African Studies Centres Around the World

Ute Fendler, Doris Löhr (eds.) African Studies Centres Around the World A Network-Based Inventory African Studies Centres Around the World Ute Fendler & Doris Löhr (eds.) African Studies Centres Around the World A Network-Based Inventory Proceedings of an International Workshop held at the Institute of African Studies, University of Bayreuth, December 2017 Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. AVM – Akademische Verlagsgemeinschaft München 2022 © Thomas Martin Verlagsgesellschaft, München Umschlagabbildung: © Marish/Shutterstock.com Dieses Werk ist als Open-Access-Publikation unter einer Creativ-Commons-Lizenz Namensnennung – Nicht kommerziell – Keine Bearbeitung 4.0 International lizenziert und unter dem DOI 10.23780/9783960915874 abzurufen. 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ISBN (Print) 978-3-95477-138-7 e-ISBN (ePDF) 978-3-96091-587-4 AVM – Akademische Verlagsgemeinschaft München Schwanthalerstr. 81 D-80336 München www.avm-verlag.de 5 Table of contents Ute Fendler & Doris Löhr African Studies Centres Around the World – A Network-Based Inventory 7 Akintúndé Akínyémí Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future – Fifty Years of Teaching and Research on African Studies at the University of Florida 15 Aparajita Biswas African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges 37 Rina Cáceres Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants – The Case of Central America and Costa Rica 59 Yongkyu Chang The History of African Studies in Korea – Forty Years of Its Academic Development 81 Marta E. Cordiés Jackson The African Presence in the Caribbean: Some Considerations 101 John H. Hanson The African Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington (USA) 115 Lungisile Ntsebeza African Studies at UCT: An Overview 125 Livio Sansone Challenges and New Possibilities – African Studies in Brazil and the South-South Connection 145 José da Silva Horta / Carlos Almeida Historicity: The Primacy of Contexts, Connections, and Networks – The Case of the International Project “African Ivories in the Atlantic World” 161 6 Table of contents Petr Skalník African Studies in East-Central Europe 181 Céline Thiriot Is there a French Touch to African Studies? 195 About the Contributors 215 7 African Studies Centres Around the World – A Network-Based Inventory Ute Fendler & Doris Löhr Introduction Over the last 20 years, the wide field of Area Studies has been subjected to critical scrutiny by insiders and outsiders of academia. African Studies were no exception. Most of the debates about the past, present, and future of Area Studies seem to be conducted by scholars based in the Global North, i.e., Europe and North America. Yet, scholars in the field of African Studies in countries such as Brazil or Cuba, with their peculiar historical relationship with Africa and therewith their own ideas regarding the development of African Studies in the 20th/21st century, very often maintain different networks that intersect only partially with those in the Global North. As a result, these voices are not heard or recognized globally. The knowledge about African Studies centres in Asia is also scant, although some were established three or four decades ago. This is due to the specific contexts in which African Studies (centres) were launched, very often entangled with the interests of the respective countries who promoted research in Africa to pursue their own political, economic, and academic agendas. Parallel to the rise of critical Area Studies approaches in the Global North (e.g., Mielke & Hornidge 2017), the long-established African Studies centres in Africa were the bases of critical debates about academic knowledge production in regional or continental contexts, oftentimes with little involvement of their colleagues from other regions of the world. The connections with other centres on the continent, thus reinforcing, expanding, and intensifying the continent-based African Studies network, seems to be a more recent phenomenon in spite of the long-standing research done by centres like the Institute of African Studies (est. 1962) in Accra, Ghana, the Center of African Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa (est. 1976, with first chairs estab- 8 Ute Fendler & Doris Löhr lished as early as 1921), or the Center of African Studies at the University Eduardo Mondlane (1976) in Maputo, Mozambique. International interest also arose with the foundation of the African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) in 2012. The awareness of the different processes has reached the Global North only lately, so the lack of data is a self-produced knowledge gap. Inspired by the strong wish to expand existing international and global networks, and to foster new forms of exchange and cooperation, the main objective of the conference “African Studies – Multiple and Relational” held at the University of Bayreuth in December 2017 was therefore to advance knowledge about the agendas and outlines of various African Studies centres, bringing together responsible voices from all continents. The present volume, “African Studies Centres Around the World,” gathers some of the contributions that can close this knowledge gap, at least partially. In addition to casting a wider net by convening representatives of African Studies institutions from the continent and beyond, the conference also pursued thematic objectives and questions related to the field. How does the wide range of approaches to the study of Africa on a global level reflect the diversity of regional and multidisciplinary viewpoints? To what extent do methods and theories depend on regional or disciplinary contexts and on their particular relation to each other and to the African context? How does this affect research on and in Africa? Could the exchange support the critical revision of African Studies in each country and open up new ways of collaboration by creating synergies in joint research? Taking into consideration comprehensive approaches to a complex field, we invited researchers in African Studies from different disciplinary backgrounds and different continents also to reflect on notions of multiplicity and relationality and to engage with these concepts and/ or to put forward other concepts that can guide the search for new approaches in African Studies. African Studies are an important and interdisciplinary research focus at the University of Bayreuth. This was already manifested in the founding deed of the university in 1975 and confirmed in the current university development plan. The Institute of African Studies (IAS), founded in 1990, forms the institutional umbrella for all specifically Africa-related institutions at the University of Bayreuth. These include Iwalewahaus (where contemporary African culture is documented, researched, and African Studies Centres Around the World – A Network-Based Inventory 9 taught; founded in 1981), the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence (established in 2019), as well as the “Research Centre Africa,” which is currently being planned. Further interdisciplinary collaborative research takes place within the framework of the Bavarian Research Institute for African Studies (BRIAS). In addition, there are many other individual projects by members of the IAS and their working groups, such as two research programs funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and numerous projects acquired through the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG). One of the milestones is the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS, established 2007). The work of the doctoral candidates is central to original and forward-looking Africa-related research on an international level. The Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies (2012-2019) is another hub for early career scholars that has become part of the Cluster. The Bayreuth Academy engages in academic exchange between Africa-related and other fields of research, with an intensive fellow program, outreach activities, and innovative working formats involving postdoctoral researchers. As the central coordination point for the Africa focus, the IAS bundles and coordinates Africa-related research and teaching, stimulates interdisciplinary research projects, supports Africa-related third-party funding applications, and promotes cooperation with African universities and research institutions, with national and international Africa institutes, and other relevant organizations. Its more than 80 members, including around 40 professors, comprise 40 different subject areas like cultural studies, linguistics, economics, law, geosciences, biosciences, and engineering. Since 2019, the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence has been the major research group of the IAS. The Cluster sees itself as a transformative space for the systematic further development of African Studies through innovative transdisciplinary research together with strong partner universities in Africa.1 1 See https://www.ias.uni-bayreuth.de/en/The-Institute/index.html and https://www. africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/en/index.html 10 Ute Fendler & Doris Löhr Outline The volume at hand is a contribution to the dissemination of knowledge about the history of centres of African Studies as well as the research structures and foci based on first-hand information about African Studies centres and regional networks covering four continents.2 The dynamic and long-standing cooperation and exchange of networks of the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at the University of Bayreuth is the basis of the interactions at the conference. The IAS, as a founding member of the Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS), a research network of European Studies centres which aims to create synergies between experts and institutions, has long-standing established and institutionalized networks with its European partners. The objective of this volume is not to give an overview of all existing institutes and partners, but rather to focus on some cooperation lines that could and were meant to stimulate new paths in the networks. Some of the partners joined the network more recently; not all of them were aware of existing institutions in their “neighbourhood.” Some of the directors met for the first time and used the opportunity for discussion. The eleven chapters in this volume show the very diverse history of African Studies centres all over, subtly underpinning the need for more exchange and research on conceptualizations in African Studies. We are only able to show a small number of examples of the existing African Studies institutions. Not all contributions during the conference are in this volume due to various reasons. We highly appreciated listening to the lecture of the Director of CODESRIA, Godwin Murunga. Furthermore, the Director of the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at the University of Ghana, Akosua Adomako Ampofo, gave a highly insightful talk with reflections on the history 2 We are aware of other existing publications in this field. The book of Jacob U. Gordon and Stephen Owoahene-Acheampong, Trends in African Studies gives an overview of Institutes of African Studies on the five continents. The book has big merits but has also leaves some gaps, as the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais (CEAO) at the Federal University of Bahia is only mentioned in the list, as the Institute of African Studies at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul is not mentioned, neither the Institute of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth, the latter founded in 1990. Most publications on African Studies centres are incomplete. So the editors are confident that the volume at hand will still fill some gaps and serves in complementary usage to previous works. African Studies Centres Around the World – A Network-Based Inventory 11 of African Studies in Ghana and the valuable concepts and thoughts developed over five decades, insights that are too seldom taken into account in the ongoing discussions on and in African Studies. Some of these thoughts can be found in her article: “Re-viewing Studies on Africa. #Black Lives Matter, and Envisioning the Future of African Studies.”3 It was complementary to the talk by Lungisile Ntsebeza whose text is central to the volume at hand.4 Being aware of the limitations of these insights into specific regional and historical settings that influenced and orientated African Studies, it still testifies to the vision of possible changes that can evolve in processes of exchange and collaboration. The network, launched during the 2017 conference in Bayreuth, met again at a joint conference at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) in Seoul in 20185 and at the Center for African Studies at the University of Cape Town (UCT), in 2019.6 While the pandemic interrupted the series of conferences, some workshops and webinars sustained the exchange between members of the growing network. With the new project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) within the framework of the German Excellence initiative, “Cluster of Excellence – Africa Multiple: Reconfiguring African Studies” in 2019, a new layer was created in the context of Bayreuth’s African Stud- 3 In: „African Studies Association, 2016, doi: 10.1017/asr.2016.34, 7-29. 4 We also highly appreciated the papers and discussions with the colleagues Giorgio Banti (University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Italy), Hui Jiang (School of Asian & African Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, China), David Doepel (Africa Research Group, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia), Carlos Fernandes (Centro de Estudos Africanos, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mozambique), Yahia Abou El Farah (L’Institut des Etudes Africaines, Université de Rabat, Morocco), Jan-Bart Gewald (African Studies Centre, Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands), Angelica Baschiera (School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Great Britain) and Godwin Murunga (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, Dakar, Senegal). 5 We herewith acknowledge the generous funding of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for most of the participants outside of Asia. Some of the conference papers were published by Yongkyu Chang and Eun Kyung Kim (eds.), African Politics and Economics in Globalized World. Kim’s co-authored work presented at the 2018 conference is forthcoming as a scholarly article in African Spectrum. 6 The conference papers will be published. 12 Ute Fendler & Doris Löhr ies. The cooperation with the four African Cluster Centres7 who – besides existing collaborations with other centres of and for African Studies – will definitely bring in new perspectives and dynamics in the discussions on African Studies on and from the continent in international exchanges. The eleven contributions of the proceedings of the conference “African Studies – Multiple and Relational,” contain one from University of Cape Town, the oldest centre on the African continent, three from Europe, two from the United States, three from Central America, the Caribbean, and Brazil, and two from Asia. It is an eclectic introduction to some aspects of the ongoing critical reflections on the historical and political development of African Studies at various institutes of African Studies on four continents.8 The contributions are mainly intended as a review of and insights into the history of African Studies (centres), and do not represent the respective countries. The articles are organized alphabetically by author instead of by region. 1. Akintúndé Akínyémí (University of Florida): Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future: Fifty Years of Teaching and Research on African Studies at the University of Florida 2. Aparajita Biswas (Centre for African Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Mumbai, India): African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges 7 The Centres are located at the Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), the Institute of African And Diasporic Studies at the University of Lagos (Nigeria), at Moi University in Eldoret (Kenya) and Rhodes University in Makhanda (South Africa), see https://www.africamultiple.uni-bayreuth.de/en/african-cluster-centres/ index.html. 8 During the poster session, 12 institutions used the opportunity to present their structures and research foci. These were: Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (South Korea): “The Past, Present and Future of IAS”, Legon (Ghana): “IAS at 50 and beyond”, SOAS, London (Great Britain): “African Studies”, Centre for History, University of Lisbon (Portugal): “African Studies”, Center for Global Studies, Universidad de Costa Rica: “African Studies”, Sciences Po, Bordeaux (France): “Les Afriques dans le monde”, University of Cape Town (South Africa): “Rethinking Africa”, Indiana University, Bloomington (USA): “African Studies Programm International School”, The „Fernando Ortiz“ African Cultural Center, Santiago de Cuba (Cuba), Università L’Orientale, Napoli (Italy): “African Transitions - Linguistic and cultural areas of transition in Africa”, Center for Afro-Oriental Studies, Salvador da Bahia (Brazil), IAS, University of Bayreuth (Germany): “30 Years of Africa-related research at IAS”. African Studies Centres Around the World – A Network-Based Inventory 13 3. Rina Cáceres Gómez (Chair for African History, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica): Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and its Descendants. The Case of Central America and Costa Rica 4. Yongkyu Chang (Institute of African Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea): The History of African Studies in Korea: Forty Years of Its Academic Development 5. Marta Cordiés Jackson (Centro Cultural Africano Fernando Ortiz, Universidad del Oriente, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba): The African Presence in the Caribbean: Some Considerations 6. John H. Hanson (Indiana University, Bloomington): The African Studies Program at Indiana University -- Bloomington (U.S.A.) 7. Lungisile Ntsebeza (Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa): African Studies at UCT: An Overview 8. José da Silva Horta & Carlos Almeida (Centre for History of the University of Lisbon, Portugal): Historicity: The Primacy of Contexts, Connections, and Networks - The Case of the International Project “African Ivories in the Atlantic World” 9. Livio Sansone (Centre of Afro-Oriental Studies of the Federal University of Bahia, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil): Challenges and New Possibilities: African Studies in Brazil 10. Petr Skalník (Philosophical Faculty, University Hradec Králové, Czech Republic): African Studies in East-Central Europe 11. Céline Thiriot (Les Afriques dans le Monde, Université de Bordeaux, France): Is there a French Touch to African Studies? Acknowledgements We thank the Institute of African Studies at University of Bayreuth for supporting the editors’ concept of the workshop ‘African Studies – Multiple and Relational.’ Besides the financial support, we appreciate the assistance in terms of logistics. We are extremely grateful that so many colleagues made their way from homes all over the world to Bayreuth in December 2017, defying the snow and contributing to great discussions. We hope that the network will expand and contribute to more exchange. 14 Ute Fendler & Doris Löhr References Adomako Ampofo, Akosua (2016), ‘Re-viewing Studies on Africa; #Black Lives Matter, and Envisioning the Future of African Studies.’ African Studies Review, 59:2, pp. 7-29. Doi: 10.1017/asr.2016.34 Awedoba, A.K.; Gordon, J.; Sutherland-Addy, E. & Ampofo Adomako, A. (2017), Revisiting African studies in a globalized world. Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana 50th anniversary conference, Legon : Smartline, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. Branch, Adam (2018), ‘Decolonizing the African Studies Centre.’ The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 36:2, Autumn 2018, pp. 73-91. Chang, Yongkyu & Eun Kyung, Kim (eds.) (2019), African Politics and Economics in Globalized World, Seoul: Dahae. Fernandes, Carlos (2021), ‘Revolution, Political Disillusionment and Intellectual Legacies: Connections between two Research Institutions from Mozambique (1976-2017)’. The Journal of African History, 33p. (in print). Gordon, Jacob U. & Owohaene-Acheampong, Stephen (2016), Trends in African Studies, New York: Nova Publishers. Mielke, Katja & Hornidge, Anna-Katharina (eds.) (2017), Area Studies at the Crossroads. Knowledge Production after the Mobility Turn, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-598349. Nhlapo, Thandabantu & Garuba, Harry (eds.) (2012), In the Post-Colonial University, University of Cape Town/Centre for African Studies. Ntsebeza, Lungisile (2020), ‘The ebb and flow of the fortunes of African studies at the University of Cape Town: an overview’, Social Dynamics, 46:2, pp. 356-372. DOI: 10.1080/02533952.2020.1815335. Owoahene-Acheampong, Stephen & Gordon, Jacob U. (2015), ‘African Studies. Knowledge Production and Beyond.’ Contemporary Journal of African Studies, 3:1, pp. 93-119. Spies, Eva & Seesemann, Rüdiger (2016), ‘Pluralicity and Relationality: New Directions in African Studies.’ Africa Today, 63:2 pp. 132-139. 15 Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future – Fifty Years of Teaching and Research on African Studies at the University of Florida Akintúndé Akínyémí University of Florida Introduction The Center for African Studies (CAS) at the University of Florida (UF) was established in 1964 as an academic unit to (1) promote and facilitate teaching and interdisciplinary research and scholarship on Africa in all the disciplines of the university, with emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa; (2) disseminate knowledge about Africa to the wider community through interactions with and outreach programs to schools and other academic and professional organizations, community groups, and businesses; and (3) sustain contact and interactive linkages with individuals and institutions on the African continent and worldwide. My aim in this essay is to discuss the achievements of the Center for African Studies (CAS) at the University of Florida in the first fifty years of its existence. In doing this, I will pay particular attention to institutional support received from different levels of university administration, curriculum design, and outreach activities. Institutional Commitment At all levels of administration, the University of Florida has unequivocally committed to CAS as a center of excellence and key component of the internationalization goal highlighted in the university’s strategic Quality Enhancement Plan (Miller et al. 2014). Faculty and students with interest and involvement in research and education on Africa are found in nearly all of the disciplines and professional schools on our campus. The long-term commitment to Africa has led to new interdisciplinary collaborations and has stimulated faculty and students who had previously 16 Akintúndé Akínyémí worked in or on Africa to undertake research and involvement there. Support from the federal government Title VI National Resource Center and Foreign Language in Area Studies programs has helped leverage a range of additional funding and activities in teaching, research, and outreach supported both by university and external funding. The University of Florida and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have sustained a significant commitment to African Studies. This strength is partially due to the fact that the administrators of the university hired Africa specialists during the past few years, when other institutions in the country were not doing so because of the economic meltdown. This commitment was most recently demonstrated in 2014 by the authorization, under the university’s “Pre-eminence Plan”1 of seven new tenured or tenure-track Africanist faculty positions, including two new senior level hires, within the strategic interdisciplinary theme of public health and social change in Africa. In addition to these positions, new Africanist hires were authorized in Political Science, Medical Geography, and Art History. The university Provost Office and International Center also fund a program evaluation specialist, whose main responsibilities include serving all National Resource Centers in the university – including the Centers for African Studies, Latin American Studies, and European Studies. This further underlines the university’s commitment to effective management and ongoing improvement of international programs. In this and other respects, the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida has generated synergies at multiple levels and initiated many diverse collaborative projects and activities. The University of Florida has sustained a substantial financial investment in African Studies across campus. The university’s annual commitment in form of salary and fringe benefits to faculty and programs funding related to CAS now exceeds $14 million, over $5 million of which involves core Africanist faculty, Center staff and activities, and Africa-related library collections and personnel (Goldman 2014). 1 For more information on the success of the Preeminence Plan, see Brown 2018. The total number of new hires according to Brown 2018 is 120. Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future 17 Curriculum Design The Center for African Studies2 at the University of Florida is not designed as a degree-awarding academic unit. Rather, the Center offers basic General Education courses such as African Experience, African Humanities, and Africa in World History. In addition, the Center supports Africa-focused degree programs in other units. For instance, it supports the BA degree program in Foreign Languages and Literatures (African Languages Track) of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and collaborates with the Center for Latin American Studies to offer a Masters of Sustainable Development Practice degree. Furthermore, the Center offers interdisciplinary Minor and Certificate to undergraduate and graduate students in 4 tracks designed to complement a wide array of disciplinary and professional baccalaureate majors. These tracks are: Track One: Language and Linguistics; Track Two: Arts and Literature; Track Three: Culture, History, and Politics; and Track Four: Environment, Resources, and Development. In the last ten years, more than 400 undergraduate students completed minors in African Studies, and they represented 42 disciplinary majors and eight colleges across the university. The Center’s curriculum at both undergraduate and graduate levels has been systematically strengthened in recent years through the regular development of courses who focus their content solely on Africa, which now total over 150. The Center also offers another set of almost 200 courses that have substantial Africa-focused content. Enhanced course options have been made possible by new faculty positions within the Center and include a broad array of disciplines as well as many interdisciplinary courses. The African studies curricular options at both the undergraduate and graduate levels are open to students from across the university and are designed to complement majors in all disciplines and across professional schools. For instance, the Masters of Sustainable Development Practice degree co-developed by the Centers for African Studies and Latin American Studies, provides a highly innovative professional graduate training program. 2 For more in-depth information about the information provided in the following section, see Center for African Studies 2018a. 18 Akintúndé Akínyémí Undergraduate Instructional Program The University of Florida instructional program in African Studies is built on exceptional faculty strengths in a wide range of fields.3 The over 100 Africanist faculty-held appointments in 45 departments and schools across 14 colleges, as well as in the University International Center, the museum, and the libraries. As intended, the addition of faculty appointed within the Center has significantly strengthened the instructional program in African Studies, enhancing course offerings in both depth and breadth. Thematically-defined faculty positions have been particularly valuable in building interdisciplinary courses and training programs. The new strategic and pre-eminence hires made in the last five years have also contributed significantly to exceptionally strong programs in key areas and disciplines. Department or Academic Unit African Studies Agricultural Education Agriculture and Bio Engineering Agronomy Anthropology Architecture Art History Biology Construction Development Economics Education English Environmental Engineering Community Sciences Fisheries Resource Economics Forestry Geography 3 Highly Africa Focus 32 10 1 9 1 2 7 5 Moderately Africa Focus 4 2 1 4 30 3 2 2 8 2 2 4 4 2 1 9 8 12 Total courses 36 2 1 4 40 1 12 3 2 8 4 2 11 4 2 1 9 8 17 For more in-depth information about the information provided in the following section, see Center for African Studies 2018h. 19 Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future Department or Academic Unit History Honors Program Journalism Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Law Linguistics Music Political Science Public Health Religion Theater and Dance Tourism Wildlife Ecology Women’s Studies Total Highly Africa Focus 15 2 1 4 4 3 2 3 3 1 2 107 Moderately Africa Focus 2 4 8 9 8 3 6 5 4 2 4 7 2 164 Total courses 18 2 5 12 13 11 5 9 5 7 3 4 9 2 271 Figure 1: Number of Current Courses with Africa Content (Goldman 2014) The Table above summarizes the broad range of recent and current course offerings in African Studies. The Center will have taught 271 courses with Africa content in 33 departments, of which 107 focus solely on Africa. A variety of new instructors with a specific thematic focus have been hired, thus maximizing impact by enhancing instructional capacity across disciplinary boundaries. The Center has also grown demand for a range of courses by inciting students to study Africa earlier in their degree programs. It offers courses with Africa-focused content every term, providing the bases for further study and advanced courses on Africa. As part of an ongoing strategy to strengthen ties with professional schools on campus, the Center has collaborated particularly closely with the College of Business Administration and the College of Design, Construction, and Planning. CAS faculty have developed a new course on African Business Culture for the College of Business Administration and proposed to continue their innovative Research Tutorial Abroad program which allows faculty to create business-focused research opportunities in Africa for undergraduates. The Africanist faculty in the College of Design, Construction, and Planning have modified some of 20 Akintúndé Akínyémí their existing courses and developed research abroad experience with the Center’s support. The recent hires in health-related fields will lead to a further strengthening of an ‘Africa’ focus within the university’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, which already encompasses a broad range of professional disciplines. CAS faculty affiliates in other colleges continue to offer courses with Africa-related content in the colleges of Public Health and Health Professions; Law; Education; Health and Human Performance; and Agricultural and Life Sciences. Following the Center’s successful effort to build interdisciplinary strengths in key thematic areas, it has focused on consolidating deep training programs with an array of undergraduate courses options in the key disciplines for Area Studies. The University of Florida possesses notable strengths in anthropology, geography, and languages, as well as very strong curriculums in political science, history, and religion, which will be further deepened by the wave of 500 new hires being made in 2017-2019. Faculty appointments within the Center have allowed to foster specialized courses in innovative areas, thus deepening disciplinary coverage that departments are unlikely to create otherwise, such as History of Islam in Africa (History), Human Rights in Africa (Political Science), HIV/AIDS in Africa (Anthropology), Contemporary African Arts (Art History), and Africa in the Global Economy (Economics). Graduate Studies Instructional Program With regards to graduate studies, the hiring priorities of the university have been targeted to ensure graduate degrees with strong Africanist concentrations in key Area Studies disciplines.4 There have been recent hires as well as pending hires in Medical Anthropology, Medical Geography, History, Linguistics, Political Science, Religion, and Art History. In many cases, faculty have added an Africa focus to their research and teaching, so that, to give just one example, research into climate change in Africa has been increasingly put into focus. Interdisciplinary professionally-oriented training programs with particular Africanist strengths are also available in the School of Natural Resources and Environment and Environmental and Global Health. The university’s Arts in Medicine program now offers an MA degree and has done pioneering work 4 For more in-depth information about the information provided in the following section, see Center for African Studies 2018b. 21 Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future at medical institutions in African countries, including Gambia, Kenya, and Rwanda. The strength of Africanist training in a wide range of graduate programs across the university is reflected in the diversity of disciplines of Africanist MAs and PhDs completed at the University of Florida in recent years. College/Discipline Agriculture and Life Sciences Agricultural Comm and Ed Agronomy Animal Science Entomology and Nematology Food & Resource Economics Forest Resources/Conservation Interdisciplinary Ecology Plant Pathology Wildlife Ecology Conservation Soil and Water Science Fine Arts Art/Art History Music Liberal Arts and Sciences Anthropology English Geography Geology History Linguistics Foreign Languages and Literatures Political Science Sociology Biology Professional Schools Design and Planning Communications Economics Education Engineering Health Services Research MA/MS PhD 6 2 1 2 12 8 8 0 7 1 5 7 0 0 15 13 8 1 7 3 13 2 3 4 16 3 8 1 12 10 2 4 2 10 62 7 15 0 7 7 4 30 0 13 4 7 0 1 5 0 0 1 1 4 9 1 22 Akintúndé Akínyémí College/Discipline Journalism Tourism Veterinary Medicine Total MA/MS 0 0 1 148 PhD 1 2 0 230 Figure 2: Graduate Degrees Awarded at UF 1985-2013 (Goldman 2014) Collectively, UF training programs have had a significant and lasting impact in terms of the national supply of Africa specialists, in higher education, government, NGOs and the private sector. The increased instructional capacity of the Center has resulted in broader course offerings and steady enrolment growth. In two of the Center’s four areas of strategic focus, it has initiated new introductory courses that are designed to provide a broad overview to interested students across a range of disciplines and lead them into more specialized courses. Pilot versions of the new courses, “Health and Society in Africa” and “African Environmental Issues”, attracted a diverse cast of students majoring in Environmental, Biological, and Health Sciences as well as Social Sciences and History. This, along with the Master of Arts degree in