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South African universities are encouraged to detach themselves from their colonial and apartheid histories and transform their curricula to be inclusive of Africanization and decolonization. Hence, there is a necessity for a case study of the University of Technology utilizing a sequential mixed methods design. Questionnaires were administered to sixtyfour second-year preservice teachers, followed by individual interviews with twelve participants who were purposively selected. Data were analyzed both statistically and thematically. The results revealed that preservice teachers have ambivalent feelings about the introduction of African psychology into the Educational Psychology module, with the majority preferring to maintain the current Western model of academic organization. They justified that culture is not static, and the decolonization of university curricula would separate Africans from the rest of the world. The study therefore concludes that the process of decolonization of university curriculum in this institution should encompass indigenous and Western knowledge as complimentary rather than contradictory, which is also known as decolonization as encounters with entangled knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When civilizations clash or encounter one another, it is a general expectation that one of them will necessarily influence or even dominate the other. This has been the principal character of the advent of Euro-Western civilizations across regions of the world such as Africa, Asia and Latin America. Whereas previous studies have been able to detail how this influence has affected the regions economically, socially, environmentally and politically, this study takes the discourse further to understand how the contact of civilizations can be useful for comprehending contemporary relations in the international community. This study uses the ideas of Samuel P. Huntington as a theoretical framework for showing how civilizations have shaped and influenced global politics in contemporary times. When the proposal of Huntington is assessed from the perspective of how Western civilization has influenced Africa and Latin America especially, three crucial theses are noticeable. First, is the point that Western civilization seeks to dominate or exterminate and then replace non-Western civilizationsin the latter’s domain. Second, non-Western cultures are usually drained of their economic resources and minerals in the name of civilization and colonization. Third, the influence of the West in contemporary international relations is waning, and this is one of the reasons why the place of countries like China in contemporary global politics is colossal and really influential in places where Western civilizations used to have unparalleled influence. Followingthese three theses, this research claims that when one considers the interplay among the civilizations of the world, Huntington’s analysis is penetrative and helpful in making sense of how they reflect in contemporary world politics.

Over the years a growing number of planning and urban theorists located in, or writing on, planning and urban theories in the global South have argued that theories emerged on the basis of assumptions within a northern context that do not ‘fit’ or are not applicable in global South contexts (Rao 2006; Ferguson 2006; Watson 2009; Roy 2009; Myers 2011; Parnell and Robinson 2012). Hence, they maintain, there is a need to rethink the northern bias in planning and urban theory and to develop new concepts, ideas, vocabularies and practices from southern perspectives. McFarlane (2008) uses the term ‘southern turn’ in urban studies, while arguing that productive comparisons across contexts constitute an epistemological transformation in urban theory. He uses the term ‘urban shadow’ to explain how southern cities are considered marginal and on the ‘edges’ of a predominantly Euro-American oriented urban theory canon (McFarlane 2004; 2008). Rao dwells on Amin & Thirft’s (2002) Cities: Reimagining the Urban to develop her ‘slum as theory’ wherein she critically reflects on the dominant discourses that inform and guide planning and urban theory. In 2009, Watson (2009), a scholar based in the South, introduced the idea of ‘seeing from the south’ to explain the need for context-rooted theory development. Yiftachel (2006) introduced a South-Eastern approach instead to break the binary of North-South and East-West. Roy (2009) calls for new geographies of ‘imagination and epistemologies’, as dominant theorizations are based on Euro-American experience, and are unable to capture the grounded reality of the global South.

This is a historical cartographic analysis of Indian and Euro-American relations in the United States. We explore the threefold roles of government, academic, and tribal mapping, and bring them together with some findings. As can be seen, government and academia have shared cartographic data; both have learned from the tribes, and in turn, the tribes have learned from the others, not always to their well-being. All of these issues are involved in the affairs of Indians in our country and are discussed to analyze the ongoing spatial activities across the dynamic landscape of Native America.

