"A disciplinary map for understanding African Catholicism today by engaging some of the most pressing and pertinent issues, topics, and conversations in diverse fields of studies in African Catholicism"--

This is the first volume providing a research platform to showcase research in the field of positive psychology and well-being science in African contexts. Next to enhancing context-sensitive theory and practice on the African continent, it also contributes to the global discourse in positive psychology and facilitates the development of a science that reflects and is relevant to complexity and diversity in a globalising society. This volume brings together work from African scholars, featuring research on theoretical perspectives on well-being in Africa, measurement of well-being in Africa, manifestations and dynamics of well-being in Africa, and well-being promotion in Africa. It stimulates further research in positive psychology and well-being science in the African context and globally, and emphasises the interconnectedness and situatedness of human functioning and well-being, contributing to a more balanced perspective on well-being in an international perspective. The volume benefits researchers, students and practitioners in Africa and other international contexts who study or apply the science of positive psychology and well-being in diverse contexts. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This study examines the theological and anthropological foundations of the understanding of the dignity and vocation of woman as a mother and wife, gifts given by God that expresses the riches of the African concept of family. There are two approaches to inculturation theology in Africa, namely, that which attempts to construct African theology by starting from the biblical ecclesial teachings and find from them what features of African culture are relevant to the Christian theological and anthropological values, and the other one which takes the African cultural background as the point of departure. According to John Paul II, the dignity and vocation of woman is “something more universal, based on the very fact of her being a woman within all the interpersonal relationships, which, in the most varied ways, shape society and structure the interaction between all persons,” (Mulieris Dignitatem no. 29). This “concerns each and every woman, independent of the cultural context in which she lives and independently of her spiritual, psychological and physical characteristics, as for example, age, education, health, work, and whether she is married or single,” (Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 29). The theology of inculturation as presented in this dissertation opens the way for the integration of the theological anthropological teachings of John Paul II in understanding African woman as mother and wife.

The religious life of the Tonga-speaking peoples of southern Zambia is examined over the last century, in the sense of how they have thought about the nature of their world, the meaning of their own lives, and the sources of good and evil in which their cosmology and society have been transformed. The twelve chapters cover Time, Space and Language; Basic Themes, Tonga Religious Vocabulary and its Referents; the Vocabulary of Shrines and Substance; Homestead and Bush; Ritual Communities and Actors; Rituals of the Life Course; Death and its Rituals; Evil and Witchcraft; and Christianity and Tonga Experience. The author has drawn on dairies by research assistants, and field notes and research of fellow anthropologists, but above all from her own interaction with Tonga people since 1946. The older people gave first hand memories of Ndebele and Lozi raids, David Linvingstone encamped near their villages in 1856 and 1862, the arrival of colonial administrators, traders, missionaries and European and Indian settlers, and in some cases, the end of colonial rule. Their experience and that of their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren provides the basis for understanding Tonga religious experience. Elizabeth Colson is an American anthropologist who is widely published on the Tonga. Her research interests have particularly concentrated on the Gwembe Valley.