Development Practice, resulted in an increased supply of specialists across numerous fields. As shown in Table 2 above, the University of Florida graduate degrees on African topics have been awarded in 36 different departments across colleges and professional programs. Many of these graduates currently hold positions across a broad range of sectors summarized below: Current Positions Higher Education teaching K-12 Teaching International Organizations Foreign government / university US government State / Local government Private Sector Unemployed/Unknown Deceased Graduate School Total MA/MS 23 5 9 5 9 6 18 47 1 25 148 Figure 3: Graduate Placement as of 2013 (Goldman 2014) PhD 89 3 28 44 13 3 23 18 4 5 230 Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future 23 Thus, the Center’s activities address the great national need for increased understanding of international issues both by the public and specialists, and especially the cultures, languages, and socio-economic conditions of Africa. In addition, the Center contributes to some areas of particularly acute national need in the area of government service, as reflected in the competitive and invitational priorities. The Center’s strategic initiative on Muslim societies in Africa, for instance, trains specialists who will generate important new knowledge on these societies and also contributes to broader public understanding via significant outreach programming. The Master of Arts degree in Sustainable Development Practice,5 as well as other professional school collaborations, are also particularly important in addressing national needs for the strong Area Studies training necessary for US professionals to be competitive in an internationalized world. African Language Instructional Program The effort to teach African languages at the University of Florida began with the inception of the Center for African Studies in 1964.6 The Center’s African language instructional program solidified further with the elevation of the Center to a full-fledged Title VI federally-funded graduate level program in 1976. It reached a further elevation with the establishment of the Department of African and Asian Languages and Literatures in 1982, in which African languages were taught until 2008, when the University restructured its regionally-based language departments to create a single globally-based one: the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. The UF Program in African Languages (UF-PAL) evolved from a one-language program (Swahili) in 1967 to a three-language program (Swahili, Arabic and Yoruba) in 1982, a fourlanguage program (Swahili, Arabic, Yoruba and Akan) by the late 1980s and, with the addition of Shona in the early 1990s, a five-language program. However, following the emergence of a new and democratic South Africa in 1994, Shona was later replaced by Xhosa in 2000, and Xhosa was replaced by Zulu in 2015. As the interest in studying Africa in more 5 For more information on this MA program, see Master of Sustainable Development Practice 2018h. 6 For more in-depth information about the information provided in the following section, see Center for African Studies 2018i. 24 Akintúndé Akínyémí detail increased among the faculty, the need to attract more students in the African studies increased, while also prompting the addition of more languages to the program, including Wolof and Amharic. UF African language courses offer a wide regional coverage of Africa as well as corresponding closely to areas of faculty expertise and graduate student research. Currently, the Center’s experienced and professional instructors regularly teach seven African languages: Akan (Twi), Amharic, Arabic, Swahili, Wolof, Yoruba, and Zulu. All the languages are taught at three levels of instruction – beginning, intermediate, and advanced. Swahili and Yoruba are also offered up to the superior level through such courses as Swahili/Yoruba Oral literature and Readings in Swahili/Yoruba literature, Swahili Texts and Context. As such they are able to help graduate students who conduct research in the areas where the languages are spoken as well as certify the linguistic competence of students who speak these languages. After having invested significant resources in African language development, the UF has built one of the leading African language programs in the United States. The languages are taught by five fulltime faculty and five graduate teaching assistants. The Center has invested continuously in pedagogic training for faculty and teaching assistants; supported three successful applications for the Fulbright-Hays Yoruba Language Group Projects Abroad (GPA); and sponsored faculty participation in leadership roles in national efforts to improve African language pedagogy. The Center’s language program has been designated nationally as a Language Flagship Center for the teaching of African languages since winning the first competition of the African Flagship Languages Initiative (AFLI) – Domestic Intensive Summer program in 2011 (Boren Awards 2018). What began as a pilot project for two languages soon turned into a full-fledged program and expanded to include five more languages. With the exception of Advanced French, all the languages are offered at three levels of instruction – beginning, intermediate, and advanced. During the first five years of the AFLI program, the grant was offered on a yearly basis. However, due to the significant success recorded during that period, the funding agencies not only decided to make it a four-year cycle grant, but also adopted the model to establish other regional flagship languages initiatives, including the South Asian Flagship Languages (SAFLI) and Indonesian Flagship Languages (IFLI). The AFLI-Domestic Intensive Program is targeted to serve Boren-funded students, but it is also open to students with other sources of funding Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future 25 such as Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Summer Fellowships (Boren Awards 2018). A total of 395 students have participated in the program between 2011 and 2018, 350 of which were Boren scholars and fellows who proceeded to Overseas for Fall or academic year immersion programs in African countries, and 45 were FLAS fellows (Akinyemi 2018). Outreach Activities The Center for African Studies at the University of Florida maintains an extensive outreach program to K-12 schools (consisting of elementary, middle, and high schools), community colleges and universities, business and media communities, and the general public.7 In the last ten years, the Center reached almost 9,500 K-12 teachers through summer institutes, workshops, consultations, or participation in the Center’s diverse activities. In addition, more than 15,000 K-12 teachers and students attended special talks and in-service presentations. Together with the UF’s College of Education, the Center offered workshops to about 300 graduate students training in the Site-based Implementation of Teacher Education Program. At the national level, as part of the African Studies Outreach Council, the Center offered teacher-training workshops during the annual conference of the African Studies Association. At the state level, the Center held multiple workshops in conjunction with the Florida Council for Social Studies. On campus, the Center cooperated with the Center for European Studies and Latin American Studies, and the UF Harn Museum to hold teacher workshops, film screenings, and cultural performances. The next Table summarizes the impact of the different outreach activities. 7 For more in-depth information about the information provided in the following section, see Center for African Studies 2018d. 26 Akintúndé Akínyémí Audience Activity Teacher training institutes, in-service workshop, consultations K-12 Teachers Lecture, school presentations Irohin: K-12 lesson plans on Africa JAMBO summer program K-12 Students School presentations; school attendance at outreach events (museum, performing arts, etc.) Curriculum development workshops, institutes, conferences on teaching Africa Post-Secondary Talks, Cultural presentations African Studies Quarterly journal Business Doing Business in Africa workshops, talks, seminars Sub-Saharan Africa Business Environment Report Yearly Participants Impact Inclusion of African content in teach500-650 ing, development of lesson plans on Africa. Effective and cur1,000+ rent teaching on Africa. Lesson plans on Print copies; also Africa made widely available online available for K-12 teachers for free. Seeding interest 15 for further study of African Studies Increased appreciation of and interest in Africa. Events 2,000+ included in curriculum: writing, assignments on Africa, etc. New courses developed or units added on Africa, 100+ sharing of teaching techniques and materials. Increased knowl2,500+ edge, curriculum change Access to current 10,000+ hits research / knowledge. Increased knowledge of methods 120 and opportunities for business in Africa African business Print copies; also information on available online covering Africa 27 Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future Audience Activity Media Covering Africa talks, PR, talks with the media Government Faculty presentations on current issues to Fed employees Community Talks, presentations, films, music / dance performances Carter conference Annual CAS flagship conference to discuss cutting-edge research issues Southeast African Languages and Literatures Forum Annual meeting for regional language professionals African Flagship Languages Initiative Summer intensive language program Yoruba Group Project Abroad Overseas summer intensive language program Interdisciplinary working groups Monthly meeting of faculty and graduate students working on a common topic Yearly Participants Impact Journalists receive advice and informa55 tion for covering Africa Sharing of expertise with government 50-75 officials, improved Africa policy Increased interest and understanding 2,250+ of African cultures and societies Increased interest and understanding 500 of current issues on the continent Regular exchange of pedagogical 100-150 techniques and materials Increase / broadening of national capacity in less 50-65 commonly taught languages, promote advanced specialists Increase / broadening national capacity in less common15-20 ly taught languages, promote advanced specialists 250-300 Increased interest and understanding of issues germane to the working group Figure 4: Summary of Outreach Activities (Goldman 2014) The Center conducts more intensive teacher training through its annual two-week Summer Institute, for which teachers in elementary schools, 28 Akintúndé Akínyémí middle schools and high schools receive continuing education credits towards certification. Institute participants produce teaching materials and lesson plans published annually in the Center’s outreach magazine Irohin: Bringing Africa to the Classroom which is distributed annually to over 1,000 teachers throughout the southeast region, as well as nationally at workshops and conferences. An electronic edition of the publication is also freely available to the public on the Center’s outreach website (Center for African Studies 2018d). In addition, the Center regularly conducts presentations in schools in response to numerous requests from local schools. Each year the Center participates in a Theory of Knowledge Program at an International Baccalaureate high school program, culminating in a full-day event on African religion, politics, and culture for all graduating seniors and their teachers. The Center also created a twoweek summer program - Jambo - which introduces high school students to Swahili language and African themes, thus planting the seeds for future Africanists (Center for African Studies 2018c). The objective of the Center outreach to postsecondary institutions is to assist community colleges and universities in the Center’s area of impact, the southeast region of the United States, to increase African content in their curriculums and improve methods of teaching about Africa. As indicated in Table 4, the Center’s involvement with post-secondary outreach incorporates conferences, workshops, multisession institutes, and individual talks on a variety of topics relating to Africa. Universitywide initiatives in the past years prompted the Center to offer additional specialized outreach on campus as the University of Florida common reading program for incoming students included non-fiction works of African authors, thereby promoting better understanding of Africa among some 6,500 new students each year. These programs provided an opportunity for presentations and cultural performances on Africa across campus, as well as local schools and the community (Goldman 2014). The Southeast Africanists Network (SEAN), sponsored by the Center, brings together about hundred presenters and participants each year, mainly faculty from smaller institutions in the region, including various minority serving institutions and community colleges. This yearly meeting presents opportunity for faculty and graduate students at institutions with smaller African programs to discuss research and effective teaching in regards to Africa and initiate potential collaborations. Since 2010, the Center has joined with the Africa National Resource Center at Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future 29 the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill to co-sponsor a joint annual meeting of SEAN and the Southeastern Regional Seminar in African Studies (SERSAS), and that of the Southeast African Languages and Literatures Forum (SEALLF). These meetings rotate between schools located in the southeast region, thereby opening them to more potential attendees as well as facilitating connections with both centers (Center for African Studies 2018f). Between 2010-2015, the Center has co-sponsored publication (print and online) of the Sub-Saharan African Business Environment Report (SABER) as a major resource for the business community as well as for academic use.8 Using SABER as a resource, Center faculty developed four presentations on the topic of “Business in Africa” for the UF College of Business, Santa Fe College, the Harn Museum, and the UF Learning in Retirement community with more than 500 participants. The Center also cooperates with the UF College of Journalism and Communications through its Covering Africa series, which brings reporters with Africa experience to campus. Center faculty affiliates help organize and present many events for the general public, with a wide range of topics, often in collaboration with other units on campus and / or community groups in the local area as well as the broader regions and, on occasion, at a national level. The UF Harn Museum of Arts has an excellent African collection and is a major venue for public outreach. Together with the museum, the Center sponsors an Africa-themed Museum Night for the public, which draws over 700 people every year. Over a period of 2 years, 2013-14, the museum and the Department of Art History organized a large international exhibit of Central African art and its impacts in the Americas titled Kongo Across the Waters. After five months on the UF campus, the exhibit travelled to Atlanta, Princeton, and New Orleans until mid-2015. The UF’s African music and dance ensemble agbedidi performs regularly on campus as well as in surrounding towns in the southeast region. In addition, the Center co-sponsors Pazeni Sauti, an African choir comprised of UF students. Partnering with the Alachua County Public Library, the Center and UF Oral History Program presented a 2018 symposium that brought musicians, scholars and filmmakers together in Gainesville to discuss hip hop, the visual arts and political activism 8 For more information on SABER, see Center for African Studies 2018e. 30 Akintúndé Akínyémí in Africa. Hip hop artists from Nigeria and Kenya participated in film screening and panel discussions (Goldman 2014). At the national level, the Center’s faculty are frequently invited to give presentations and talks at various levels of government due to their areas of expertise. In the last ten years, Africanist faculty have presented to officials in federal agencies alone. Examples include: a faculty member and advanced graduate students presenting to 120 people at the US Department of State and National Intelligence Council on the political situation in the Sahel; faculty presenting to 50 US embassy personnel in Algeria; and faculty regularly advising US Embassy staff in Addis Ababa (Goldman 2014). In addition, one of the Center’s multidisciplinary discussion groups, the Sahel Research Group, maintains a website intended for use by policy makers, journalists, and the public in addition to students and scholars that provides overviews and up to date information on political and other developments across six countries of the West African Sahel (Sahel Research Group 2018). This is updated by in-country experts throughout the region as well as by UF faculty and graduate students. The Center also publishes the African Studies Quarterly (African Studies Quarterly 2018), an open access peer-reviewed academic journal which provides an important vehicle for timely dissemination of knowledge about Africa for use by both scholars and policymakers. Conclusion This essay aimed to document the strength of the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida. Building on consistently strong support from its home institution and the successful leveraging of federal government funding, the Center has become one of the largest and most wide-ranging African Area Studies centers not only in the United States but globally. For over fifty years, the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida has served as a major national resource for research, training, and outreach about Africa and its peoples, and continues to do so. The University of Florida itself has invested significantly in the resources necessary to carry out all aspects of the Center’s mission. The landmark achievements made in the past notwithstanding, the Center is confronted with a number of challenges. Among these are the preference of students for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines over the field of the Humanities, low student enrolments, and lack of incentives to faculty and students. In the coming Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future 31 years, the Center intends to enhance and expand its program offerings and initiate new efforts that will address these challenges and further extend the impacts of what is done at the Center. The top priority is the development of an interdisciplinary MA degree program in African Studies. The Center’s research mission builds on the unique capacity of centers such as the CAS to stimulate interdisciplinary collaborations and generate synergistic opportunities. It will continue to support innovative programs around the proposed interdisciplinary MA degree, which, hopefully, will bring together faculty and graduate students from across the campus and beyond. References African Studies Quarterly (2018), http://asq.africa.ufl.edu/. Accessed 28.05.2019. Akinyemi, Akintunde (2018), ‘Expanding the Frontiers of African Language Teaching in the United States’, in: O. Adesola, A. Akinlabi and O. Ola Orie (eds.), Data-Rich Linguistics: Paper in Honor of Yiwola Awoyale, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 310-325. Bokamba, Eyamba G. (2002), African Language Program Development and Administration: A History and Guidelines for Future Programs, Madison: National African Language Resource Center. Boren Awards (2018), ‘AFLI FOR BOREN SCHOLARS’, https://www. borenawards.org/ scholarships/thinking-applying/special-initiatives/ african-flagship-languages-initiative. Accessed 28.05.2019. Brown, A. A. (2018), UF Preeminence – Five Years Later. Explosive Growth and Surge of New Talent for a University on the Rise, https://news.hr.ufl.edu/news/uf-preeminence-five-years-later/. Accessed 28.05.2019. Center for African Studies (2018a), ‘Academics’, http://africa.ufl.edu/ academics-programs/. Accessed 28.05.2019. — (2018b), ‘Graduate Studies’, http://africa.ufl.edu/academicsprograms/graduate-studies/. Accessed 28.05.2019. — (2018c), ‘Jambo!: Learn an African Language this Summer!’, https://africa.ufl.edu/outreach/jambo/. Accessed 28.05.2019. 