This article draws on a turn of events in the speaker's long association with Papua New Guinea in the Pacific. Pacific Island academics have made it clear that anthropologists should be explicit about 'knowledge exchange'. Knowledge transfers take innumerable forms; in the case of the anthropologist, however, it often seems that expert knowledge is more taken than given. Thinking comparatively about academic practice, is there any future for potential 'exchanges' as forms of interdisciplinarity, say, or of argument between points of view? The article takes the concept of an academic argument to ask about its counterparts in non-academic milieux of knowledge-making in one part of the Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the state of knowledge construction within the South African academe. This, I do by looking at how issues of epistemology and ontology are prioritised or negated in the social construction of knowledge. Focusing on what I have called 'the problem of perspectives', I show how 'epistemological narcissism' has often limited the scope of methodological and theoretical innovativeness. I argue that by relying on a set of certain theories that scholars have known and used over the years, and dismissing those that are considered 'foreign' (or non-African), the exercise of knowledge construction has become largely polemical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There has been an overwhelming call to improve the understanding of how children develop within an African context as Euro-American definitions of competence have been uncritically adopted as the norm for children in Africa. The activities that children engage in within the family setting are seen as important to understand how children develop within context. The use of activity settings is closely aligned with a strengths-based perspective of family-centred practice and contributes to improved sustainability of intervention. Objectives: This study that was conducted in Soweto, South Africa, aims to describe activity settings that typically developing young children in low-income African contexts participate in. Method: A descriptive design using structured interviews was utilised to obtain information about activity settings that children aged 3–5 years and 11 months engaged in. Structured interviews with 90 caregivers were conducted. Results: Findings show that children participate in a variety of activities with varied participation levels. The types of activities are dependent on the context and perceptions of caregivers. Conclusion: These findings draw attention to understanding activities that children engage in within the family context.

Background: There has been an overwhelming call to improve the understanding of how children develop within an African context as Euro-American definitions of competence have been uncritically adopted as the norm for children in Africa. The activities that children engage in within the family setting are seen as important to understand how children develop within context. The use of activity settings is closely aligned with a strengths-based perspective of family-centred practice and contributes to improved sustainability of intervention. Objectives: This study that was conducted in Soweto, South Africa, aims to describe activity settings that typically developing young children in low-income African contexts participate in. Method: A descriptive design using structured interviews was utilised to obtain information about activity settings that children aged 3–5 years and 11 months engaged in. Structured interviews with 90 caregivers were conducted. Results: Findings show that children participate in a variety of activities with varied participation levels. The types of activities are dependent on the context and perceptions of caregivers. Conclusion: These findings draw attention to understanding activities that children engage in within the family context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This essay argues that comparison as a method of study within religious studies is best thought of in two terms: conversation and craft. As a conversation, comparison has its own history, which has included several major shifts. At present, comparative work would benefit from addressing the fact that Euro-Americans dominate the comparative conversation. This dominance limits conversational data, topics, strategies, and participants. At risk is the relevance of comparative work within religious studies. As a craft, comparative work is creative and idiosyncratic, reflecting the apprenticeship lineage in which the comparative scholar has been trained as well as her individual personality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When that other is Asia and the “Far East”, it always seems as if the European intellectual must speak in absolute terms, making this other an utterly incomprehensible, terrifying, and fascinating spectacle ... [T]he “native” is turned into an absolute entity in the form of an image (the “empty” Japanese ritual or “China loam”), whose silence becomes the occasion for our speech. (Chow 33, 34)

This essay argues that comparison as a method of study within religious studies is best thought of in two terms: conversation and craft. As a conversation, comparison has its own history, which has included several major shifts. At present, comparative work would benefit from addressing the fact that Euro-Americans dominate the comparative conversation. This dominance limits conversational data, topics, strategies, and participants. At risk is the relevance of comparative work within religious studies. As a craft, comparative work is creative and idiosyncratic, reflecting the apprenticeship lineage in which the comparative scholar has been trained as well as her individual personality.

