Nabuderian Pluridisciplinary Methodology

Nabuderian Pluridiciplinary Mehodology is an approach that involves the use of open and resource-based techniques available in an actual situation. Thus, it has to draw upon the indigenous knowledge materials available in the locality and make maximum use of them. Indigenous languages are therefore at the center of the effective use of this methodology (Nabudere, 2003).
What all this suggests, according to Dani Wadada Nabudere, is that the researcher must revisit the indigenous techniques that take into consideration the epistemological, cosmological and methodological challenges. The researcher must be culture-specific and knowledge-source-specific in his/her orientation. Thus, the process of redefining the boundaries between the different disciplines in our thought process is the same as that of reclaiming, reordering and, in some cases, reconnecting those ways of knowing, which were submerged, subverted, hidden or driven underground by colonialism and slavery. The research should therefore reflect the daily dealings of society and the challenges of the daily lives of the people.
Towards this end, following Nabudere, at least the following six major questions should guide pluridisciplinary research (2003:13):
(1) How can the research increase indigenous knowledge in the general body of global human development?
(2) How can the research create linkages between the sources of indigenous knowledge and the centers of learning on the continent and in the Diaspora?
(3) How can centers of research in the communities ensure that these communities become “research societies”?
(4) How can the research be linked to the production needs of the communities?
(5) How can the research help to ensure that science and technology are generated in relevant ways to address problems of the rural communities where the majority of the people live and that this is done in indigenous languages?
(6) How can the research help to reduce the gap between the elite and the communities from which they come by ensuring that the research results are available to everyone and that such knowledge is drawn from the communities?
The truism that indigenous knowledge is critical to Africa’s development prompted a workshop titled “Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Intellectual Property in the Twenty-First Century: Perspectives from Southern Africa” convened at the University of Botswana from November 26 to 28, 2003 which culminated into a book with the same title published in 2007 by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) based in Dakar, Senegal. The tenor of the workshop and subsequent book is that the twin themes of indigenous knowledge systems and intellectual property rights have moved to the center of academic discourse within the context of innovation and the commercialization of knowledge. This is because wealth is no longer reckoned in terms of physical assets alone. Unfortunately, the traditional imbalance between the North and the South, which has for long manifested itself mainly through trade, is replicated even in tapping intellectual property given to residents of the developing world who remain largely unable to define their property rights. Once again, the West exploits Africa and the rest of the developing world by expropriating indigenous knowledge systems and patenting them in the West (Mazonde and Thomas, 2007).
Various scholars have suggested many major concepts to underlie the Pluridisciplinary Methodology, but it is Nabudere (2003) who has provided the most succinct definitions and discussions for most of these concepts. They are as follows:
(a) African Spirituality refers to those aspects of people that have enabled them to survive as a human community throughout the centuries. It transcends European classical humanism with its class, socioeconomic and geographical limitations based on Greece and the Athenian City-State, which is based on a system of slavery. African Spirituality leads to enlarged humanities and recaptures the original meaning of humanity which Western scholars, beginning with Plato, in their hollow and lopsided search for material progress, have abandoned (Nabudere, 2003:3-4).
(b) Contemporary African Philosophy is a critique of the Eurocentric “idea” and “general philosophy” in its metaphysical perception that European humanism is superior to that of the African people. This falsehood, which has been perpetuated by Europe to this day, hinges upon the belief that the rest of humanity has to be forced to believe like Europe in order to be “humanized” into a singular humanity. Contemporary African Philosophy seeks to “de-structure” this European pretext and emphasize humankind’s “shared humanity” (Nabudere, 2003:4).
(c) The African Renaissance is the initiative to recapture the basic elements of African humanism (ubuntu, eternal life, and immanent moral justice) as the path to a new humanistic universalism. This initiative, according to Chancellor Williams, “is the spiritual and moral element, actualized in good will among men (and women), which Africa itself has preserved and can give to the world” (Nabudere, 2003:4).
(d) The Pan-Afrikan University does not begin in a vacuum, for it has a deep heritage of culture and “civilizational” values that must inform its recreation (e.g., the Sankore University in Timbuktu). These institutions are to be found within Africa’s ancient achievements. They must be unearthed and reclaimed. If the Pan-Afrikan University is to respond to this historic challenge and be a part of the correction of its historical distortion and theft of African heritages, it has to provide deeply thought out and well-conceived vision and mission, with a well articulated strategy to achieve its objectives. For it to be successful, it must be a part of the creation of a counter-hegemonic discourse which can enable the “triple agenda of deconstruction, reconstruction, and regeneration” to be undertaken at the same time. Consequently, the Pan-Afrikan University must develop the University as a new institution of higher education, which can help in reshaping the direction of education on the continent toward a more culture-specific and culturally relevant curriculum and pedagogy of liberation. It must draw from those heritages and provide the students, adult learners and the communities with a space in which they can learn as well as carry out their research and be trained by their teachers, community experts, and consultants at the University campuses as well as in the community knowledge sites. Essentially, the Pan-Afrikan University must be people-centered and community-based in which everyone enjoys the freedom to learn and speak (Nabudere, 2003:5-6, 14).
(e) African Epistemology and Cosmology imply the development of an all-inclusive approach which recognizes all sources of human knowledge as valid within their own contexts. This calls for the adoption of hermeneutic philosophy in its African essence. This African-based epistemological and cosmological foundation is the prerequisite for the production and development of knowledge (Nabudere, 2003:6-7).
