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The Decline of the Africanists' Africa and the Rise of New Africas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2019

William Martin  and
Michael West
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Extract

Our thesis may be simply stated: There is a specter hanging over African studies: the specter of irrelevance both within and outside the academy. Indeed, African studies, as constructed in the North American academy over the past four decades, is dying.

Type
African Studies; Past, Present and Future
Information
African Issues , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , Spring 1995 , pp. 24 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1995

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References

Notes

1 For our purposes here, we would provisionally define “Africanists” as those located in Euro-North American institutions of higher learning and self-defined as specialists on continental Africa.

2 Michaels, Marguerite, “Retreat from Africa,” Foreign Policy, vol. 72, no.l, 93–108.Google Scholar

3 Richard D. Lambert, Language and Area Studies Review, Philadelphia: The American Academy of Political and Social Science, monograph no. 17, 1973.

4 Bay, Edna G., “African Studies,” in National Council of Area Studies Associations, Prospects for Faculty in Area Studies, Stanford, CA: American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 1991, pp. 1–18.Google Scholar

5 Bates, Robert, Mudimbe, V.Y. and O'Barr, Jean, eds., Africa and the Disciplines: the Contributions of Research in Africa to the Social Sciences and Humanities, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. xiii-xiv.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., p. xxi.

7 Hodder-Williams, Richard, “African Studies: Back to the Future,” African Affairs, vol. 85, no. 341 (October 1986), pp. 593–604 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCracken, John, “African History in British Universities: Past, Present, and Future,” African Affairs, vol. 92, no. 367 (April 1993), pp. 239–353 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Twaddle, Michael, “The State of African Studies,” African Affairs, vol. 85, no. 340 (July 1986) pp. 439-45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar