Un enfoque antropológico como herramienta metodológica en el estudio del África negra

Abstract

The contemporary globalization, colored by the cultural diversity, makes us think about the theoretical and methodological tools to approach with non western cultural universes. Approaching the wide spectrum of cultural realities with "west-centered" parameters implies a distortion in the interpretation. This text aims to present some anthropological elements that can introduce us into a better comprehension of institutions such as the State, democracy, and law in the black African cultural universe. First of all, we make an approach of culture as a fundamental analysis framework, then, we present the basic lines of western cosmogony and the roll of the State, in contrast with the traditional black-African cosmogony, that starts from man as an element of articulation.State and democracy are analyzed throughout a way of thinking based in the inclusion of opposites. The cosmogonic differences of western thinking and its influence in the conception of the institutions studied here, shows how useless are those references in the study of a very different reality from a cultural point of view.