The closing years of the 20th century have been a mixture of positive developments and opportunities, on the one hand, and of challenges and new threats, on the other.

On the positive side are: the affirmation of the importance of participation by the students in Tiananmen Square; the opening of the Berlin Wall and of the values which this act reflected; and the success of the struggle by the peoples of Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, etc., in Eastern Europe, all of whom for a half century had struggled under dictatorships. All sought the opportunity to determine courses of action consonant with their socio-cultural values and aspirations.

To a lesser degree what took place in Europe has been replicated in Africa, where long-time dictators have been overwhelmed by organized peasants and middle class elites calling for more democratic governance. Single party dictatorships continue, slowly but surely, to be dismantled and replaced by more acceptable and responsive forms of governance and the rule of law.

Hand in hand with these political developments has come economic liberalism. Once protected and inefficiently managed economies (characterized by and large by scarcity) have been liberalized, allowing for greater participation by the masses and for more commensurate rewards for personal initiative and entrepreneurship.

Changes that began as a result of revolts against dictatorships and tyranny not only have revolutionalized the political and economic aspects of life, but also are transforming the cultural aspects as witnesses the coincidental development of information technology. This time of epochal changes is increasingly making the world a homogeneous cultural entity, connecting all peoples of the world via satellites, the web, etc., gravitating towards the constitution of a global village.

But those unprecedented positive developments have at the same time posed new challenges, fears and anxieties on an interna-tional scale.

In Africa, at the turn of this century African tribesmen found themselves ensconced in arbitrarily concocted new states, whose borders divide what had formerly been integral communities. These new borders were lumped together under the same nation states which for all practical purposes formerly had been different nationalities. At the close of this century, they remain in an arbitrarily declared new world order whose economic philosophy they have yet fully to digest and internalize, and whose cultural homogeneity threatens to wipe out their distinct cultures and identities.

The fears and anxieties are not only confined to Africa. Several European countries at the initiation of the European monetary union are apprehensive about the entire program, unsure not only of how it will affect their individual economies and programs, but whether it will radically affect their cultural identities.

These epochal changes that continue to take place challenge intellectuals to think more reflectively about the direction of contemporary change. It seems certain, however, that these changes and challenges will not require a reversion to the old ways of thinking, nor invoque the old arguments that characterized discourse during the Cold War years.

All this has motivated professors from the Department of Philosophy of Makerere University to take up the challenge of social reconstruction in the face of contemporary change. To do so they organized a continuing seminar in which each presented serially a paper for general discussion. Those papers constitute most of the present volume.

The theme and tone of these papers continues the work done by the Department of Philosophy on The Foundations of Social Life. It is part also of a world wide effort of The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP) which has encourage teams of academicians from different areas of the world to discuss contemporary changes, focussing upon the basic current issues of their own people. Although the views expressed in these papers are those of professors from Uganda, nevertheless, much of what they have to say should be very relevant for most of the sub-Saharan region of Africa.

Chapter I by A.T. Dalfovo, "Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: The State and the People," critically analyzes the role of the state in development, given contemporary changes and challenges.

He introduces his paper by pointing out that current challenges in sub-Saharan Africa reflect a failure of theories of development to have "sufficiently queried the wider political context of development." Development theories have collapsed one after the other, because theorists erroneously assumed that the matrix of the developing state itself was sound. But the crisis of development in sub-Saharan Africa ultimately is a crisis of the state. In support of this Dalfovo points out that whereas development is an endogenous process that should be carried out by individuals themselves, the state has usurped that role, which it is not qualified to carry through. In turn, the state has become an obstacle to, rather than a facilitator of, development.

The contemporary state, challenged by new forces both from without (forces of globalization) and from within (forces, for example, of ethnicity), needs to de-modernize and post-modernize, by reconsidering the role of civil society. Only such a state will be able to meet the challenge of contemporary society. Dalfovo concludes by observing that there will be no short cuts to growth; it cannot be forced. Spontaneous development and operation of civil society remains the key by which contemporary society will be able to meet the challenges of the time.

Chapter II by G. Tusabe, "Ethics and Social Reconstruction in Africa," begins by highlighting the problematic relationship between the African state and the development effort. Like Dalfovo earlier, Tusabe points out that the African state has taken on the task of developing society, creating for the purpose a bloated bureaucracy and strongly centralized leadership. With that kind of structure three decades of independence leave Africa by and large still underdeveloped.

Although Tusabe, sees the potential of civil society for a positive role in directing African development, he remains cautious, and in fact emphasizes that ethnicity and religious bigotry in pluralistic societies could turn "civil society" into a problem rather than a solution to Africa’s problems. Tusabe’s concern gains force when we recall what has taken place in the 1990s in Somalia, Rwanda and Burundi. The various negative elements could use civil society as a cover not only for self-aggrandizement and enrichment, but also and more dangerously for sowing civil discord.

Tusabe argues that the state in Africa needs to continue to play an important role in the regulation and co-ordination of civil society, ensuring basic justice for all and facilitating the operation of a morally motivated and guided civil society.

More fundamentally he carries out a most insightful analysis of the importance of ethics and of its metaphysical foundations for the dignity of the free human person. Upon this he builds the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity by which the various levels of society can cooperate in the achievement of human fulfillment.

