In an attempt to understand the meaning of 'African Cosmology' and its constituent elements, it would be worthwhile to first explore the concept 'cosmology'. Etymologically, it is from the Greek words: cosmos and Logos, meaning 'universe' and 'science' respectively. Put together, it is the 'science of the universe'. Thus, in this paper, cosmos and universe will be used interchangeably, and by universe it is meant worldview. For a further and profound enquiry as to the meaning of worldview, there is a copious cache of literature available in this regard. One needs to glance at the works of eminent scholars like Wambutda (1986), Ejizu (1986), Achebe (1986), Onuoha (1987), Metuh (1987), Ubesie (2004), Madubuko (2004), Madu (2004), Ezenweke and Kanu (2012). Very significant to their analysis, is an underlining principle that speaks of cosmologies as basically religious, which gives a sense of purpose and direction to the lives of people and enables them to act purposefully and exercise a measure of control over their environment. It is in this regard that Metuh (1987) maintains that cosmology answers fundamental questions about the place and relationship of man with the universe. This cannot be done outside the ambience of supernatural power or powers and thus religion.

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The Dimensions of African Cosmology

Recent work on oral narrative has emphasized differences in textual and performative approaches, which in turn has tended to widen the distinction between two fundamental categories of anthropological thought: structure and process. This paper argues that, at least for the interpretation of South American myth, an integrated approach is essential. After reviewing the epistemological basis of current problems in myth studies, the paper attempts a structural analysis of myths with the theme of a metamorphic conjugal union between human and nonhuman. Processual considerations are introduced in the form of syncretic myth, and the argument is advanced that there exist syncretic transformations of a structural nature. Identifying these provides the beginnings of a bridge between structure and process, and leads to an examination of the performative context of the subject myth. Other narrative genres, dealing with explicitly ethnic concepts, are implicated in the processual sequence of the telling and interpretation of the tale. The attempted synthesis of structure and process in narrative analysis leads to an engagement with two difficult problems: the relationship between ethnicity and kinship; and the transition from myth to history. [myth, structure, process, ethnicity, kinship]

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.1977.79.4.02a00050

Structure and Process in the Interpretation of South American Myth: The Arawak Dog Spirit People

Recent work on cognitive domains has stressed the themes of intracultural variability, “larger cultural informational systems,” the relationships between cognition and behavioral performance, and diachronic change in cognitive organization. These themes are taken up in an analysis of the domain of ethnic identities (“tribes”) among an urban Ghanaian population. It is shown that individual outlooks vary considerably; that few of the many ethnic terms have high salience; that alternative hierarchical and nonhierarchical modes of organization of the domain coexist; that a widely shared implicit structure of language groupings underlies surface diversity; that the domain “tribes” embraces a world-wide array of ethnic identities; that cognitive salience and structure correspond closely, but not perfectly, with behavioral experience; and that change in cognitive organization may arise both “on the ground” through changing patterns of interethnic relations, and “from above” in state-sponsored modes of organization of the ethnic domain. Twelve dimensions of cognitive variability that arise in the analysis are recapitulated in conclusion.

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/ae.1977.4.4.02a00020

cognitive maps of the ethnic domain in urban Ghana: reflections on variability and change

My thesis works as an experiment, or rather a series of experiments, in methods of thinking about historical material. These methods come from anthropology and engage with myths and ritual, with the concept of “complementary others”, and the concept of “schismogenesis" as it has been developed by Gregory Bateson and advanced further by Marshall Sahlins. My overall goal is not to re-describe a well-researched historical event, but to explore how different ways of analysis, using different analytical frameworks, could lead to valuable explanations of the same political-cum-cultural event.
The phenomenon I engage with is the last Oecumenical Council, a major religious event in the history of Councils within already schismatic societies. For this reason, I treat this Council in particular, as a ritual, unprecedented in scale and ambiguous in its inception. I am examining the structure and the return of this Event in History, and the controversies and tensions in the diachrony of East and West. I do this not only through the notion of schismo-genesis and ritual, but specifically the notion of sacrifice as developed by Maurice Bloch, in which the journey from Constantinople to Italy becomes a historical metaphor of mythical realities, regarding the Emperor John VIII Palaiologos. And finally, I explore the significance of Bessarion and complementary others within the notion of transformation and alterity.
What I establish through discussions of the historical material, which span eleven centuries of history, is first of all, that there is no event without a system; that means the journey can acquire the form of the ritual. I argue that the relation between the myth and the idea of unity is dialectical in nature; the Event of a Union, which could bring peace in the one Church of Christ, from this moment of realisation becomes a fabrication, a mystery to the witnesses, and all the other myths that will be developed on the way become even more imperative and melancholic, because they seek to express a negative and unavoidable truth. The Event doesn’t portray reality any more, it exists despite it and becomes an extreme position, almost like a dream, and it justifies the vision one wished to be possible, only to show that it is untenable: the “what if it could be”; the possibility of all parts being aspirations to the whole, oecumenicity as a goal rather than unity. Overall, this thesis is about the presence of the past in the present, in relevance to the future.

The politics of religious experience in Fifteenth-Century Europe through an East-West encounter: a re-interpretation

The research for this paper was conducted in the Department of Ayacucho during 1975 and 1976 under the sponsorship of The National Institute of Mental Health grant number MH26118-02 and a grant from the Social Science Research Council. Billie Jean Isbell is responsible for the theoretical formulations in the paper, which she wrote in English. Fredy Amilcar Roncalla Fernandez, the coauthor, collected nearly all of the data. He is a native speaker of Quechua and without his native intuitions and careful translations, this paper would not have been written.

Pierre Maranda

Papers

Structuralism in Cultural Anthropology