandla Mandela (grandson) and Makaziwe Mandela (the eldest daughter from the first wife) to argue that gender fluidity and access to power by African women was never based on their gender or marital status, but rather on the possession of the virtue of being “intombi” (directly translated as first daughter—umafungwashe).

Conceptualizing African sociology through the “female center” and the use of vernacular terms and duties (such as umafungwashe—first daughter or intombi—daughter/girl/unmarried woman) challenges the Western-centric “nuclear” or “biological” type of family that keeps the power with the “male” head alone. Hence, the African sociological enterprise could contribute to global sociology through the emphasis on the fluidity of access to power irrespective of the body occupying the position. Inkulu (first born male) and umafungwashe (first born daughter) both possess the complementarity of power relations depending on the duty and responsibility in the ritual.

An emphasis away from the biology-centered logic of family or what Nkiru Nzegwu (2006) calls “consanguineal family relations” tied to kin and lineage relations is central in defining Africa-centered sociology as this type of family structure appears in almost all African societies. This statement is also confirmed by Siqwana-Ndulo (1998) when she says, “in African society generally, and among the Xhosa in particular, ‘family’ refers to a much wider circle of people.” The ideas that blood does not define family relations and that biology does not determine one’s status as a family member vibrate almost throughout all African societies across the globe. This idea of family has been employed to explain “backward” and “traditional” African values that inadvertently “progress” toward the “nuclear” family because of economic transformation. Adesina (2010: 4) notes similar assertions to this type of family outside African context by noting that “[m]uch of the strong mother-centric families that other western anthropologists observed in the Caribbean was explained by the high incident of ‘illegitimacy’ and ‘unstable family structure.’ This was also the case in approaching African American family structures who were all depicted as being “caught in a ‘tangle of pathology’” leading eventually to their “failure” to adapt to American society. The mother-headed households were viewed as central to the “disorganization” of the family (Moynihan 1965 as quoted in Siqwana-Ndulo, 1998: 409).

Even though socio-economic changes have influenced the shape and size of the typical African family structures and households, most of the principles and values relating to kin and lineage relations still endure to this day. The centralization of the ideas of duty and responsibility in the African household beyond gender allows scholars to approach the female/male access to authority and power differently. Indeed, this is the exact location where the social reproduction of African society occurs. After all, the collapse of African economies is mostly shielded by African household literally held together by females. Such female roles and responsibilities in the African family not only point to the matriarchal foundations of African society, but Diop’s (1991) philosophy of the matriarchal heritage of African systems specifically addresses the power and focus of the female head. For instance, Nguni and Sotho communities have four important roles women occupy that wield much power, including elderly women (Oomakhulu), uDabawo (paternal aunt), (amadikazi/iintombi) unmarried women/liberated women, and umafungwashe (the eldest daughter). In this analysis of family relations in terms of power and responsibilities defining the African family, we intentionally omitted the roles of umfazi (wives), umhlolokazi (widow), makoti (the young bride), since these relations tend to attach themselves to man–woman relations alone whereby their power can be compromised because of their being “perpetual” outsiders regardless of the age of the woman.

Nkiru Nzegwu (2006) has also argued against the loss of power and resources by senior daughters in African societies. She notes that beyond education and religion, “gender inequality began to work through the judicial and legal system to institutionalize the right of Igbo men to appropriate and control the family’s economic resources to exclude female relatives.” Sesanti (2009: 213) also analyzed the role of senior women in African cultures as the most important role in mitigating the patriarchal order advocated through colonialism. He notes that among the Venda, Tsonga, and Xhosa people, the senior woman in Xhosa called umafungwashe (first born daughter)—and Makhadzi in Venda and rakgadi (in SeSotho/Pedi/SeStwana cultures)—plays a major role in the sacred rituals of these communities as only they can directly communicate with ancestors. Recovering their Indigenous status will thus not only give women political agency, but also access to land and lineage rights, as Amadiume (1987) has detailed in the case of Nnobi society. The role of senior women in African societies is to neutralize male dominance, thereby providing a gendered balance on how we conduct and behave in our societies. By identifying “the one we take an oath by” (direct meaning of umafungwashe), we have yet to engage on the power and multiple identities that women have based on “relational” realities rather than to focus solely on the “body” that is often defined through the(lack of) power in Western thinking.

