Anthropology
Open Access

Abstract

The Strength of African Culture in Managing Family Crisis in a Globalized World

Ruth Bulus Iganus and Andrew Haruna

We live in a world that is overrun with family problems. It is important to find out how family members perceive such problems culturally and how we perceive them in the modern sense. Through modern changes in this globalize world, the African traditional setting or ways of managing crisis cannot remain intact, but they are by no means extinct. In times of crisis they often come to surface or people revert to them in secret. The question is what are the coping strategies which families adopt while facing social problems which needed to be overcome? Scholars of the family know that traditional values in Africa are primarily not for the individual but for his family and community of which he is part. In other words there are no persons that are without a family. Members live in kinship adhering strictly to the norms and values of their family and the society at large. To be regarded in high esteem among Babur- Bura, one must share in the beliefs and participate in cultural practices such ceremonies, rituals, festivals of joy or suffering. For these reasons, one cannot afford to exist without the family/community. A person cannot detach him/ her self from the beliefs of his/her culture. By implication, to do so, is to severe from his/her roots, his/her foundation, his/her context of security, his/ her kinship and the entire group of those who make him/her aware of his/her own existence. Unfortunately, today there are many sources of severe trauma or dislocations for the African families. Some of the sources could be attributed to incessant conflicts, drought, flood, rural-urban migration, urbanization, industrialization, death, divorce, famine, epidemics, locust invasion and western education attainment among others. The Babur-Bura families are not immune to these challenges. As a result of this interference many families and individuals become detached from their traditional setting/environment. In these circumstances, modernity does not seem to remove the sense of frustrations and up rootedness in the life of the African. What people do in such a situation of disenchantment is motivated by what they believe, and what they believe springs from what they do and experience. So then beliefs and actions in Babur-Bura traditional families cannot be separated, but they belong to a single whole. This paper looked at the real ingredients how African families clinch to or embrace cultural practices for survival during adversities. The type of catastrophe mentioned often evokes a revival of their religious activities or innovation of new ones. Specifically, this paper identified and examined the Babur-Bura cultural coping strategies such as fellowship, Lineage marriage, Religion, Story-telling and Group-co-operative farming. These values are strongly influenced by the power of culture and they may or may not be in conformity with the western beliefs which are dominated by a linear perspective linked to the theory of modernization. African traditional beliefs on the other hand are characterized by a circular viewpoint and moral values for fellowship. Our approach is chiefly descriptive and interpretive, bringing together in a comparative way those elements which are representative of traditional coping strategies the Babur-Bura ethnic group.