32 Akintúndé Akínyémí — (2018d), ‘Outreach’, http://africa.ufl.edu/outreach/. Accessed 28.05.2019 — (2018e), ‘Sub-Saharan Africa Business Environment Report (SABER)’, https://africa.ufl.edu/research-training/research-archive/ saber/. Accessed 28.05.2019 — (2018f), ‘SouthEast Africanist Network (SEAN)’, https://africa.ufl. edu/newsandevents/sean. Accessed 28.05.2019. — (2018g), ‘Teach Africa / Irohin: Taking Africa to the Classroom’, https://africa.ufl.edu/outreach/irohin/. Accessed 28.05.2019. — (2018h), ‘The Carter Conference’, https://africa.ufl.edu/ newsandevents/carter-conference/. Accessed 28.05.2019. — (2018i), ‘Undergraduate Studies’, http://africa.ufl.edu/academicsprograms/undergraduate-studies/. Accessed 28.05.2019. — (2018j), ‘University of Florida Program in African Languages’, http://africa.ufl.edu/academics-programs/african-languages/. Accessed 28.05.2019. Goldman, Abraham C. (2014), Building Expertise, Growing Capacity, and Disseminating Knowledge: African Estudies for a new Era, Grant application proposal submitted for the National Resource Centers, and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships Program. Master of Sustainable Development Practice (2018), ‘Home Page’, http://mdp.africa.ufl.edu/. Accessed 28.05.2019. Miller, David M.; Villalón, Leonardo A. and Brophy, Timothy S. (2014), Learning without Borders: Internationalizing the Gator Nation. The University of Florida Quality Enhancement Plan, Gainesville: University of Florida, http://sacs.aa.ufl.edu/media/sacsaaufledu/ files/UF-QEP-2014.pdf. Accessed 28.05.2019. Federal Service Website of the National Security Education Program (2011), ‘About Us’, https://www.nsepnet.org/AboutUs.aspx. Accessed 28.05.2019. Sahel Research Group (2018), ‘Home Page’, http://sahelresearch.africa. ufl.edu. Accessed 28.05.2019. Schleicher, Antonia Folarin and Moshi, Lioba (2000), The Pedagogy of African Languages: An Emerging Field, Columbus: National East Asian Languages Resource Center, Ohio State University. Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future 33 Schwegler, Stephan J. (1982), ‘Academic Freedom and the Disclaimer Affidavit of the National Defense Education Act: The Response of Higher Education’. Unpublished PhD. thesis, Teacher’s College, Columbia University. Appendix Appendix 1: Yearly Carter Conference Themes (1984-2018) [For almost 35 years, the Center for African Studies at the University of Florida has organized annual lectures or a conference in honor of the late distinguished Africanist scholar, Gwendolen M. Carter. Gwendolen Carter devoted her career to scholarship and advocacy concerning the politics of inequality and injustice, especially in southern Africa. She also worked hard to foster the development of African Studies as an academic enterprise. She was perhaps best known for her pioneering study The Politics of Inequality: South Africa Since 1948 and the co-edited four-volume History of African Politics in South Africa, From Protest to Challenge (1972-1977). In the spirit of her career, the annual Carter lectures offer the university community and the greater public the perspectives of Africanist scholars on issues of pressing importance to the people and societies of Africa. Since 2004, the Center has (with the generous support of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) appointed a Carter Faculty Fellow to serve as convener of the conference. See also Center for African Studies 2018h.] 2018 Text Meets Image and Image Meets Text 2017 On the Edge: What Future for the African Sahel? 2016 Tropics of Discipline: Crime and Punishment in Africa 2015 Schools of Architecture and Africa: Connecting Disciplines in Design and Development 2014 Kongo Atlantic Dialogues 2013 The Politics of Permanent Flux: State-Society Relations in the Horn of Africa 2012 Health, Society and Development In Africa 2011 African Independence: Cultures of Memory, Celebrations & Contestations 2010 Bridging Conservation and Development in Latin America and Africa: Changing Contexts, Changing Strategies 2009 African Creative Expressions: Mother Tongue and Other Tongues 34 Akintúndé Akínyémí 2008 Migrations In and Out of Africa: Old Patterns and New Perspectives 2007 African Visual Cultures: Crossing Disciplines, Crossing Regions 2006 Law, Politics, and Society in South Africa: The Politics of Inequality Then and Now 2005 States of Violence: The Conduct of War in Africa 2004 Movement (R)evolution: Contemporary African Dance 2003 Dynamics of Islam in Contemporary Africa 2002 Zimbabwe in Transition: Resolving Land and Constitutional Crisis 2001 Governance and Higher Education in Africa 2000 Renegotiating Nation and Political Community in Africa at the Dawn of the New Millennium 1999 Aquatic Conservation and Management in Africa 1998 Africa on Film and Video 1997 Communication and Democratization in Africa 1995 African Entrepreneurship 1994 Transition in South Africa 1993 Africa’s Disappearing Past: The Erasure of Cultural Patrimony 1992 Sustainability in Africa: Integrating Concepts 1991 Involuntary Migration and Resettlement in Africa 1990 Health Issues in Africa 1989 Structural Adjustment and Transformation: Impacts on African Women Farmers 1988 Human Rights in Africa 1987 The Exploding Crisis in Southern Africa 1986 The African Food Crisis: Prospects for a Solution 1984-85 SADCC’s Bid for Independence from South Africa: Will it Succeed? Appendix 2: List of the Center’s Interdisciplinary Working Groups [The Center supports a variety of collaborative interdisciplinary working groups. These thematic oriented groups provide a forum for faculty and graduate students to pursue research and funding initiatives that cut across standard academic units. Group activities have also included symposia, mini-conferences, invited lectures, and fieldwork/methodology workshops. See also Sahel Research Group 2018.] 1. The Sahel Research Group Gazing into the Past to Transform the Future 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. African Architecture Initiative Group Natural Resource Management in Africa Group Social Change and Development in Africa Group Text, Image Studies and African Humanities Group China in Africa Group Islam in Africa Group African Migrations Group 35 37 African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges Aparajita Biswas Centre for African Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Mumbai, India Introduction African Studies in India has evolved into a multi-disciplinary field of comparative studies. This article surveys the evolution of African Studies in post-colonial India. An attempt has been made to detail the purposes behind the establishment of various centres and think tanks of African Studies in India and to emphasise the varying subtleties in the study of Africa by Indian Africanists in contemporary times. Early Contact between Africa and India India’s relations with African countries date back to the prehistoric era. Ancient Indians were a dynamic and vigorous people who were known to have dominated the Indian Ocean and through their trade and commercial activities influenced the course of the history of the adjacent lands bordering the ocean. There is a host of material which shows that Indians and Africans shared close and friendly relations from times immemorial. Hindu Puranas mention India’s trade relations with ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, and East Africa before the birth of Christ. Other ancient Indian literature in Sanskrit and Pali, as well as archaeological finds, art, coinage, and traditional lore also point to these trade relations with distant civilisations (Basu 1998). The picture becomes clearer at the beginning of the Christian era. The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, a sailor’s guidebook which is variously dated from 60 A.D. to 266 A.D., continues to remain a significant source of the study of the early history of East Africa and the Red Sea Coast. The author, a Greek pilot who had lived in India for some years in the port town of Barygaza (the present town of Broach), gives in considerable detail the account of trading voyages between the West African, Arabian, and Indian coasts. He also provided information about the nature 38 Aparajita Biswas of commerce that was carried on from the Red Sea and the coast of Africa to the East Indies at a time when Egypt was a province of the Roman Empire. The Periplus throws considerable light on ancient Indian seafaring culture and maritime activities. It mentions not only the names of dozens of Indian ports of antiquity which can still be identified along the western coast but, even more importantly, it shows the well-organised trading activities prevalent in India (Schoff 1921). In the Red Sea region, it was the stimulus provided by centuries of trade relations with Egypt and beyond to Rome that gave India access to all the great arteries of African trade along this route. Trade relations, preceded by the migration of peoples, inevitably developed into cultural relations. At Alexandria, in Egypt, Indian scholars were a common sight: they are mentioned both by Dio Chrysostom (c. 100 A.D.) and by Clement of Alexandria (c. 200 A.D.). Peter von Bohlen (1796-1840), a German Indologist, also wrote extensively about the cultural connection between India and ancient Egypt (Bohlen 1830). Interestingly, there are elements of folk art, language, and the rural culture of Bengal which have an affinity with their Egyptian counterparts and which have not been explained satisfactorily in terms of Aryan, Mongolian, or Dravidian influences. There are similarities between place names in Bengal and Egypt, and an Egyptian scholar, Ahmed El Mansouri, has pointed out that in both Egypt and India the worship of the sun, cow, snake, and river are common, a fact which has been mentioned in the book written by John Hanning Speke (Speke 1863). It is believed that the Dravidians went from India to Egypt and laid the foundation of its civilization there. The Egyptians themselves think that they originally came from the South, from a land called Punt, which the western historian Henry Reginald Holland Hall thought referred to some part of India (King and Hall 1907). Historians like Francis Wilford wrote that Indians had established their settlements along the river Nile and even explored the regions as far as the surroundings of Lake Victoria. The famous Arab historian, Ali ibn al-Husayn al Masudi, visited India around the year 915 and wrote about flourishing trade between India and various countries, including those in Africa (Biswas 1992). Although contact began long ago, the study of Africa in India started much later. During British colonial times, the narratives of Indian contacts with Africa were mainly Anglocentric. However, in 1912, a fascinating book was written by an Indian historian, Radha Kumud Mookherjee, African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges 39 which sought to prove that “the ancient Indians fully utilised the opportunities presented by nature for free development of maritime activities” (Mookherjee 1957). The book mentions Indian seafaring activities and India’s dominant position of seaborne trade among the major powers. According to Mookherjee, “[…] they built ships, navigated the sea, and held in their hands all the threads of international commerce, whether carried on overland or sea.” The author, in a general summing up of India’s maritime achievements, states that “For full thirty centuries, India stood at the very heart of the old world, and maintained her position as one of the foremost maritime countries and that her colonies extended all over the east coast of Africa” (Mookherjee 1957: 60). Later, the noted Indian philologist, Suniti Kumar Chatterji, wrote extensively on the contact between India and Ethiopia in his book India and Ethiopia from the 7th Century B.C (Chatterji 1969). As far as the Kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia is concerned, evidence of Indian contacts rests on more solid foundations. The importance of India’s trade relations with the Axumite Empire was brought to light by the discovery of 103 Kushana-era gold coins dating around 230 A.D. in Axum. Among them were coins which bore legends of the ancient Indian scripts, Prakit and Kharosthi, as well as Greek. According to Chatterji, this was to enable the Axumites, who were already familiar with Greek, as evident by their coins, “to check and read the Kharosthi script in these bilingual coins.” A Cornelian seal also found in Adulis is said to have an inscription in Brahmi and belonged presumably to an Indian trader. In response to these findings, scholars have constructed their views that Brahmi and Kharosthi may have had an influence on the Axumite script. Chatterji says that “Indian merchants with Brahmi alphabet (as well as some cases Kharosthi) were moving about in Ethiopia, as well as Egypt from the pre-Christian centuries” (Chatterji 1969: 53). His book on “Africanism” has been appreciated as a “work which deals with ‘human values’, and not ‘power values’,” and as a document in which “the pattern of culture presented is something which grows out of the materials brought together and is not something superimposed on it” (Kunda Kumar 1970). In the backdrop of the intense contacts between India and African countries, I would like to focus on the evolution of African Studies under the Area Studies Programme of India. 40 Aparajita Biswas Indian Independence and the Introduction of the Area Studies Programme The initial impetus for the emergence of Area Studies in India came from the far-sighted and internationalist vision of India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. After independence, Nehru stressed the need for an enlightened awareness of the world beyond Indian borders and a clear and critical understanding of the situations in foreign countries and regions, especially those of vital interest to India (Nehru 1961). It was a time when a newly independent India felt the imperative need for competent Indian academic specialists to watch developments in other areas of the world, interpret their significance, and give a studied second opinion or critical evaluation of India’s own external policies, apart from the work of government bureaucracy. The strong motive behind the introduction of Area Studies was to train a group of competent experts in international matters through the establishment of the Indian School of International Studies (ISIS) in New Delhi, in 1955. From its very inception, ISIS was intended to be a centre for advanced study and research in international relations (Rajan 1994). In April 1963, the University Grants Commission of India (UGC), a statutory body created by an act of Indian Parliament in 1956 for coordination, determination, and maintenance of the standards of university education in India, appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Shiva Rao. The committee recognised the need for a large number of Indian scholars who would be adequately equipped with a knowledge of the historical, cultural, social, and economic backgrounds of particular regions, and also gave priority to the study of areas like China, Japan, Africa, South- and South-East Asia, West Asia, and other countries and regions which are India’s immediate neighbours. The principal objectives of the programme were: 1) To promote the holistic understanding of the area with its cultural, social, economic, and strategic specificities. 