Rebuilding Global Community, Altered Family Structures and Social Relations using African Philosophy of Family: Criticisms, Impacts and Paradigms

Abstract

The family is the smallest units of the society but its impacts on individuals’ progress geometrically to immediate society, states and global community at large. The symbolism of the family in Africa cannot be overemphasized. Family systems have been distorted globally due to over-zealousness, negative reconciliatory dialectics, absurd social systems (same sex marriages and family), uncensored visual information, technologies and all they brought. Societal changes, such as industrialization and urbanization, shifted family dynamics, leading to more nuclear families and a gradual transformation of traditional roles. The modern era has brought about more diverse family arrangements, embracing various forms of relationships and acknowledging the importance of inclusivity and individual choices within families. The aim of this paper is to highlight Africa’s achievement in maintaining great social community lives and relations despite the increased dwindling family life has faced in the wake of modernity, globalization, overzealous, freedom and technology. Part of the objective of this study is to show that African philosophy of family can be used as pristine ideology to address the negative dialectics of family experienced and accepted in the global west and Europe. The argument is that family lives, values, norms and structures have been distorted by ideologies emanating from modernism, fake visual consumption and weakened by today’s technological advances, moral corruption, intolerance, democracy, migrations, changing patterns of socialization to mention but a few. These have weakened the strengths of family values and exposed the limitations of traditional family arrangements. The thesis of this paper is that individuals, citizens and social relations have been dislocated because of the changing family patterns. The significance of this study is to show in different ways negative family dialectics have manifested in human relations including high rate of divorce, gay motherhood, lesbian fathers, single parenting and the likes. The justification of this study comes from the need to tackle altered family ideologies and structures using African philosophy of family. This is because the distorted family ideologies, structures and patterns have been minimally experienced in Africa. The position of this study is that Africa still has constructive, realistic, pragmatic and viable family norms, ideas, virtues and values to sustain family culture, practices which emanated from their lived experiences, traditions and cultures that can be used to address modern changing family patterns experienced largely in the west and Europe. Africa has consolidated her philosophy of family; which has great impacts on personal, communal, social, national and global relations. Postmodernist phenomenology which allows us access to alternative lived-experiences of family lives across cultures is the methodology while the study will be built on a theoretical frame of inter-subjectivity. The study will end with an extensive discussion on the lessons from the existential pillars sustaining family life in Africa.