Distortion of Facts in Western Ethnographic Study of African Religion, Culture and Society

This paper will identify some of the fundamental short comings in African ethnographic studies undertaken by Europeans in the nineteenth century. Existing works on Africa reveal a lacuna that is depressing to scholarship. The gap has to do with the failure of some Western researchers to approach African study as a unique venture. Admittedly, there are elements of interdependence and continuity in scholarship, but that does not equate belief systems into a unified whole. European ethnographers came to Africa with the ethnocentric mind-set that did not allow them to study the people's culture and religion objectively. The greatest negative impact of the lopsided ethnographic study of African society was in the misinterpretation of the traditional religion. The primary objective of this paper is to correct the hermeneutical error which has hindered progress in the understanding of the African world-view.