Africa has always been, in fact, a "special case"-in the same way that China is a special case-even as it has shared characteristics with other regions of the world. Those originalities and common grounds have been the special concern of scholars in African Studies, and out of the struggle to understand both the differences and convergences there have emerged some striking insights into the world at large. I know this best from areas in which I have been involved. During the early 1980s several Africanist anthropologists argued that households were not unitary decision-makers as economic theory assumed. By the end of the decade, initially-skeptical economists had developed an alternative model that dealt with our observations, and were finding it applicable to completely different areas of the world: Brazil, Thailand, the Caribbean and the U.S. This is the kind of contribution we can potentially make, based on the classic methods of field research, and comparative and theoretical study.
One could add many examples: in the humanities, on the relationship between oral genres and written work; in music, on the structured thinking that produces improvisation; in demography, on concepts of the female reproductive life cycle in high fertility regimes; in the philosophy of science, on logics for conceptualizing the properties of a thing; in political science, on prebendalism, ethnicity and the dynamics of state failure; and in economics, on the links between credit and insurance in nonwestern economies. African disasters also attract scholarship that informs other world areas: on AIDS, refugees, ethnic warfare, and the character of dictatorship, for example. The "marginal" situation of Africa in the globalized world is shared by many other populations within otherwise-growing economies. We have a whole literature on the rift in our own society between those with skills adaptable to an information era and those without. From another angle, Afrocentric scholars argue the particular inspiration of Africa, and African colleagues point out how little is still known of "endogenous knowledge." There remain classical terrains of enquiry on which there are still only one or two major works, such as African theories and practices of rhetoric, moral philosophy and jurisprudence. Research on Africa, by African scholars as well as ourselves, is not just a geographical stake in an "area studies" world; it is a contribution to the understanding of global phenomena and common human experience that has made African cultures and societies "special cases."
As we all enter a new era of scholarship, where work is more tailored to specific themes and constituencies, we risk to diminish and to starve the basic research endeavor in Africa. The constituents are few, poor or over-convinced that they already have the right answers in models that come from elsewhere. Identifying themes and intellectual networks, building constituencies and responding to them is hard work. The basic assets, however, have been laid down during the past two eras, so strategic infusions in effort and resources would bring much higher returns than they cost. We have a cadre of junior people, who would be full participants in the endeavor, that is far better than any logic of the material costs and benefits available in this branch of study could possibly explain.
The community of academic scholars has been facing reduced resources
since the early 1980s, so there is a great deal of experience of what works.
There exist both a wide range of different expertise, and a few people
who have been thinking programmatically for many years. The leadership
has begun to turn over, and now includes more African-Americans, women
and younger men who are ready to recognize the need for change and embrace
it. These people will carry on for many more years, because they are clearly
valued in their universities which have-on the whole and surprisingly-protected
African Studies from the rounds of initial cuts. But they may not be replaced,
for a variety of reasons that the following list of possible strategic
interventions could help to counteract. All have been mentioned in the
text; they are pulled out here as a summary.
* Undergraduate programs in Africa would benefit from being specialized by skill or discipline, by including a work/internship component, and by giving special attention to African-American students.
* Long term dissertation research needs to be protected and ensured.
* Faculty and scholar interchanges in most places outside of Southern Africa would benefit from working with networks, for thematic purposes, with flexible locations, rather than with institutions, for generalized purposes, on a strict partnership basis.
* Special attention needs to be focused on the junior faculty
in Africa, such as resources to bring them to international meetings on
their own topics of expertise (i.e., different from attendance at generalized
meetings such as the ASA annual conference). The networks of organizations
such as CODESRIA and AERC (African Economic Research Consortium) could
help with identifying potential candidates.
* We should make a major effort at better preparation of students for field research: through courses, local research practicums and innovative language teaching.
* We should explore and encourage the combination of shorter-term field research with analysis of databases (not only quantitative and scientific data, but including media reports and other modern textual sources).
