Abstract
Recent research into contemporary African social and political philosophy has emphasized African folk and indigenous heritage, as well as the legacies of eminent African leaders and precolonial African societies. Such research has also attended to theoretical debates and discussions and clarifications of concepts employed in the political and social spheres. The core themes and issues driving this subject area relate to African people’s daily lives, the search for better modes of political and social organization, and the challenges that African people must face. In accordance with this contemporary definition, African social and political philosophy draws on African people themselves and considers them to be actively engaged in philosophical theorization work while tackling the challenges that reality poses to their lives. Democracy is one of the main challenges for Africa. In particular, on the continent, democracy is increasingly following an alternative trajectory toward anocratic forms of government. Anocracy is examined to describe the path to democratization that various African countries are following. The analysis of acts of civil disobedience carried out in an anocratic regime, such as that of Sudan, provides additional evidence of the role that African people are playing in dealing with injustices and democratizing their countries from below. Through these processes, African people are philosophizing from below, and it is on this process that African social and political philosophy should concentrate to further develop as a field of study.
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Badona Monteiro, Y. (2023). Doing Contemporary African Social and Political Philosophy from Below. In: Imafidon, E., Tshivhase, M., Freter, B. (eds) Handbook of African Philosophy. Handbooks in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25149-8_43
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