Dr. Femi Jegede
Dr. Femi Jegede
Short Bio
My research expertise has broadly drawn upon Ashantee Molefi’s notion of Afrocentricism as a wider episteme that tends to push the essentiality of phenomenon using African knowing systems and scientific traditions. The methodology is not the formal Eurocentric knowledge systems that place so much emphasis on theoretical and not much on the practical. It is squared in what I like to call apprenticeship methodology; generally referred to as communivasity; that is locating knowledge of traditional religion, medicine and belief systems within the people. It also pushes me into Husserl phenomenology that is a theoretical standpoint that gives a special place for the experience of the people and these experiences are as such, valid. At another level, my contribution to African traditional religion, medicine and belief systems has been in regard to shrines and the location of the divine essence, a focus that draws inspiration from my postdoc on Shrines, Oath-taking and Jurisprudence in Yoruba and Igbo Religions. I have engaged the phenomenology of religion in Africa by locating the interaction between religious symbols and the reality it symbolises. As a departure from the general understanding that the deity or the divine essence is located in what Jerome calls the “assumptive world”, in my research, I have located the divine essence in nature. Religion in Africa therefore is the veneration of nature for sustainability and holistic health. Fostering intellectual activism, I am committed to the pursuit of knowledge on Traditional Medicine and Belief Systems using Afrocentric epistemology as the basis for the validity of my scholarship, ethnography as methodology and phenomenology as the theoretical standpoint.
Selected Publications
- Jegede, C. O. (2010). Incantations and Herbal Cures in Ifa Divination: Emerging Issues in Indigenous Knowledge. Ibadan: African Association for the Study of Religion. 174 pp. ISBN: 978-36862-24 (Nigeria) (Contribution:)
- Jegede, C.O. (2012). The Meaning and Essence of African Traditional Religion in Nigeria. In A.S. Jegede, O.A Olutayo, O.O. Omololu, & B.E. Owumi (Eds.) Peoples and Culture of Nigeria. Ibadan: Department of Sociology, University of Ibadan. 326-335pp. ISBN:978-978-929-644-6 (Nigeria) (Contribution: 100%).
- Jegede, C.O. (2014). African Indigenous Religious Rituals in Ibadan Politics: Issues for the Democratisation Process in Nigeria .International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology (IJSA) Vol. 6. No. 2: 42-48.
- Jegede, C. O. (2015) Shrine and Sovereignty in Yoruba Religious Life and Experience. In David Ogungbile (Ed) African Indigenous Religious Tradition in Local and Global Context Perspectives on Nigeria; A festschrift in Honour of Jacob Olupona. Lagos: Malthouse Press Ltd. 123-136pp. ISBN: 978-978-5325-01-0
- Jegede, C.O. (2015). An Aspect of Ifa Divination as an Indigenous Knowledge Systems for Security and Development in Africa. In Peter Okebukola (ed.) Harnessing Culture for Sustainable Development and Human Security in Africa. Abeokuta: Institute for African Culture and International Understanding UNESCO Category. 131-147pp ISBN: 978-978-945-331-3
- Jegede, C. O. (2016). Ifa Mythology on Human Variations and Global African Identity and Global Contact. Canadian Social Science, Vol. 12, No. 10: 34-41.
- Jegede, C.O. (2013 ) An Exploration into Soteriology in Ifa: “Oral and Intangible Heritage for Humanity”. Black Theology. Vol. 11. No. 2: 201-218.
Project Description
The project is designed to enable an understanding of the theoretical basis for African spatiality and spatialisation as exemplified in Ifa, a Yoruba oral tradition and divination systems, spreading in Afro-American spaces. It employs the use of dialectics as theoretical framework and ethnography as methodology. In doing this, the study examines the conquest of distance in the dialectics of Ifa divination systems between Yoruba land and Afro-American spaces. It is designed to stimulate conversation on how Ifa divination systems as practiced among Yoruba people and African Americans interact and influence these cultures across border and particularly across their assigned spaces. Of great relevance to this spatial location of Ifa, which is well established among African Americans in the United States, is the advancement of studies in spatiality premised on specific indigenous knowledge system among specific indigenous people in Africa and beyond. This aspect has not been squared into the agenda of scholarships in Spatialities. Using indigenous methodology, this study seeks to contribute to research in spatiality analysing data from Nigeria and the United States, it aims to unearth how the idea of the interconnectedness of the universe common within Ifa divination practices, constitutes an African idea of space, not as geography, but as time and space or as beingness and existence (Fisher, Spies et al., 2018). . The study is designed to produce contextual interrelatedness of the real lifeworlds of Yoruba in Africa and Afro-Americans in United States, so the study is exploratory using ethnographic- qualitative design.