Although it has been hypothesized that culture and religion play an important role in sexuality, the relative roles of acculturation and religiosity on ethnic differences in sexual attitudes have not been often empirically explored. The present study assessed differences in sexual attitudes in Euro-American, Asian, and Hispanic American populations using measures of acculturation to analyze the relative effects of heritage and mainstream cultures, as well as religiosity, within each ethnic group. A total of 1,415 college students (67% Euro-American, 16% Hispanic, 17% Asian; 32% men, 68% women) completed questionnaires which assessed attitudes towards homosexuality, gender role traditionality, casual sex, and extramarital sex. In concordance with previous studies, Asians reported more conservative sexual attitudes than did their Hispanic and Euro-American peers. Hispanics reported sexual attitudes similar to that of Euro-Americans. For both Hispanic and Asians, higher acculturation predicted sexual attitudes similar to that of Euro-Americans. For Asian, Hispanic, and Euro-American women, there was a significant interaction between intrinsic religiosity and spirituality such that the relationship between conservativism of sexual attitudes and intrinsic religiosity was stronger at higher levels of spirituality. In Euro-Americans and Asians, intrinsic religiosity and religious fundamentalism strongly predicted conservative sexual attitudes; while still significant, these relationships were not as pronounced in the Hispanic sample, implying an ethnic-by-religious effect. Novel to this study, acculturation did not mediate the relationship between religiosity and sexual attitudes, indicating that ethnic differences in religiosity effects were distinct from acculturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has been conducted on ethnic differences in sexuality, but few studies have systematically assessed the importance of acculturation in sexual behavior. The present study assessed general differences in normative sexual practices in healthy Euro-American, Asian, and Hispanic populations, using measures of acculturation to analyze the relative effects of heritage and mainstream cultures within each group. A total of 1,419 undergraduates (67% Euro-American, 17% Hispanic, 16% Asian; 33% men, 67% women) completed questionnaires which assessed sexual experience and causal sexual behaviors. In concordance with previous studies, Asians reported more conservative levels of sexual experience and frequency of sexual behaviors, fewer lifetime partners, and later ages of sexual debut than Euro-American or Hispanic counterparts. Hispanic reported sexual experiences similar to that of Euro-Americans. There was a significant interaction between mainstream and heritage acculturation in predicting number of lifetime sexual partners in Asian women such that the relationship between heritage acculturation and casual sexual behavior was stronger at lower levels of mainstream acculturation. On the other hand, in Hispanic men, higher levels of mainstream acculturation predicted more casual sexual behavior (one-time sexual encounters and number of lifetime sexual partners) when heritage acculturation was low but less casual sexual behavior when heritage acculturation was high. These results suggest that, for sexual behavior, Hispanic men follow an “ethnogenesis” model of acculturation while Asian women follow an “assimilation” model of acculturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this pilot study the maternal separation anxiety of 49 mothers of primarily Mexican descent was examined. A hierarchical multiple regression was conducted to determine if predictors of maternal separation anxiety in Euro-American mothers would also predict maternal separation anxiety in Hispanic mothers. Results identified maternal education, marital status, and total number of children as predictors. Maternal age produced a significant increment when added to the model. Neither infant age nor hours mothers spent attending school or in paid employment predicted maternal separation anxiety. Additionally, adolescents reported greater maternal separation anxiety when separated from their infants than did adult mothers. Results of this pilot study indicated some consistency with findings of previous research with Euro-American participants. Suggestions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Objective: To compare Omani and western teenagers attending schools in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman and Filipino teenagers residing in Manila, Philippines on indices of deliberate food restriction and dieting behavior. Methods: The sample consisted of 444 students who were assessed using the cross-culturally valid measure, Eating Attitude Test-26, a subscale of Eating Disorder Inventory to gauge the presence of the drive for thinness or ‘fat phobia’ and the Bradford Somatic Inventory to elicit the presence of somatization. Result: Significant differences in attitudes to eating, body image and somatization between the western and non-western teenagers were found. Conclusion: This paper suggests that trajectories of eating disorder, such as body image disturbances as expressed in fat phobia and somatization, tend to vary from culture to culture and underscore the view that some of the health related behavior among adolescents need to be examined within socio-cultural contexts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study sought to describe speaking fundamental frequency characteristics of elderly Euro-American and African-American individuals and to explore the effects of ethnicity and ageing on vocal parameters of speech production. Speech samples from 42 elderly Euro-American and 37 elderly African-American individuals (age range: 70-80 years) were compared on measures of mean speaking fundamental frequency (F[sub 0]), maximum and minimum speaking F[sub 0], speaking F[sub 0] standard deviation (F[sub 0] SD), and speaking F[sub 0] range (in semitones). Elderly African-American females had significantly lower mean speaking F[sub 0] and speaking F[sub 0] SD than their Euro-American cohorts. Results indicate that researchers need to improve the clinical database for speakers from non-Euro-American backgrounds, and speech-language pathologists must exercise discretion when assessing the speaking F[sub 0] and other speech characteristics of elderly individuals from different ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]