Definitions
of Conceptual Terms
for discussing African-American music
The definitions below have been compiled from various dictionaries and rewritten by Dr. Karlton E. Hester for use in the context of discussing Global African music and culture.
(1)
Power
Power is the ability to define reality and have other people respond to your definition as if it were their own.
Africanity / Afrocentricity
Afrocentricity is the intellectual and philosophical foundation used to develop the political, scientific and moral criterion for authenticating the reality of African family processes. It is the utilization of the African experience as the core paradigm for human liberation and higher level human functioning.
Paradigm
A scientific paradigm serves as the formalized framework which guides the assessment and evaluation of reality. The paradigm is, therefore, a perceptual, cognitive and achievement representing the organizational process for understanding. It is the singular screen through which all understanding is filtered.
(2)
Ontology
Ontology is a component of the cultural factor level which pertains to a people's assumptions of beliefs about the nature of existence or essence of being.
Transubstantiation
Transubstantiation is a process whereby the "cultural substance" of one group of people is utilized to give "meaning" to the cultural manifestation of another group of people.
Transubstantive Errors
Transubstantive errors are literally "mistakes of meaning". They occur when the cultural manifestations meaning, is different. The knower of one culture will attribute meaning, for instance, to behaviors of a member of another culture utilizing his/her own cultural substance. To the extent that the cultural substance of the two groups differs, the knower will erroneously interpret the behavior in terms of his/her own perspective and thereby commit a transubstative error.
Conceptual Incarceration
Conceptual incarceration is the highest or most sophisticated level of scientific colonialism. It is the process whereby alien ideas or concepts are utilized to explain and/or understand the reality of a particular people. The utilization of alien concepts results in the knower being limited in what he can know about the phenomenon under study.
(3)
Scientific Colonialism
Scientific colonialism is a term utilized to connote that science as a process in human relations qualifies in its treatment of African and African-American phenomena as a colonial exploitative system. Any system of relationships which are characterized by: (1) removal of wealth; (2) claim to the right to access; and (3) an external power base, qualifies as a colonial relationship. When the scientific process satisfies these three conditions it is scientific colonialism. Under the process of scientific colonialism, knowledge and information are rigidly controlled by the methodology or mechanisms of destruction, distortions, fabrications, and suppression.
Science
Science is thought to be a systematic, regulated process for acquiring substantiated and valid information which is generally characterized by (1) a method for organizing and explaining reality; (2) a set of procedures for amplifying and specifying the common sense of a people; and (3) the development of models whereby one reconstructs reality.
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a guess about the "functional relationship" between an antecedent (cause) condition and a consequent (effect) condition which can be tested by observation and/or experimentation.
(4)
Scientific Fact
A scientific fact is nothing more than an agreed upon observation.
Theory
A theory is a statement or set of statements that relate functionally at least two sets of laws. Essentially a theory differs from a law only in its scope and its generality. Simplistically, a theory is a symbolic representation of a people's practice.
World-view
A people's world-view is their picture of the way things in sheer actuality are, their concept of nature, of self, of society. It contains their most comprehensive ideas of order.
(5)
Epistemology
In the philosophy of science, epistemology is a focus which pertains to the study of the nature and grounds of knowledge or knowing and what is considered real especially with reference to its limits and validity.
Axiology
A component of the cultural factor level which pertains to a people's assumptions of beliefs about the primary characteristics of universal relationships.
Constructionist Response
The constructionist response is an intellectual response which attempts to create from the cultural prerequisites of African people a basic and authentic body of information and ideas.
(6)
Ethos
A peoples' ethos is the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mode. It emerges as a set of guiding principles which define the underlying attitude they have towards themselves and their world.
Ideographic
Ideographic studies aim to understand the unique and the non-recurrent.
Cosmology
Cosmology is a component of the cultural factor which pertains to a people's assumptions or beliefs about the origin and the structure of reality (universe).
Philosophy
The original synthesis of knowledge;
the attitude to the world and to life's problems; the elaboration, often implicit
and more confusedly felt than clearly expressed, of a cosmology.
Living Encyclopedia
of Global African Music
Received Spring 2001
Posted 10/18/02