2) To provide critical input to policymakers, particularly in India’s economic, strategic, and political interests. 3) The production of popular books in these areas (Sharma 2013). Taking cognisance of the Committee’s report, a Standing Advisory Committee was appointed by the UGC to develop the programme of Area Studies in Indian universities. It was acknowledged that profound knowledge of the world beyond our country’s borders was not only essential for the security and prosperity of the nation but also for the im- African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges 41 provement of the quality of the country’s participation in world affairs. In pursuit of these objectives, the UGC undertook the task of promoting Area Studies in some universities. The government of India also established think tanks like the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) and the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), to provide innovative and practical recommendations on strategic, political, economic, and foreign policies issues. Evolution of African Studies in India At the outset, it must be mentioned that the foremost Indian political leaders whose views, statements, and actions inspired the establishing of African Studies in India were Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi and Nehru. They were Africanists by any definition and had a good grasp of problems and issues facing Africa. A close examination of several documents such as speeches of these two Indian leaders and a review of resolutions of the Indian National Congress before and after India’s independence established beyond doubt that India was fully aware of and sympathetic to African liberation movements (Biswas 1992). The issues concerning the liberation of African countries and racist policies of the white regimes in Africa were among those which drew the deepest concerns of Indian national leadership. It is pertinent to note here that in 1893, Gandhi went to South Africa and spent 21 long years there, where he changed from a lawyer to an activist to a leader. It was there that he perfected his philosophy of Ahimsa and Satyagraha. Gandhi left an imprint on succeeding generations of African leaders. By 1919, he was described as Mahatma Gandhi the Great by the whole of Africa. The success of his passive resistance in South Africa, and later in India, immensely inspired oppressed people in Africa and all over the world. Nelson Mandela of South Africa paid rich tribute to Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence as a means of protest against subjugation (Biswas 2007b). Besides Gandhi, another substantial link between India and Africa was Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. Under Nehru’s guidance, the Indian National Congress continued to manifest a direct interest in African affairs. African leaders often sought inspiration and guidance from Gandhi and Nehru for their struggle against colonialism. Thus, in 1947, when India achieved independence after a long and protracted period of struggle, it spread a fresh wave of hope among the African people. India, 42 Aparajita Biswas too, was eager to support the African cause – in fact, Prime Minister Nehru regarded the African liberation struggle as a part of the AfroAsian resurgence. Nehru took a couple of important policy decisions to enhance IndiaAfrica relations. From the very beginning, there was an emphasis on the developmental requirements of the emerging African states. Indeed, with considerable foresight, even as early as 1949, India had established a general cultural scholarship scheme under which students from Africa and Asia were provided access to institutions of higher studies in India, even though at that time facilities in India were not adequate to meet Indian requirements (Appadorai 1987). Educational cooperation has remained the main plank of India–Africa relations. Nehru was keen on promoting Indo-African understanding in the cultural field on a continuing basis. To achieve that, he institutionalised African Studies. It was he who first thought of inducting African Studies into the university framework. Way back in 1953, a proposal was made by government of India’s Ministry of External Affairs to set up a Department of African Studies at the University of Delhi. Accordingly, the first Department of African Studies was set up in 1955, in line with Nehru’s zeal for the decolonisation of Asia and Africa. From then till today, the Department undertakes inter-disciplinary teaching and research studies, leading to MPhil and PhD degrees of the University of Delhi, along with Certificates and Diplomas in the Swahili Language. Students graduating in MPhils and PhDs from the Area Studies Programmes routinely describe themselves as having received doctoral degrees in International Studies or even, in some cases, International Relations. It may be true that a PhD in Area Studies would have little market value in the Indian university system; indeed, the UGC itself recommends that the student should be awarded the degree in the basic discipline, which may entitle him/her to teach the basic discipline. The disquieting point is that, decades after the inception of these programmes, confusion continues partly because of strong opposition from the traditional departments of the universities, and also from the ignorance of the university administration. The second African Studies Centre was established under a vibrant Area Studies Programme in 1960 at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). At JNU, it functioned as an autonomous division under the larger Centre for West Asian and African Studies, until it was upgraded to a full- African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges 43 fledged Centre of African Studies in 2009. The Centre has two major programmes of studies- MPhil and PhD. It also offers courses for the MA programme through the School of International Studies. The teaching and research programmes of the Centre have been designed to cover both traditional and contemporary issues related to the region. At present, the Centre’s three faculty members supervise around 45 students pursuing degrees in MPhil and PhD. The current academic curriculum of the Centre focuses on the following areas: regional organisations, government and politics, state and civil societies, ideologies, governance, diaspora, bilateral relations, issues of development, and foreign policy of major African countries. Besides this, the Centre has its research focus on Asian engagement with Africa. To facilitate the development of research, training, and interaction with scholars from abroad, the Centre holds a Nelson Mandela Chair, funded by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), through which visiting faculty from African countries are invited every semester. The visiting faculty participates in various programmes and activities of the Centre. In pursuance of its aim, the Centre is also involved in several academic outreach programmes on African affairs involving Indian educational institutions. The Centre also has a major research programme on “Diaspora in Development: Comparative Assessment of Harnessing Globalisation” funded under UPE II Scheme by JNU for 2014-2019. This Centre also hosts the Secretariat of the African Studies Association (ASA). The University of Mumbai hosts the third Centre for African Studies in India. Initially, it was established as a programme by the UGC in 1971-72 at the University of Mumbai, as a part of its efforts to develop an Area Studies Programme at the university level outside Delhi. It acquired the status of a Centre in 1984. With a faculty strength of two at present, it offers MPhil and PhD degrees in African Studies. During the past three years, the Centre started offering a certificate course on International Trade (Africa). It has been mainly introduced to cater to the demand of industry and business people in Mumbai. The teaching and research programme of the Centre covers both traditional and contemporary African issues. Over the years, the Centre for African Studies, Mumbai University, has successfully undertaken several projects on Africa with finance from governmental and non-governmental agencies and also organised international conferences, seminars, roundtables and workshops. The 44 Aparajita Biswas Centre has developed a successful relationship with trading and business houses who in turn have supported the Centre’s academic endeavours continuously through their participation and financial support. In all these Centres of African Studies, books written by African political leaders like Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Cheikh Anta Diop, and Léopold Sédar Senghor are recommended to students for comprehending African mindsets and the struggle for freedom over the years. (Diop 1987; Kenyatta 1978, 1964; Nkrumah 1965; Nasser 1965; Nyerere 1971, 1974; Kaunda 1966, 1988; Singh 1967). On the other hand, to understand contemporary Africa, books of authors like Roland Oliver and Gordon Mathews, Walter Rodney, Colin Legum, Colin Leys, and Robert G. Gregory are taught. And for studying Indians or Asians in Africa, books written by, among others, Gregory and Apa Pant are part of the syllabus (Oliver and Mathew 1963; Rodney 1972; Leys 1974; Legum 1980; Gregory 1971; Pant 1974). Beside the above departments and centres, some of the important universities in India like Jamia Milia Islamia in New Delhi, Jadavpur University in Kolkata, the University of Allahabad, and the University of Hyderabad offer smaller or optional courses on Africa. All these centres organise seminars and conferences regularly to strengthen their academic programmes by facilitating the exchange of views and interaction among scholars. Think Tanks In addition to formal academic institutions, some think tanks help the policymaking process by publishing reports and books, hosting seminars and conferences, etc. Among these, MP-IDSA, funded by the Ministry of Defence, ranked as one of Asia’s top think tanks, has an active cluster with at least one senior research associate working exclusively on Africa (Xavier 2010). Think tanks like the ICWA, funded by the Ministry of External Affairs, and the privately funded Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and Gateway India are also active in hosting seminars and conferences on African issues. Besides think tanks, India’s two industrial and commercial chambers, the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), have played a catalytic role in strengthening India-Africa ties, especially in the world of African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges 45 business. The CII Africa Desk engages with all parts of the continent and has received a positive response from the region – both Sub-Saharan and the north. The Tata and Kirloskar groups, which have massive investments in various African countries, have presided over CII’s Africa Committee, an apex body whose 34 corporate members are involved in or at least interested in getting involved in Africa (Xavier 2010). Both organisations have links with investment promotion agencies in Africa. FICCI introduced Namaskar Africa – a regional flagship programme in partnership with the government of India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry. It started with an India-Central Africa Regional Business Forum in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The organisation has worked relentlessly over more than two decades in creating platforms for deepening India-Africa economic cooperation on a mutually beneficial basis. However, in reality, there is only a minimum interface between academia, industry, and the Ministry of External Affairs. Occasionally, the Ministry of External Affairs funds seminars and conferences in different African centres, but rarely attends them. Moreover, it hardly adopts any of the recommendations made at conferences where Africanists from various parts of the world and India participate. To strengthen the academy-industry interface, the Centre for African Studies in Mumbai recently started a Certificate Course on International Trade (Africa). Resource persons from various industry segments address students on different rules and regulations to do business in Africa. However, this interface is limited to a narrow range of activities. There should be a push from the university authorities for planned collaborations and interactions to build a fruitful and successful industry-academia relationship. Major Research Work by Indian Africanists after the Independence Between 1970 and 1990, Indian academics mainly wrote and published books and articles on topics like Ancient India and East Africa contacts. They also wrote about India’s support to the African resistance movements during the colonial period, such as the Mau Mau movements in Kenya and the Maji Maji movements in Tanganyika and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Academics also discussed and wrote about government and politics in African countries, South-South cooperation, India-Africa relations, and the Indian diaspora. 46 Aparajita Biswas Several books and research articles have been published on these topics and issues. In fact, narratives on the socio-economic and political issues of developing countries, which were suppressed and interpreted by imperialistic perspectives, were given different assessments by Indian authors. For instance, Vijay Gupta (1981) discussed at length the violent, grassroots resistance movement launched by the Kikuyu and related ethnic groups against the British colonial government in Kenya in the 1950s. The book highlights the heroic activities of Makhan Singh, an India-born trade union leader in Kenya who played a vital role in the development of trade unions in Kenya. In 1970, an article was written by Surendra Pal Singh about how India supported the liberation struggles of southern African countries substantially. Similar work was produced by Aniruddha Gupta, who edited the report of the seminar proceedings held in New Delhi in April 1971. Some contributions were devoted to an overall reflection of the populations of Indian origin in Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Trinidad, and some East African countries. These highlighted the status of Indians in the host countries. Gupta (1988) also published a book which analysed at length the problems of independence and the nation-building process in African countries. He argues that in spite of the genuine attempts by some African leaders to create a sense of national unity and identity among their citizens, ethno-regional loyalties remained a strong and intractable problem in most African countries. The book discusses the major issues that new African nations faced in their early days of independence, regardless of the optimism the leaders and the people felt for their future free from colonial rule (Gupta, A. 1971, 1988; Gupta, V. 1981; Singh 1970). On ancient Indian contacts with Africa, pioneering work was undertaken by Shanti Sadiq Ali (1987) in her book which presents a survey of the commercial, cultural, and political contacts between India and the African continent. She traces the links from antiquity through the colonial period, to the partnership of the newly-freed countries in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Sadiq Ali also worked extensively on Africans in India and published a well-researched book which brings into focus the immigration of Africans into the Deccan (including modern Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh). It emphasises various aspects of their assimilation and integration with the South Indian communities as well as their contributions in the history of the Deccan (Ali 1987, 1996). African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges 47 Another remarkable book was written by Ram R. Ramchandani in 1976 which gives a vivid account of the Asian enterprise in Uganda since early times until the expulsion of Asians by President Idi Amin. In 1990, Ramchandani brought out two volumes on India-Africa relations in the context of economic cooperation of developing countries. The project was funded by the Indian Council for Research on Indian Economic Relations (ICRIER). The focus of this project was South-South cooperation. The main focus of these two volumes is to throw light on relevant policy options related to critical socio-political and economic issues with a view to further strengthen India-Africa ties on a mutually beneficial basis. In the first volume, distinguished Indian Africanists such as Rama S. Melkote, Rajen Harshe, Daleep Singh, V. S. Seth, A. Gupta, and Ankush B. Sawant contribute on numerous critical themes covering IndiaAfrica relations. Another notable work published by Ramchandani in 2000 deserves special mention. It was funded by the UGC. The study was undertaken to critically examine aspects of the NAM, third world state formation, and underdevelopment problems in a comparative frame of the Sub-Saharan state and India and to revisit the ups and downs of 50 years of India-Africa relations (Ramchandani 1990, 2000). Another important book based on seminar proceedings was published around this time by Sadiq Ali and Gupta in 1987. Contributors to this book discuss various dimensions of the economic crisis in Africa such as stagnating or negative economic growth, asymmetrical balance of payments, fiscal problems. and sluggish agricultural performances which lead to economic disaster in most of the African countries (Ali and Gupta 1987). Research done by Indian Africanists from the 1990s onwards Since the 1990s, Africanists in India have placed emphasis on various subjects like South Africa, India-Africa relations, and Francophone Africa. In 1989, Ajay Dubey analysed