In shaping and conceptualizing African sociological contributions globally, we suggest that Nkiru Nzegwu’s (2019) concept of “Sankofering” ⁶ helps us in generating a historically specific and cultural theorization that produces concepts and categorizations venturing beyond the mere act of “borrowing” from the West. Similarly, adding onto Falola’s concept of the ritual archive, Xolela Mangcu (2016: 53) has called for African historical consciousness and cultural identity as the basis of regeneration of society. He quotes Soga (1862: 9–11) as follows:

Our veterans of the Xhosa and Embo people must disgorge all they know. Everything must be imparted to the nation as a whole. Fables must be retold; what was history or legend should be recounted . . . Whatever was seen or done under the requirements of custom should be brought to light and placed on the national table to be sifted for preservation. Were there not several tribes before? What is the record of their history and customs, good or bad? Had we no chiefs in the days gone by? Where are the anecdotes of their periods? Were these things buried with them in their graves? Is there no one to unearth these things from the graves? Were there no national poets in the days of yore? Whose praises did they sing? Is there no one to emulate this eloquence? In the olden days, did not some people bewitch others? What were the names of the men of magic? Is it not rumored that some were tortured severely and cruelly? Are there no people who have an idea of matters of this nature which happened under the cloak of custom? Are there no battles which were fought and who were the heroes? What feathers were worn by the royal regiments? We should revive and bring to light all this great wealth of information. Let us bring to life our ancestors: Ngconde, Togu, Tshiwo, Phalo, Rharhabe, Mlawu, Ngqika, Ndlambe. Let us resurrect our ancestral forebears who bequeathed to us a rich heritage. All anecdotes connected with the life of the nation should be brought to this big corn pit, our national newspaper, Indaba.

Just like Tiyo Soga noted earlier, this ritual archive we propose can be situated in the bodies of our grandmothers (OoMakhulu) or on senior women who are sources of Indigenous knowledge (Magoqwana, 2018). Elderly women in African societies who have always been respected as sacred have also assumed the wisdom of survival. It is the elderly women who are currently helping the unemployed young people across the continent and specifically in South Africa through their old age pensions. Even though the capitalist economy merely identifies their bodies as “unproductive,” these bodies have sustained many homes in rural South Africa sheltering young children out of poverty. It is indeed the ooMakhulu (plural for uMakhulu) that first teach children and others around them history lessons and the sociological imagination and ubuntu through storytelling, rhymes, songs, and drama. Through these folktales, ooMakhulu manage to transfer the ancient wisdom and imagination of the society to the young. And this is why sociological vocabularies for many African children can never be solely located within university libraries since such knowledge is often “embodied.” While seniority as noted by Oyewumi (1997) gives elderly women the status and voice that sometimes manage to neutralize the so-called masculine power, the same women can also turn into enforcers of patriarchal values through the concept of ukuhlonipha (respectability) as they often socialize with and sometimes chastise young women in relation to their position in marital homes (Rudwick and Posel, 2015). Still, elderly women’s role and status in Africa in closing the generational gaps of knowledge makes them, we would argue, “vernacular archives” in and of themselves.

Conclusion

Mangcu (2016), Nzegwu (2019) and Falola (2017) all seem to agree on the centralization of the historically and culturally conscious ways of knowing to negotiate the accepted and normalized “epistemological hierarchies” of knowledge globally. We argue that to decolonize sociology in Africa with a distinctive flavor that is developed beyond imitation and regurgitation, we may need to “return to the source” as Cabral once noted, but to do so without romanticizing Africa as the West does, but instead through creatively and critically reviewing its ways of being and knowing that have been sustained in spite of being ravaged by all forms of domination and colonialism. When African sociologists join others on the global stage, they will then possess “ontological security” to contribute to what (Falola, 2017) terms “pluriversalism” to replace the western “universalism” that systematically undermines any knowledge formation occurring outside the West.

We combined the women’s status in the African household with the general understanding of being umntu (non-gendered notion of being a person) and uluntu (society) to argue for establishing sociological vocabularies that transcend beyond what the “fathers” of the discipline have developed; we did so by taking into account how power and difference was formulated and accessible to women in Africa beyond the growing Western-hued “invention of tradition” that seeks to penalize women today by severely limiting their agency. These terms and concepts based on the nature and histories of African family systems enable us to move beyond the challenge regarding the origins of the discipline, and to focus instead on building a language and vocabulary that can successfully counter the violence in these societies predicated on the deliberate misinterpretation of history that oppresses Africa globally. In countering the biological determinism persistent in sexuality and gender studies today, the particular usage of pronouns in African histories can help us embrace a gender fluidity that trespasses the fear of being “different.” After all, it is well recorded that many African cultures have gender fluid pronouns that emanate power regardless of the gender. As Ifi Amadiume (2006) has demonstrated, for instance, different cultures can use the same pronouns for males and females without any language restrictions or attached stigma. ⁷

Finally, we hope to resuscitate and encourage us to “remember what we have forgotten” as African sociologists in understanding the distinctive ways of knowing and being in Africa. Such a move would indeed be a form of decolonization as Dillard contends. ⁸ We think that we can confront the “intellectualist imperialism” articulated by Alatas that still defines sociological thought in Africa and we can do so by excavating familiar African concepts and philosophies that decenter the influence of Western European modernity while building a more inclusive global sociology.