Summary: Life in contemporary African settings involves negotiating personal and religious values, which may influence attitudes towards science. Using a subset of yet-to-be-determined African countries, this study will investigate:
- How values vary across and within countries and regions (e,g, West, East and South) in sub-Saharan Africa
- How these values may be influenced by religious beliefs
- The relationship between values and religion and concerns about/attitudes towards Our World versus My World (self)
The analysis will be informed by social and cultural psychological perspectives about science and belief.
We will use data from the World Values Survey (WVS) – a multi-country database that explores people’s values and beliefs, their stability or change over time and their impact on social and political development of the societies in different countries of the world for our empirical Investigation. This project will contribute to the literature on science and belief in the African context. Project deliverables will be: one research article, a conference presentation, one seminar presentation hosted at University of Stellenbosch, and a blog post.