Chapter III by J.K.Kigongo, "Moral Consciousness and Self-identity in Contemporary African Change," takes the moral issue as the point of departure, arguing for a consciously executed moral education as a necessary prerequisite for humanity in the process of contemporary change.

Kigongo’s particular moral issue is the relationship between individual rights and social cohesion, Kigongo laments that this seems to have become conflictual in the wake of Africa’s contact with external influences.

Inasmuch as contemporary society has become global, Kigongo argues that there is a special need for moral education. This must be geared towards an appreciation of individual freedom and rights in a social context that is no longer merely tribal or national, but well nigh universal. Only such an education will enable the contemporary person to make informed decisions in an otherwise increasingly complex world, and enable individuals to strike an acceptable balance between self and community. Any theory that emphasizes the worth of one individual above others is a real hindrance to the harmony of interests required for a society that is clearly global.

Chapter IV by A.R. Byaruhanga, "Ethnicity, Culture and Social Reconstruction," attempts to elucidate the concepts of culture and ethnicity and how these relate to the issue of social reconstruction. Byaruhanga stresses the need to examine the nature of social reality before thinking of its reconstruction.

In his elucidation of the key concept, "ethnicity", Byaruhanga makes a distinction between "ethnos" referring to the broad racial groupings of man, and "ethnic" referring to the smaller cultural groups into which one is born, and which shape one’s consciousness and value system. It is this latter sense of ethnicity that he treats in his paper.

Elucidating the concept of culture, Byaruhanga first provides the etymological meaning of the term highlighting both its explicit and implicit aspects. The former is exhibited in physical artifacts while the latter is exhibited in the ethos of the people. For Byaruhanga, culture is related to ethnicity which is its identifying factor.

Byaruhanga’s central idea in this paper is that although the existence of ethnicity presupposes the existence of other ethnic entities, nevertheless, ethnic entities tend to exult their individual cultures over those of their neighbors. This sows the seeds of civil discord and leads to outright confrontation. For an increasingly globalized society, Byaruhanga underscores the need for genuine recognition of ethnic and cultural differences as the viable starting point of mutual recognition and consequent acceptance of one and all.

Chapter V by E. Wamala, "Cultural Elements in Social Reconstruction in Africa," argues that rather than trying to explain development issues in the tradition of grand theories after the manner of Weber or Fukuyama, we should look for particular elements within cultures that either foster or hinder, encourage or discourage, development.

To make good his point, Wamala cites Max Weber’s theory concerning the Protestant ethic and the development of capitalism, and Fukuyama’s social trust theory. He shows that in all these theories there are generalizations which cannot withstand scrupulous empirical examination.

Wamala proposes that theorists interested in culture and development would do well to look for the particular positive and negative elements within all cultures, and see how the positive elements within those cultures could be enhanced, even as the negative ones are rejected or discouraged.

Social reconstruction, according to Wamala, will be possible only after identifying the particular negative elements within cultures, and then reconstructing those elements. Only thus will it be possible to reconfigure the social, cultural and political structures which those presently subconscious negative elements support. For Wamala, this social reconstruction is first and foremost to be carried out at an intellectual level, before being extended to the empirical realm.

Chapter VI by S.A. Mwanahewa, "Modernization and Social Reconstruction: Africa at the Crossroads," is rather less hopeful than the previous studies about the possibility for effecting social reconstruction in Africa.

First, Mwanahewa sees Africa at the crossroads between the Occident and the Orient, on the one hand, and between the Africa’s traditional past (which remains latent) and its future, on the other. Given that crossroads situation, modernization, the aspect of social reconstruction upon which Mwanahewa dwells at great length, may not easily be realized in Africa.

To make good his point, Mwanahewa examines the political and economic situation in Africa and shows that a careful reading of the situation reveals some very fundamental problems which could mar any modernization effort. Particularly, he points out the wholesale transplantation of development theories and paradigms to Africa. Such wholesale implanting of development theories, according to Mwanahewa, could deter modernization by denying Africa the opportunity to develop her own indigenous capacities, thereby making her forever dependent.

Implicit in Mwanahewa’s paper is the view that Africa will be able to effect social reconstruction only if she can develop her own categorical framework for social and economic development.

But Chapter VII by Byaruhanga Rukooko Archangel, "Social Identity and Conflict: A Positive Approach," brings the investigation to the issue of unity and diversity among people, namely, the classical issue of the one and the many as found among personal and social identities. He suggests that we need to begin with the notion of identity as implying conflict and then build toward reconciliation, especially on the basis of Paul Ricoeur’s view of "self" and "other" as appealing mutually to each other. The chapter is rich in examples of recent frightening Central African conflict between peoples bound in a spiral of mutual fear.

Chapter VIII by George F. McLean, "Globalization as Diversity in Unity," suggests a further possibility opened by new possibilities of seeing oneself and one’s people in terms of a larger whole as suggested originally by Nicholas of Cusa. In this horizon the other is not contrary or conflictual, but a fellow participant in a larger reality and hence complementary to oneself. This vision becomes increasingly vivid as globalization proceeds, but at the same time reflects the basic sense of African cultures whose creation stories were always cosmogonic in character.

Through the process of mutual critique described above these studies have come to constitute the considered view of a team of scholars. They constitute a platform for further research, reflection and writing as a contribution to the people of Uganda in their effort to construct an effective path to a future worthy of both ancestors and posterity.