We have no solid data on the African-American student body in African Studies. Their eligibility for minority fellowships at the entry level at almost all institutions protects them from the statistically-expectable elimination (due to their numbers in the pool) that could result when there are so few entering students, as there are in most of our disciplines. The same may not be true for field research funds which have become very scarce. We may be wasting at the research stage some of the talent and training that has been cultivated at the coursework stage.
* It is worth studying the participation of African-American students in field research, with a view to making sure that the current extremely tight budgets, with very limited targeted programs, do not effectively discourage or eliminate them.
Just as African Studies moved from graduate to undergraduate teaching in the 1970s, we now have to incorporate professional schools and students from programs other than the classic core, including the scientific disciplines engaged with environmental, health and population issues.
* We need to increase a presence in the professional schools and build further on collaboration with the sciences.
The disciplines have been both a strength and the Achilles heel of the effort to internationalize the curriculum. It is they, and not area studies, that have blocked the study of the rest of the world. Economics has been particularly powerful in this regard. The only solid claim to representation that African Studies has within the disciplines is intellectual originality, not a generalized need to know about the world. We will continue to survive on this basis as in the past, but not necessarily with as strong a capacity as is needed to address all the agendas and to ensure context-sensitivity in global studies.
* Interdisciplinearity needs reconfirming, in course work and research, because otherwise efforts to internationalize will again be thwarted, regardless of the names of programs.
* Different combinations of disciplinary studies than we have had in the past need to be encouraged.
There is a cadre of junior-level faculty (or just tenured), who have a good grip on both quantitative and other methods. There are no junior faculty awards in our field (as far as I know), unlike in the sciences where they seem to abound, and no ways of targeting resources to them for collaborative and programmatic work.
* Some strategic funding or recognition award could be offered
to junior faculty who bridge the disciplines in new ways: to offer recognition
and to use to help organize networks around key issues in current studies.
* We have to relate to more of these organizations, and compete along thematic lines. The pervasive image of Africa as marginal is going to create barriers to convincing funders of the general relevance of African Studies but there's no alternative, and the international/global thrust offers a good forum.
If I am correct that we are moving towards more constituency-oriented research, then the African Studies community will need to be more active in defining and negotiating what needs to be done. There is every sign that scholars are, in fact, being consulted and brought into discussion of Africa to a greater degree than was the case in the 1980s, which creates tremendous time pressures in the context of university demands. Some of our colleagues are serving in so many capacities-from public education about Rwanda to brainstorming about potential innovations in methods teaching and addressing multiculturalism and minority politics on campus-that it's hard to imagine how they still produce scholarship (which they do). Some of the impression of diffuseness in the field is strictly a function of the localistic "brush-fire" approach to "matters arising."
* There need to be something like one-semester "public service leaves" for some senior faculty members, explicitly to engage with formulation of approaches to the key programmatic problems that face us all.
The Joint Committee on African Studies of the Social Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies has the confidence of the African Studies community and well represents our network mode of organization. At critical moments it has provided leadership for the field as a whole. The committee on Africa remains a single committee after the SSRC reorganization, but with a very limited fellowship budget.
* The committee needs a budget and a mandate for developing an orientation for the next few years (a "mission statement") towards reconfiguring its activities.
In the spirit of building on assets that already exist, the differing bases of African Studies at different universities needs embracing as a strength. The response to the current round of proposals indicates great enthusiasm for opportunities to build on unique local assets such as a museum collection, library, or links to what is probably the largest epidemiology center in the world (the CDC in Atlanta).
* A regular competition for small planning grants in African Studies would offer the seed money for the local initiatives that will become more important in the next era.
* It could be useful to go a large step farther than an individual report, to organize a round of collective discussion, possibly using the report as a basis. People have suggested this to me.
We have the Internet, but probably not the right kind of organizations to respond to the exigencies of the moment that are presented to us on the screen and in the press.
* We need to devise better ways, under the present circumstances, to fulfill the civic function that area studies was supposed to take on, namely engaging with the public on the issues affecting the area of the world in which we work.
Jane I. Guyer, Copyright 1996