(f) African Humanism/Ubuntu is a concept from the Southern African Nguni language family (IsiNdebele, IsiSwati/IsiSwazi, IsiXhosa and IsiZulu) meaning humanity or fellow feeling; kindness. Ubuntu serves as the spiritual foundation of African societies. It is a unifying vision or worldview enshrined in the maxim umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu: i.e. “a person is a person through other persons.” This traditional African aphorism, which can be found in every corner of the continent, articulates a basic respect and compassion for others. It can be interpreted as both a factual description and a rule of conduct or social ethic. It both describes the human being as “being with others” and prescribes what that should be.
(g) African Languages are at the center of developing the Pan-Afrikan University at all knowledge sites. Language, as Amilcar Cabral correctly pointed out, is at the center of articulating a people’s culture. He stated that the African revolution would have been impossible without Africans resorting to their cultures to resist domination. Thus, culture is a revolutionary force in society. It is because language has remained an “unresolved issue” in Africa’s development that present day education has remained an alien system. As Frantz Fanon put it, “to speak a language is to assume its world and carry the weight of its civilization.” Kwesi K. Prah has argued consistently that the absence of African languages in the curriculum has been the “key missing link” in the continent’s development. Consequently, the Pan-Afrikan University must build its curriculum on the basis of promoting African languages at the sites of knowledge and at the same time try to build libraries at those sites in the languages of the people living there. They must be promoted as languages of science and technology. This calls for the complete revamping of the epistemological and cosmological worldview of the current discourse. It also calls for the application of different methodological and pedagogical approaches to learning and research in African conditions (Nabudere, 2003:10).
(h) New Humanities is to serve as the core department in the division of the Pan-Afrikan University concerned with research and advanced studies. In the words of Chancellor Williams, the New Humanities “will have the task of enlisting the services of the world’s best thinkers of the work of developing a science of humanity through studies expressly aimed at better human relations. It is to be at the heart of the entire education system and, therefore, the nation.” Williams believes that the central idea in this philosophy is life. He argues that since neither Western science nor religion has provided satisfactory answers to three questions (From where do we come? Why? And where are we bound?), it is imperative for the Pan-Afrikan University to provide the space for discussing these eternal questions. This approach calls for the reorganization of the disciplines of the social and human sciences as well as the natural sciences into a holistic learning process. The reorganization should lead to a breaking down of the over-compartmentalization and over-fragmentation of faculties, departments, and branches of knowledge. It should explore the reunification of allied disciplines (which have been subdivided into sub-disciplines) into unified fields of study (Nabudere, 2003:14).
(i) Hermeneutic Philosophy recognizes the basic unity of human endeavor through “discourse” that expresses “the intelligibility of Being-in-the world” (Nabudere, 2003:16).
(j) Integrated and Synthesized Knowledge is based on the notion that privileging African-centered curriculum must transcend a narrow conception of what is purely African to include such knowledge within the wider synthesized framework of global knowledge (Nabudere, 2003:17).
(k) Afrikan-based Pedagogy draws inspiration and materials for learning from real life situations of the African people, especially in the rural areas, by adopting those pedagogical methods and techniques that inform their philosophy of life, their worldview, and their lived experiences and practices. The key to developing an Afrikan-based Pedagogy hinges upon the knowledge specific-sites where African experts of different branches of knowledge are located. These sites will inform both the content and the pedagogy. The pedagogy will incorporate “oracy,” which contains forms of art and techniques to which they give expression, which is essential for adult learning. By mainstreaming this form of expression, its agents gain visibility and recognition in knowledge creation and production. This will enable indigenous tales, stories, proverbs, legends, myths, symbols and epics to be resuscitated, for these forms of knowledge incorporate people’s philosophies of life, norms, values in a kind of “moving” and “living library” (Nabudere, 2003:19).
(l) Life Long Learning, which has recently become a mantra of many developed countries and international organizations as a novel approach to learning in the 21st Century, is deeply embedded within African culture and epistemology. Learning and “culturalization” in African societies were considered continuing processes that “took place from birth until death with the family unit, extended family, the village and the entire community participating” (Nabudere, 2003:19). Life Long Learning will bring adult learners to formal institutions of learning and remove the division between informal, non-formal, and formal education in line with African traditions and culture. It will also provide for the cooperation in research between the Pan-Afrikan University and the communities, in addition to providing for the recognition of learning outcomes gained through their own contexts outside the formal education system (Nabudere, 2003:20).
(m) Kemetic Civilization is a Black African civilization whose origination in the Fertile African Crescent was unified from its foundations in the Sahara up to its contemporary manifestations in the languages and culture of Black Africans (Winters, 1998).
The favored methodological approach for pluridisciplinary studies is Hermeneutics, an open-ended approach that permits cross-cultural communication and exchange of ideas and opinions to promote understanding between all knowledge systems in their diversities. This African philosophical-pedagogic approach hinges upon the acceptance of pluralism and cultural diversity. It stresses the need for the “fusion of historical horizons” as the best way of transmitting understanding between different lived histories or experiences of different communities as the basis of their existence. It insists on both the cultural context and the historical contingencies of events as necessities for a true comprehension of the different lived experiences. Furthermore, the approach has its roots in the African/Egyptian mythical figure of Hermes, the messenger of knowledge from the gods to mortals and the interpreter of the divine message to humankind, and that is why Hermeneutics is named after Hermes (Nabudere, 2003:7-8).
Hermeneutics is to be employed on the premises that encourage self-directed learning, which engages with the knowledge, interests, and real life situations that learners bring to their learning situations. This notion of site-specific knowledge attempts to offer a corrective to the Eurocentric tendency of universalizing knowledge around Occidental centers and sites of knowledge which are privileged to the disadvantage of others, claiming to be the only sites of “rationality” and “scientific knowledge.” Recognizing the other sites and centers leads to a truly multi-polar world of global knowledge culled from all sources of human endeavor (Nabudere, 2003:8).

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