India’s economic diplomacy towards Africa, and the changing nature and content of economic relations between the two countries in the post-Nehru era. Later, Aparajita Biswas (1992) systematically examined both the internal and international variables that have influenced India’s Africa policy and bilateral aspects of India-Kenya relations. The findings suggest that India’s policy since its freedom struggle has significantly moved from narrow national con- 48 Aparajita Biswas siderations to broad humanitarian principles. These principles are fully reflected in its Africa policy with respect to their liberation struggle, anti-imperialist and anti-racist commitments, and development strategy (Dubey 1990; Biswas 1992). In 1990, South Africa’s political developments and the establishment of India-South Africa diplomatic relations were of intense interest to Indian scholars. The concept of an ‘African renaissance’ was frequently discussed and hotly debated by Indian intellectuals. In 1992, the Centre for African Studies Mumbai organised a two-day national seminar on India and South Africa: Retrospect and Prospects, sponsored by India’s Ministry of External Affairs. The articles presented focus on four topics: South Africa’s political transition; socio-economic dimensions of South Africa; India and South Africa; and people of Indian origin in South Africa. Later, the seminar proceedings were edited and published by Sawant in a book titled India and South Africa – A Fresh Start (1994). Over ten years later, Biswas (2007a) would undertake a detailed study on South Africa and its neighbourhood. The study was sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). In 1997, the Ministry of External Affairs sponsored an international conference in Delhi on Africa, India, and South-South Cooperation. The findings of the conference were edited and published by K. Mathews and Narinder Nath Vohra in 1997 (Sawant 1994; Mathews and Vohra 1997). Since 2000, plenty of books and articles have been published by Indian Africanists, following the changing dynamics of India-Africa relations. Around this time, the scope of India-Africa cooperation increased rapidly, especially with India’s emergence as an important player in the world economy and India’s own significant need for oil and other natural resources. Coupled with this, the economic scenario of African countries also changed significantly, with six of the world’s fastest-growing economies located in Africa. Additionally, several African nations started providing incentives to attract foreign investors and partners in growth while the Indian government was actively lobbying for support for its bid for a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) seat. Additionally, the increasing influence of other powers in the continent, especially China’s hyperactive engagement, nudged India to adopt a proactive Africa policy. India began to extend its relations with various other regions of African countries, besides Eastern and Southern African countries. In a bid to expand its economic reach, the government of India launched the ‘Focus Africa Programme’ in 2003 and ‘Team 9’ initiatives in 2004. African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges 49 The Ministry of External Affairs and other government agencies like the ICSSR, the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, and the Indian Council of World Affairs encouraged and provided generous grants to the centres, departments, and think tanks of African Studies. These supports are to help organise national and international conferences, workshops, seminars, and symposiums on India-Africa relations to make major stakeholders interested in understanding and analysing India’s relations with African countries in the era of new dispensation. Going by the impetus, the JNU’s Centre for African Studies organised three international conferences on India-Africa relations and Indian diaspora. Conference proceedings were edited and published by Dubey. In the book on diaspora, Dubey proposes a framework of analysis of the Indian diaspora as a heritage of resource, noting that they are not only key drivers in development efforts but also help in strengthening bilateral relations between host and home countries. Contributors also argue that the new Indian diaspora contributes significantly to promote bilateral relations (Dubey 2010). The University of Mumbai’s Centre for African Studies organised three international seminars and conferences with the support of the Ministry of External Affairs. One was India-Africa Relations: Emerging Policy and Development Perspectives in 2006, the second was India Africa Relations: Africa on the Centre Stage in 2010, and the third was India Africa Enduring Partnership; Emerging Areas of Cooperation in 2012. The proceedings of the three conferences were edited and published by Seth (2008), Renu Modi (2011), and Biswas (2013) respectively. In 2014, the Ministry of Defence also sponsored its think tank, the MP-IDSA to organise an international conference on India-Africa security challenges. The proceedings of the conference were published by Ruchita Beri (2016). In all these books, scholars and researchers from India and African countries seek answers to a wide spectrum of issues: What are the parameters of the emerging relationships? What is the maritime threat to India’s security? What are the emerging areas of cooperation? Do the development methods of Africa and India complement each other? (Seth 2008; Modi 2011; Biswas 2013; Beri 2016). Not only the government of India, but some international institutes and stakeholders also showed interest in funding projects and conferences to learn about the status and progression of India-Africa relations. An important symposium was held in Nairobi, Kenya, jointly funded 50 Aparajita Biswas by the University of Nairobi and the Peace Support Training Centre on East Africa-India Security Concerns. The University of Nairobi invited Indian Africanists to initiate dialogue on the subject. Based on the symposium proceedings, a book was published by Biswas and Makumi Mwagiru of the University of Nairobi in 2012. Although the focus of the book was security relations between the two countries, it also captured broad dimensions of security and went beyond traditional understanding to capture contemporary aspects of security. Indian Africanists like Nivedita Roy, Vidhan Pathak, Manendra Sahu, along with Africanists in Nairobi like Anita Kiamba, Musambayi Katumanga, and Patrick Kamanda were contributors to the book (Biswas and Mwagiru, 2012). Similarly, Indian Africanists were invited to the conferences and seminars at KwaZulu-Natal University in Durban, South Africa in 2013 and Wolkite University in Ethiopia. On the subject of India-Africa relations, international agencies like the African Development Bank (ADB), the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and Oxfam India funded three important projects. (Erikson et.al. 2011; Biswas and Dubey 2014; Dubey and Biswas 2016). These studies demonstrate the changing scenarios of India-Africa relations against the backdrop of rapid transformation in international contours. The findings of the most recent study were published in the book India and Africa’s Partnership: A Vision for a New Future (Dubey and Biswas 2016), funded by the ADB. It provides a critical analysis of India’s investments, official development assistance, and capacity-building activities in Africa. Moreover, the book claims the Indian diaspora as a heritage and strategic resource in Indo-African relations (Biswas 2013). The earlier studies provide a contemporary analysis and assistance of India-Africa relations, bringing together contributions from the Global South and the Global North that explore whether the relationship is truly ‘mutually beneficial’. The project, funded by Oxfam India, studied the controversial issue of India’s private agro-investment in Zambia’s agricultural sector (Biswas and Dubey 2014). Indian Africanists also concentrated a great deal on the themes of democratisation, refugees and human rights issues, and foreign policies, agricultural cooperation, and economic and social issues between India and Francophone African countries (Mathews K. 2017; Malakar 2006; Moosa 2007, 2013; Pratihari 2010; Suresh and Fisal 2013; Suresh 2016; Yaruingam and Kapoor 2013; Saji 2013). Singh also wrote a book on the African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges 51 relations between India and Francophone countries that is both comprehensive and exhaustive. The book detailed the evolution and growth of the economies and the economic institutions of the 18 states of Francophone Africa since the beginning of the 20th century. He focused on key drivers of India’s enhanced engagement with Francophone African countries and mapped out future directions and challenges (Singh 2008). The year 2004 saw the African Studies Association of India (ASA), a nation-wide organisation, come into being. The ASA is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation of scholars whose mandate is to ‘foster the study, knowledge, and understanding of African affairs in India and Indian affairs in Africa’ through research and studies. It organises seminars, conferences, symposiums, and workshops on various issues concerning Africa, both nationally and internationally. It has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with different African Studies institutes all over the world. MOUs set out opportunities for collaboration and positive academic engagement like joint collaborative projects and joint seminars and conferences for mutual benefit. African Studies in India have made great progress because of the ASA’s activities, with membership open to everyone in this field. It has two refereed biannual journals – Africa Review and Insight on Africa. Both the journals have been published by international publishers. Challenges for African Studies in India If one looks back at the performance of African Studies in India, their achievements are laudable in terms of both quality and quantity. It has produced a large number of books and research materials on Africa. However, this does not mean that all is well with African Studies. Although African Studies in India was established as an inter-disciplinary field of study, the disciplinary profiles of the area specialists betray the marked presence of political scientists. A survey showed that disciplines like political science and international relations overshadowed others in African Studies. Issues like anthropology have been ignored (Prasad and Phadnis 1988). The other problem confronting African Studies centres along with other Area Studies departments is lack of funds. African Studies in India need a regular flow of funds to meet various expenses, like staff training, regular field trips, acquiring library resources, visiting foreign scholars’ programmes, etc. However, what is frustrating is that unlike in western countries and the USA, promotion of Area Studies has 52 Aparajita Biswas never been a priority of the government of India, UGC, or research agencies like ICSSR and ICHR. There is hardly any interaction between the government policy makers and area specialists. The policy of the government has often become faulty because of lack of interaction (Biswas, 2007b). There are other problems, too. As of this writing, there are only three African Studies centres in India, with a handful of faculty members studying 54 African countries. Although there are many vacant faculty positions, the government of India is reluctant to fill the posts. Conclusion African Studies in India have progressed quite steadily since the 1950s. Interactions between Indian and African academics have increased significantly. PhD dissertations too have been increasing steadily since the late 1990s. Many dissertations have focussed on India’s and China’s engagements in Africa. Students are attracted to the topics of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRICs) and Africa, the role of Indian diaspora in different African countries, India agricultural reforms, etc. In all the international conferences organised by the ASA, there are special sessions for students to express their critical views on the theme of the conferences. Moreover, academic exchanges between Indian Africanists and Africanists around the world persist. Therefore, African Studies in India is progressing well with the dedicated efforts of teachers, students, and other stakeholders. References Ali, Sadiq Shanti (1987), Africa through the Ages, Mumbai: National Book Trust. (1996), The African Dispersal in the Deccan: From Medieval to — Modern Time, Mumbai: Orient Blackswan. and Gupta, Aniruddha (eds.) (1987), Africa: Dimensions of the — Economic Crisis: An Analysis of the Problems and Constraints of Development, New Delhi: Sterling publishers. 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Sankara, Thomas (1990), Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, New York: Pathfinder Press. Sawant, Ankush B. (ed.) (1994), India and South Africa, A Fresh Start, Delhi: Kalinga Publications. African Studies in India: Evolution and Challenges Schoff, Wilfred Harvey (1921), The Periplus of the Erytherean Sea. Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean, London: Kessinger Publications. Sheth, Vanraj Sankalchand (2008), India Africa Relations: Emerging Policy and Development Perspectives, New Delhi: Academic Excellence. Senghor, Léopold Sédar (1961), Nation et voieafricaine du socialisme, France: Presence Africaine. Sharma, Kavita (2013), Sixty Years of University Grants Commission: Establishment, Growth and Evolution, New Delhi: UGC. Singh, Surendra Pal (1970), ‘India and the Liberation of Southern Africa’, Africa Quarterly, 10:3, pp. 4-8. Site for President Gamel Abdel Nasser (2018), ‘Speeches’, nasser. bibalex.org/Speeches /SpeechesAll.aspx?CS=0&lang=en. Accessed 28.05.2019. 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Accessed 28.05.2019. 57 59 Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants – The Case of Central America and Costa Rica Rina Cáceres Chair for African History, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica Introduction In this essay, we briefly discuss some of the dominant paradigms in the field of African Studies, as well as some of the challenges facing the field in the current situation in Central America in general and in Costa Rica in particular. Academic representations and perceptions about Africa and their descendants have been guided by ideological frameworks and the specific political agendas of the time and place in which they occurred as well as the forces of power that must be considered to overcome the colonized perceptions that still prevail today. The Space and Its People Central America is a region formed by seven countries: Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, which have different histories in their formation as independent states. From the mid-16th century until 1821, most of the territory was under the control of Spain, divided into three different colonial political spaces: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica were provinces of the Kingdom of Guatemala that was attached to the Viceroyalty of New Spain, today Mexico. Panama was part of what is today Colombia. Belize and the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua were under British hegemony, which ended in 1981 and 1894 respectively. Legally, the Spanish colonial state divided society in two social groups, the Indigenous and the Spanish Republics, which were separated from each other by specific laws for each, and by labor regulations and taxes. 60 Rina Cáceres The colonial state was a corporate system that assigned certain geographical spaces to Indigenous and Spanish people, organized urban life in guilds, and created a series of mechanisms so that the highest positions of the religious and administrative hierarchy could be accessed only by Spaniards born in Spain and the Creoles (descendants of Spaniards born in America). In the mid-16th century, the Kingdom of Castile, Spain, occupied the territory of dozens of Indigenous states with varying degrees of pre-existing scientific and economic progress. After a few years of occupation, changes in production patterns and the impact of diseases and wars led to a demographic catastrophe that affected the region unevenly: some regions had losses of more than 90 % of the population. Those states that had greater negotiating capacity, such as Quiches and Cakchiquel, were able to manage the output of labor demanded by the new authorities for mining and agriculture, but those whose military force was significantly inferior to the Spanish experienced a more serious depopulation, as can be seen in Figure 1. Figure 1: Demographic decline of the Indigenous population (Kramer et al. 1993: 80-81) From this dramatic episode arose arguments about the heroicity of the past Indigenous populations and the strength of the Spanish cultural heritage in the present contemporary identity. However, it was in this context of a dwindling labor force that the economic potential of the region was seen. Honduras, Nicaragua, and Pana- Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants 61 ma began to recruit enslaved workers from Africa for mining through an international network which Patrick Manning has called a global system of labor (Manning 1996). Plantations for sugar in Guatemala, indigo in El Salvador, and cocoa in Costa Rica, as well as the construction of military forts in the region also demanded involuntary workers.1 The areas of origin of these African workers were the Wolof and Mandinka, in West Africa, as well as the Akan, Igbo, and Ibibio, although the majority came from the Kongo and Angola regions. They also arrived from the south of Spain, which had been connected to North Africa for centuries. Strong legislation regulated all social and personal relationships. Extreme physical and emotional violence, such as the norms derived from the Partus sequitur ventrem law, which stated that the condition of slavery was inherited from mothers to children, had dramatic consequences in the evolution of the experience of Africans and their descendants in Hispanic America.2 Already in the 17th century, we find in Central America, as in many places in Hispanic America, a large number of free descendants of Africans. The Spanish Empire did not have full control of all of its territories, nor of all the social spaces. There were mechanisms to avoid enslavement: individual flight, collective insurrections, and the purchase of freedom. By the middle of the 17th century, we find important communities of black and mixed free populations in the whole region, integrated in brotherhoods, militias, as colonists, merchants, producers, tailors, blacksmiths, carpenters, weavers, shoemakers, service employees, etc., the majority of them not going through the experience of enslavement. Examples of those towns are San Felipe de Austria in León and San Andrés in Villa del Realejo, both in Nicaragua, and Nuestra Señora de los Angeles in Costa Rica, to name just a few.3 The concentration of the population of African origin influenced the payment of taxes. Authorities had ordered in 1574 that the descendants of free Africans who had land and wealth should pay taxes because it was 1 For the experience of slavery in the region, see McLeod 1973; Gudmundson 1978; Lutz 1982; Leiva 1982; Cáceres Gómez 2000; Velásquez 2001; Gudmundson/Wolfe 2010; Lokken 2013; Lohse 2014. 