Afrocentric School - Essay Example

Among the most influential dis communities is the Afrocentric School that tends to focus more on the glorious origins of the black race, or peoples of African descent. This community of scholars considers ancient activities to be its central focus, and it assumes people act by relating to a specific collective cultural activity and not a response to internal elements or environmental stimuli. The theories that are discussed in this community integrate individual emotion, motivation and agency to the cultural activity an individual is involved. Cultural activities are important in the theories that they discuss for framing human thinking and social activities, and to inquire on how the member of the community will be able to develop the theory in practice (Swales et al. 5). To be precise, the theories that are discussed have a main focus on how the history present in individuals is able to take shape and various practices that are interpreted on cultural activities. These tend to develop when individuals in the community, in behavior of life, form personal identities in relation to the person’s important roles and positions. A person’s historical formation on the various environmental activities makes environmental identity become a construct of the person which is developed and used in organizing the person emotionally and the actions to take. Personal identities in this community are conceptualized based on the complexities of memory, sentiments, a person’s knowledge and ideas of the environment which the person can evoke by the use of cultural identity symbols for the purpose of organizing one’s self to take an environmental action. Once the person’s identity is entrenched in the history that is inside the person, it will provide a ground for guiding the individual’s behavior towards cultural activities and the person will avoid behaviors that are not harmonious with the community’s assigned identity. The Afrocentric community is often able to revisit rational and intellectual picture of the various agencies and historical factors that are offered by other theories that are based on pro-European schools. This community has been able to decentralize the mind, conversations and texts written, and simultaneously shifts motion, practical knowledge and its members’ routines in order to be the center of vocabulary. The feeling of unity that occurs in the mind of individuals encourages the members of this community understand themselves as not being agents, but as an intentional stream of individuals involved in the gathering of information concerning the acts of ancient Africans. The Afrocentric community can be regarded as a chain of discourse, communication and a variety of symbols, for the purpose of intellectual motives. This community encourages the use of theories with the intention of shifting self-understanding by encouraging its members to consider agents as carriers of routine, over subjective complexes of migratory movements, forms of interpretation, knowledge and use of the things. Through their membership in this community, individuals are able to stipulate shifts taken by a self-understanding individual and get an ethical meaning of the agency among other factors. It is a fact that this community works towards encouraging the consideration of ethical problems as questions used in creating the various theories and researches that make up the bulk of Afrocentric thought. The ethical problems are considered to be extremely important and are expressed by certain bodies, understandings or things that are complex. Ethics, therefore, are related to the thoughts, the environment and individuals’ motivation and feelings. This move is distinctive in relation to functional ethics of the members of this community and has worked against the general skepticism that individuals have towards ethics that is facilitated by objectivism. It can be said that this community is capable of developing philosophical perseverance without giving up its attachment to both empirical historical, cultural and social analysis. The Afrocentric community has developed its own theoretical social vocabulary that is in the form of a sensitizing framework for research done in the various fields in which its members conduct research. This community, therefore, opens up a special way for researcher to see and analyze social and historical phenomena, thus they are able to mould and change their understanding of the diverse matters under research. It offers its members with various ways of defining their place as individuals in the societal world, and these points toward both political and ethical dimension. The effect of this school in the implementation of teaching and learning standards is that it brings into light symbolic and cognitive spheres, and assists in finding reasons as to how structures are able to give significance to the African perspective of the world in a positive way (De Moraes Farias 327). Other theories that are often discussed in this community focus on intellectualizing culture by acting as a point of departure for entities such as consciousness, mind, actions of communication and texts. The theories that are developed in this community do not invite mental phenomena analysis and instead they explore the attachment of mental activities required in the understanding and knowing complex actions. Analysis tends to be done is on the connectivity that is present between routine behaviors of the mind in understanding and knowing, and use of various objects. The theories developed do not favor use of complexities as a sole sphere of discourse or passing and receiving of information, but considers routines and patterns which are discursive. This community, therefore, plays a role in the revision of the pictures of human agency that are have been rationalized and intellectualized while offering afrocentrism in a classical and modern theory. It works towards the liberation of the mind, conversations and texts concerning the failed perceptions of the black race. In conclusion, it can be said that this community has worked a lot towards the development of a positive identity for peoples of African descent. This has created a situation where individuals from this race have been made aware of their history, ensuring that the various racist theories that have been propagated concerning its inferiority. This discourse community has become so popular in some circles that it has facilitated its continued expansion. Works Cited De Moraes Farias, ,P.F. "Afrocentrism: Between Crosscultural Grand Narrative and Cultural Relativism." Journal of African History 44.2 (2003): 327. Swales, John, et al. "Personal Statements: A Conversation with John Swales and Chris Feak." Issues in Writing 15.1 (2004): 5-30. Read More