• Journal of the Korean Association of African Studies
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• v.43
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• pp.89-111
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• 2014

This article deals with the characteristics and limitations of Edwin W. Smith's study of African religions. He was born as son of British Primitive Methodist missionary in South Africa, 1876. He was trained to become a Bible translator. After marriage he moved to Africa with his wife and translated the Bible into the Ila language. Most Western missionaries despised African cultures and religions, but Smith proposed a new way to study African cultures and religions on the anthropological basis of respect and understanding. Though he kept the mission mind to convert Africans to Christians and supported the fulfillment theology, he accepted the values and significance of African religions. With scientific and object approaches, Smith regarded Africans as rational and philosophical human beings. He rejected the traditional concept of mission that Western form of Christianity should be forced upon the mind and heart of Africans. Rather Smith encouraged Africans to build up their own churches and theologies with creative and dynamic worldviews including magic, Dynamism, Spiritism, ancestor worship and the faith to the Supreme Being. In conclusion, despite his limitations as missionary, Smith has been remembered as 'the founder of African Studies' and 'the ancestor of British phenomenological school.' His missionary experience became the solid foundation for becoming scholar of African religions.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.50
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• pp.131-172
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• 2018

It is noted that nowadays, the bride wealth custom takes an extremely distorted form in African society. Such a phenomenon is a result that the male-dominant culture, Western religions, and capitalist economic system have been negatively combined into dynamic factors seen as bride wealth. This means that the concept of bride wealth has been incessantly reconstructed in the middle of clash and conflict of tradition and modernity. There is also little doubt that the practice is inextricably tangled with the common and current ways of livelihood, early marriage, polygyny, kinship/family structure, poverty, and migration labor. Bride wealth has become an increasingly commercialized element under a capitalist economic system. Accordingly, its traditional symbolism is seen to be subsequently weakening, whereas a tendency towards the reification of women is strengthening more in modern society that embraces modern customs bent on the protection of women's human rights. Its commercialization has produced a result, which instigates the noted violations of women's basic human rights, gender inequality, and promotion of domestic violence. The ways that people perceive bride wealth vary according to their own sex, generation, stratification, and ethnic background. Those people who negatively recognize bride wealth will increase with the deepening of its commercialization due to the influence of capitalism. Its color and effect will deepen and depend on how its agents correspond to socioeconomic changes. They will constantly reinterpret and reconstruct it within their own environments, but the basic human rights efforts are constantly under review by concerned individuals seeking to promote equality for women as a global effort.