2 These laws were derived from Alfonso X Partidas by Alfonso X, King of Castile in the 13th century. See Cabrera Lobo 1993 and de la Fuente 2010. 3 Archivo General de Indias, Guatemala 43. N49. See also Molina Arguello 1962. 62 Rina Cáceres customary in their land, referring to Africa.4 From there, a series of laws specified the assignment of the population of African origin to the Spanish Republic and not to the Indigenous ones, which continued throughout the whole colonial period in the Spanish colonial corpus. In the next century, the militia was a space of social mobility in Central America, as in the rest of Latin America. The descendants of the first Africans were incorporated into militias and specific units were created in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, and some of their members even occupied authority positions. The lack of men of Spanish origin for militia service was a bargaining chip used by Afro-descendants to negotiate exemptions from tax payments while they were in service. During the 18th century, the descendants of these Africans spoke Spanish, were Catholics, and paid taxes. The importance of Africans in the demographic recovery of the region can be seen through examples from Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama throughout the colonial period, as shown in Figures 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. It is possible to verify that in the middle of the Indigenous demographic decline the demographic group that had the largest growth was that of the African’s descendants. Figure 2: Population of the capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala (now Antigua Guatemala) (based on the data of Lutz 1982) 4 The text says “por vivir en nuestras tierras y ser mantenidos en ellas en paz y justicia […] y porque así mismo en sus naturalezas tenían costumbre de pagar a sus reyes y señores tributos y en mucha cantidad, con justo y derecho título se les puede pedir que nos le paguen y que éste (tributo) fuese de un marco de plata en cada un año.” (Konetzke 1958: 482). Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants 63 Meanwhile, as Rubio Sánchez points out, in the port of El Realejo on the Pacific of Nicaragua, the most important in the province, 80 % of the population were Afro-descendants in the mid-18th century, while 60 % of the population was in Rivas, the main area of cocoa production, as we see in Figure 3. Figure 3: Baptisms in Rivas, Nicaragua, 1811-1821 (Rubio Sánchez 1975, Anexo demográfico) In El Salvador the situation was not very different; Indigenous people composed only 43 % of the population, which is evidence of the importance of African contributions in the demographic recovery of the region, as shown in Figure 4. Figure 4 (based on the data of Heriberto Erquicia and Herrera 2017) In Costa Rica, although the distribution of the population was clearly differentiated by region, 26 % of the population of the capital at Cartago was descended from Africans, while in the Pacific economic area, Esparza, they constituted 82 % of the population, as Figures 5 and 6 show. 64 Rina Cáceres Figure 5 (based on the data of Pérez Brignoli 1988: 8) Figure 6 (based on the data of Pérez Brignoli 1988: 8) In Panama, the bridge that united the Atlantic with the Pacific, the importance of the population of African origin was even greater; 77 % of the total recorded in 1610 were African descendants, as can be seen in Figure 7. Figure 7 (based on the data of Castillero Calvo 1969) Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants 65 These examples show that the demographic recovery of the Central American region during the Spanish colonial period was, in large part, due to the African contribution. Most of those towns were located in the Pacific area where the main Hispanic colonial cities were located, and not on the Caribbean as is usually believed. The New States and New Ideologies about Africa and Africans at the End of the 19th Century By 1821, after having achieved independence from Spain, new states were articulated and went through a series of political rearrangements until the second half of the 19th century, when each one more or less achieved the form it has today. Before the end of the first half of the 19th century, slavery was abolished in the region. At the end of the century, these states began defining the limits of the nation: territory, population, language, and religion. And the dominant narratives defined their societies in the singular, as white and/or mestizo(understood as the mixture of Spanish and Indian) societies, with a single language, some with a glorious Indigenous past, but all with a single historical experience inspired by the Spanish epic. They removed the Indigenous republics from political power and erased the Afro-descendants’ legal recognition, delegitimating both from the new social order. New laws and strategies were developed to promote the economic development of the region and place the different economies in the international economy guided by the ideals of progress and modernity. At the end of the 19th century, the New States turned to England, France, and Germany for capital and technology. The construction of railways, the Panama Canal, and banana production were the points of investment with international capital. Alongside these investments, local and regional economies grew around abaca, fisheries, and cocoa. These trends resulted in one of the largest migrations in the region between 1870 and 1913, this time by African descendants from the Caribbean islands to the continental Caribbean of Central America, as shown in Figure 8. In the first decades of the 20th century, more than 200,000 people came to Central America in the framework of these large-scale investments that placed the region at the centre of the new capitalist node, stimulating the construction of urban infrastructure: streets, aqueducts, sewers, lighting, theaters, offices, etc. 66 Rina Cáceres Figure 8 (Putnam 2011: 24) Opportunities for the West Indian migrant workers improved with the transformation of the transport system. As Pérez and Hall have indicated, in the mid-19th century, the introduction of the steamboat changed spatial relationships dramatically: distances and prices shrank. That would explain, for example, the intense maritime movement of the United Fruit Company and the Royal Netherland West India Mail Steamship (Hall / Pérez Brignoli 2003: 201-202). Large-scale banana production established the region as one of the largest producers in the world. In addition, writers, nurses, teachers, religious clerics, railway operators, telegraph operators, and accountants arrived in the region who enriched the professional world of the countries. A network was created that linked the Caribbean region to New Orleans and New York; this network included Jamaica, Barbados, Cuba, Trinidad, Tobago, and Haiti, and on the Caribbean mainland, the ports of Colón and Bocas del Toro in Panama, Limon in Costa Rica, Bluefields and San Juan del Norte in Nicaragua, Puerto Cortes and La Ceiba in Honduras, and Puerto Barrios in Guatemala. To this mosaic of Englishspeaking, Protestant influence must be added the strong African Akan tradition that survives in the continuation of the tales of Anansi. Later on, these tales were supplemented by tales from workers immigrating from India and China. Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants 67 By the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Jamaica was the focal point for the region’s inhabitants, whether they were from an African, European, or mixed cultural tradition. Kingston had been influential since the 18th century as the spearhead of the British presence in the region and the base of operations of international capital with financial and labor networks through which investments and labor arrived on the basis of the long experience and communication of 200 years of British occupation in the Caribbean Sea. Anti-black legislation Soon, however, the stimulus to this migration would see its limits. As we have said, at the end of the 19th century, and coinciding with European expansion in Africa and Asia, the national states of Latin America had begun to redefine the terms of their identities. The image that the European travelers transmitted spoke of mixed-blood Central American elites, children of Indians, Europeans, and Africans. The reengineering of the memory of the region’s past would have disastrous consequences later on. Since the 19th century, the official historiographical narrative had begun to define societies as ‘white’ or as ‘mestizo’ – extolling the Spanish contribution, minimizing the Indigenous component, and denying any African contribution. And as in other parts of the world, the ‘whiter,’ the closer to the European ideal, the more ‘civilized.’ So, when it came to visualizing and reconstructing the past, many of the details outlined in the first part of this article were actively made to disappear. The 19th century liberal ideologies had opted to establish whiteness of the population as a whole, undermining the demands of different cultural groups. Different social groups assumed slogans of order and progress. The liberal discourse held that both the elites and the popular classes belonged to a single family that was white, European, civilized, and hence ‘better.’ The ‘others’ were qualified as ‘uncivilized’, ‘conflictive’, and ‘uneducated.’ To the ideology of order, progress, homeland, and identity would be added a racial ideology, of ‘whitening,’ which nullified the origins of different groups, their achievements, and social mobility, as Darío Euraque, Diana Senior and Ronald Soto have shown (cf. Putnam 2010; Euraque 1996; Euraque 2004; Quirós 2008; Senior 2011). What happened in Central America can be seen in the detailed study of Lara Putnam. At the end of the 1920s, the governments of the Central 68 Rina Cáceres American region declared black immigration illegal on the explicit basis of race. And they put in place legal sanctions to limit the Afro-Caribbean entry and even expelled some of the second- or third-generation residents (Putnam 2011: 29-30; cf. also Euraque 2011: 58, 67). In Guatemala and Nicaragua, the immigration of “black race” was illegal unless a special entry fee was paid. A few years later, Chinese, Arabs, Syrians, Armenians, Gypsies, and Indian ‘coolies’ were added to this regulation. El Salvador would do its counterpart in the same decade (Putnam 2010: 289). In Honduras, new laws restricted the employment of black immigrants, and two years later they were added to the list of “restricted races” and forced to offer a deposit of $2,500 to enter the country, which was maintained until a few decades ago. In Panama, a mostly Afro-descendant country, a restrictive law was issued in 1926 to “blacks whose native language is not Spanish” and a list of “undesirable” races was also included. In 1941, a new constitution stripped the children of Afro-Caribbean immigrants born after 1928 of their Panamanian nationality (Putnam 2010: 290). According to Putnam, one of the ideological bases of this legislation was instituted in 1927 in the first Pan American Conference on Eugenics and Homiculture, held in Havana and convened by the Cuban eugenic doctor, Domingo Ramos, and by Charles Davenport, head of the Eugenics Record Office of the Carnegie Institute (Putnam 2010: 292). In the 1930s, deputies in Costa Rica limited Afro-Caribbean immigration, using the criterion that a possible “mixture” of races would be a threat to public health. This debate reached the media where it was argued that the national space should be protected by closing the borders and proposing a geographic segregation of the Caribbean people already settled in Costa Rica. Thus, the press and the popular voice identified a Zurquí tunnel and the city of Turrialba as references of that division, imaginary borders which can be found even today in popular thought. Turrialba popularly has been seen as the limit between the “black lowlands” and the “white highlands.” Informal violence, concludes Putnam, followed the alleged spatial segregation within the Costa Rican territory and has left permanent scars in the collective memory of the region (Putnam 2010: 299). In 1942, “the black race” was included in the list of “undesirable races,” with the “Chinese, Arabs, Turks, Syrians, Gypsies, and coolies,” which had been banned already for a long time (Putnam 2010: 289-290). Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants 69 This legislation, in contrast to what happened during the colonial period, excluded the descendants of Africans from the national ethos, leaving them on the “margins” of the definition of its territorial and symbolic social geography. It is for those decades that the figure of Marcus Garvey – a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist will occupy a special place in the social movement of African origin in Panama, Costa Rica, and Belize. Meanwhile, the First World War and the Depression of the 1930s left the North American economy in crisis, causing secondary crises in the economies of the region, particularly felt in the Caribbean Central America, as a result of the heavy dependence on banana exports by the national economy, up to 50 % in some countries (Putnam 2010: 291-296). Images and Representations in Textbooks In a review of the textbooks used in the region in the last two decades, we observe that there is a transversal axis in all of America on which the image of Africa circulates. In most of those narratives that have been used in a traditional historiographical perspective, the organization of the colonial Spanish period was explained through a so-called “social pyramid.” In it, the Peninsular people occupied the upper stratum and the “blacks” the lowest one, and in the middle, it is argued, were the mestizos and below them the Indians. This social pyramid erases the term Africa or descendants of Africans, and replaces the identifications with the word blacks, or slaves, as synonyms in most cases. It shows a static image of colonial society and the ideological fiction that there were no poor Spanish peasants, nor social mobility among the descendants of Africans. Figure 9, presented below, is often used as a basis of analysis of the social complexity present during the 300 years of colonial rule and, in the absence of more information about what happened, it is often used to explain the present. These representations place the situation of people of African descent in the lowest echelon of society, as victims, without the possibility of agency or socio-economic and political mobility. This image completely ignores people who fought for freedom and were liberated from slavery during that same period, and that there were communities of Afro-descendants who ventured into business, cocoa farming, livestock production, and services, without ever being in slavery. Some of them achieved a 70 Rina Cáceres social position and acquired capital in the colonial period which allowed them to build hospitals and churches, while others owned haciendas and land, had captain and lieutenant titles, and had the right to carry arms despite the prohibitions, as we said earlier (Cáceres Gómez 2000: 90). Figure 9: Quiros, A. (2010) Fichas de Estudios Sociales para Secundaria 3er ciclo, 8vo año. - Primera edición - San José, Costa Rica.: Litografía e Imprenta LIL. p. 118 und grafico poblacion Africans and their descendants are presented as subdued and degraded, unable to articulate strategies of resistance or mobility. That fallacy about identities continues to be repeated and studied as a truth in most of the American continent. This has been created by the fiction that the phenotype is an economic and cultural marker associated with categories of subordination. Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants 71 Therefore, the answers given to a question made to random groups of teachers in Central America in the framework of the Del Olvido a la Memoria project – which will be discussed later – is consistent with that narrative and should not be surprising. The question, part of a broader questionnaire of ten items, was intended to assess the knowledge that teachers and their immediate social environment had about the history of the descendants of Africans.5 The survey respondents consisted of a random sample of 30 primary and secondary teachers in each Central American country excluding Belize (see Table 1 below). Table 1 Question: What is the image of Africa that you believe people have in their minds? Answers: • Negative • Only blacks. • The place where the punta originated (dance) • A country full of poverty, famine and lack of development possibilities, full of conflicts • Only blacks and animals • Only black people poorly fed or mentally disabled people • Where poverty reigns • Horror, malnutrition, discrimination • Poverty, sadness, ignorance • Backward country • The continent of creation but also is presented as the poorest continent • First civilization • The worst because they only show us the negative side • They are slave people still • The cradle of all human beings • Continent with diversity of flora and fauna. 5 The surveys were held in each workshop that was made prior to the delivery and explanation of the contents of the collection of the fascicles Del Olvido to the Memory between 2010 and 2014. We created it as an instrument to visualize weaknesses and strengths of the teachers prior to the holding of every workshop. 72 Rina Cáceres • • • • • • Multicultural. Environmental problems A poor nation with little racial education Poverty, malnutrition or famine, underdevelopment Where nobody is overcome because they do not believe in God Is the country where slaves came from or emerged Images and Representations of Africa at the Popular Level These images do not differ from other images transmitted in television programs and children’s stories with familiar parallelisms between the African descendant and the animals and the jungle. Examples are the images of “Looney Tunes” and “Merri Melodies” which were originally transmitted on television and widespread during the second half of the 20th century, marking the lives of generations of children and young people, now adults. At least eleven of those cartoons were censored in the mid-1960s, but in many countries some of them with similar images are still being transmitted and reproduced. The Africa Squeaks series, for example, in which the African continent is presented as backward and as an object of ridicule, presents the main character with animal and ‘tribal’ features. This ‘fictionalized’ image of African descendants fed on the ideas left by the Blackface in the American continent and the human zoos in the European case, all of them in the times of the colonial occupation of Africa. Some of these images were recreated in children’s literature, as in the Cocorí short story written by Joaquín Gutiérrez Mangel, the children’s best-selling book from Central America and originally published in Chile in 1947. Its content has inspired artists in various countries, where it has been released to present an image on its cover and in the text their own interpretation of the story, such as the one shown below, in Figure 10, of the 1985 edition in Bulgaria. This image of the Cocorí character recalls Inki, the African child of the television fables who appears dressed in a loincloth, bracelets, earrings, and a bone in his head. The contents of the story, the analysis of which is outside the scope of this paper, was legally confronted in the Court of Justice through an appeal for protection by two African descendant children who argued that Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants 73 after reading the story in class they had begun to be subjected to teasing from their classmates.6 The ruling issued by the Constitutional Chamber in 1996, which is still enforced today, reflects the vision about the descendants of Africans prevalent in the decade of the 1990s. Some paragraphs provide an example: Figure 10 (Gutiérrez 1985: 11) [N]owadays, if a person of white race travels to some place in Africa, where there are only tribes that have no contact with the outside world, the members of those tribes are usually surprised, and quite possibly even get scared if they see a blue-eyed blond arriving by any means of transport […] This Chamber does not consider that there is any discriminatory element in the book “Cocorí”. Moreover, it is a book that – within the historical context […] – tries to highlight the virtues of a race that at that time was still condemned by the remnants of slavery, a time full of cruelties and that produced many sufferings and vexations not only to the black race, but also to the indigenous and mestizo race, among others. The character of Cocorí does 6 The appeal provoked a heated debate in 1996, 2003, and 2015 about whether it should be compulsory reading in the country’s schools. These debates stimulated the production of academic and journalistic articles which have explored possible meanings from a literary perspective. For examples of this, see K’añina 2004 and Duncan 2017. On the other hand, the debates also provoked waves of racist rhetoric in the media. 74 Rina Cáceres not have a single negative quality: he is a generous, awake, brave boy, who spends a series of adventures moved by a romantic engine. (Powell and Campbell v. Ministry of Education 1996; our emphasis). All this speaks of the relevance of decolonizing the image of Africa in the contemporary identity paradigms of Latin America. The Importance of African Studies in the Region The Center for Studies of Asia and Africa of El Colegio de México was for many years the training centre for Africanist researchers in Latin America. It was created in 1964 as a centre for Asian Studies with the support of UNESCO, and in 1982 the Sub-Saharan Africa area was opened. For example, students from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico have done their Master and PhD degrees there. Meanwhile in Central America, as a result of political and economic instability, the military coups and armed conflicts experienced in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and the serious social and economical deterioration of the 1970s and 1980s, the issues of gender, history, and archeology were postponed. Two generations of students and researchers were lost, and the growth of libraries stopped. The signing of the peace agreements in the early 1990s slowly began a reversal of these trends. In the field of news media, the interest in Africa was small and generally covered the classic thematic spectrum: food problems and military conflicts, until the FIFA World Cup was held in South Africa in 2010. The change came through the cable television that made information available to the public about the continent that cannot be found in the local media. As a result, today, the younger generation has more information and more data about the African continent, although this has not meant an immediate transformation of their conceptual paradigms. A dynamic factor has been that African descendant groups in civil society have fostered the knowledge of their cultural roots and have achieved greater participation at a political and symbolic level with celebrations of Black Day, or the month of culture, or black ethnicity for several decades. In Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and the Caribbean coast of the region, important poles of debate have emerged at the academic level and even in several municipalities (2016-2018), such as Co- Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants 75 lon, Panama City, and Zacatecoluca. Several museums have also opened spaces for the exploration of the history and recognition of rights. United Nations agencies have played a central role in pressing for compliance with their resolution of the decade 2015-2024 as the International Decade for People of African Descent, with the slogan Recognition, Justice, and Development (UN resolution 68/237). The Teaching of the History of Africa in Costa Rica In the case of Costa Rica, the interest in Asia and Africa began at the end of the seventies in the Universidad de Costa Rica as a result of the debate over the meaning of civilization and history and the Eurocentric perspectives that dominated those times (cf. E. Araya I. 1993; Agudelo 2017). Africa as a topic of teaching in Humanities began with the pioneering work of the writer Eulalia Bernard and her emblematic course on Afro-Caribbean Culture. In the eighties, the political science department incorporated it in those cases in which it was relevant to explain certain political conjunctures. In the nineties, the fields of communication as well as the arts assigned spaces to the study of African particularities. But perhaps it was anthropology that incorporated African themes earlier, by the theories and debates around kinship and the concepts of tribe and ethnicity. In linguistic studies, Swahili is still one of the obligatory examples in the revision of the universal linguistic panorama. However, many of these changes were isolated and did not respond to a coordinated strategy or to a transformation of curricular content, much less to a transformation of collective thinking that broke with the image, concepts, and ideas built about Africa, and overcame the Eurocentric criteria that dominated and still dominate in thought. In the middle of the eighties, the first course on History of Africa was opened and since then it has been taught at the History Department of the Universidad de Costa Rica, being the only course on African history taught in Central America on a regular basis. At the beginning of the 2000s and as a result of the students’ request, the traffic of enslaved people across the Atlantic and its consequences in Africa and America was introduced as a unit which fostered the interest to know and to connect the history of our Central American societies with African history. In the same decade, intermittent programs were created in the Diplomatic Institute attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the Uni- 76 Rina Cáceres versity for Peace, attached to the United Nations, and at the National University, called the African Studies Program, which became a space for meeting, conversation, and discussion of African issues. The Program of African Diaspora Studies, within the Center for Central American Historical Studies, was created in the University of Costa Rica (2000-2004). It was one of the four ‘laboratories’ where the students of master’s and doctorate history programs debated their research subjects. The Chair in Africa and Caribbean Studies was created (20142018) under the Rector’s office. Today, African history at the Universidad de Costa Rica is part of the program of world history courses (ancient, modern, medieval, and contemporary). A series of international conferences have been hosted, the first being held in 1999 on the topic of “The Routes of Slavery in Africa and Latin America”, in celebration of the 175th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Central America, which brought together Africanists and Latin Americanist researchers. Of particular importance was the participation of three different universities: African Studies Program from El Colegio de Mexico; African History of York University, Toronto, and Central American History Program, Costa Rica. Other conferences continued in that line in partnership with the Tubman Institute, from York University. In 2004, the conference “Haiti: Revolution, Independence and Emancipation,” on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Haiti’s independence, was held at the University of Costa Rica’s headquarters on the Caribbean coast. In 2006, the symposium on “Slavery, Culture, and Religion,” was held in Cahuita, Limón, Costa Rica. In 2008, the international symposium “Slavery, Citizenship, and Memory. Minor Ports in the Caribbean and the Atlantic” took place in Omoa, Honduras, co-organized with Darío A. Euraque, who was at that time Director of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History. In 2014, the symposium “The Meaning of Blackness I” was attended by more than 50 researchers from different countries in Latin America, North America, Europe, and Africa, and two years later, “The Meaning of Blackness II / The Meaning of Negritude II” took place. A workshop in 2017, “Press and Slavery XIX century,” followed up, as well as two international academic forums held in the community of Cahuita in the Costa Rican Caribbean, “Calipso, Anancy, and Other Stories” and “Knowing Our History” in 2017 and 2018 respectively, also in partnership with York University, Canada. Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants 77 Conclusion As we have said, at the level of civil society, and as a result of the first World Conference against Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR) carried out in Durban, South Africa in 2001, as well as the preparatory conference of the Americas carried out in Santiago de Chile in the previous year of 2000, and the intense work of the organizations grouped around the Central American Black Organization (ONECA), interest in knowing the African roots of our societies has increased. As a result, two projects were launched: A special module about history in the “Educational Campaign on Human Rights and Ethnic Rights of Afro-descendant Populations” undertaken by the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (2006-2007), and the educational project Del Olvido a la Memoria (2006) was training teachers in the study of the history of Africa and people of African descent in Central America supported by the project “The Slave Route: Resistance, Freedom, and Heritage,” of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The aim of this project is to help transform the Central American vision of the history of the region through an education campaign that seeks to historicize the African presence, from its experience in Africa until its development in America. Moreover, in 2017 in Panama, a resolution was approved that will change the trends in education. The resolution recommended promoting the inclusion in the educational curricula of the topics related to the history of Africa, slavery, and the teaching of the legacy of the populations of African descent through the Ministries of Education of the region at primary and secondary schools. The study of the African reality has a promising future (Agreement No. 5 of the 38th Ordinary Meeting of the Council of Ministers of Education and of the Council of Ministers and Directors of Culture of the CECC / SICA 2017). A new reading of the demographic and cultural contribution of African societies in the demographic recovery of the Central American region must be set. Recognizing that the region experienced one of the most extreme cases of ethnocide as a result of the military conquest by Castile will show the role played by Africa in the configuration of the modern western Atlantic world. This recognition would make possible the building of a historical image of Africa that surpasses the image constructed in the interpretation of the Latin American colonial period, 78 Rina Cáceres made at the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries and displace the discussion on discrimination from the moral sphere and focus on the historical-social sphere. Africa and Latin America have researchers of high academic quality that, in a South-South perspective, must be made more visible. They require the recognition of each other and their strengths which unfortunately does not happen enough. To name just a few of the topics: electoral processes, migration and immigration, traditions, Indigenous rights and political representation, the legacy of the colonialism in the curriculum, external debt, technology, agriculture, transitions from military governments and dictatorships to civil governments, and globalization. These topics have enormous potential. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Andres Rodriguez for translating the text into English. References Agreement No. 5 of the 38th Ordinary Meeting of the Council of Ministers of Education and of the Council of Ministers and Directors of Culture of the CECC / SICA (2017). Panama. Agudelo, Carlos (2017), ‘Estudios sobre afrodescendientes en Centroamérica. Saliendo del olvido’, Tabula Rasa 27, pp. 199-217. Araya Incera, Manuel E. (1993), ‘Los estudios sobre Asia y África en Costa Rica’, Reflexiones, 10/1, https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/ articulo/4796195.pdf. Accessed 08.05.2019. Cabrera Lobo, Manuel (1993), ‘Las Partidas y la esclavitud: Reminiscencias en el sistema esclavista canario’, Publications de l’École française de Rome, pp. 121-130. Cáceres, Rina (2000), Negros, mulatos esclavos y libertos en la Costa Rica del siglo XVII, México: IPGH. Castillero Calvo, Alfredo (1969), ‘Los negros y mulatos libres en la historia social panameña’, Revista Lotería, 14:164, pp. 61-96. de la Fuente, Alejandro (2010), ‘From Slaves to Citizens? Tannenbaum and the Debate on Slavery, Emancipation, and Race Relations in Decolonizing Images and Representations about Africa and Its Descendants Latin America’, International Labor and Working-Class History 77, pp. 154-173. Duncan, Quince (2017), Toda la verdad sobre Cocorí, San José: Asociación para el desarrollo de las mujeres negras costarricenses. Euraque, Darío (1996), Estado, poder, nacionalidad y raza en la Historia de Honduras, Tegucigalpa: Ediciones Subirana. — (2004), Conversaciones históricas con el mestizaje y su identidad nacional en Honduras, Tegucigalpa: Centro Editorial. — (2011), ‘Los discursos de la identidad étnico-racial’, UNESCO-UCR 5, pp. 58-67. Gudmundson, Lowell (1978), Estratificación socio-racial y económica de Costa Rica: 1700-1850, San José: EUNED. — and Wolfe, Justin (eds.) (2010), Blacks and Blackness in Central America. Between Race and Place, Durham: Duke University Press. Gutiérrez, Joaquín (1985), Cocorí, Sofia: Editorial Otechestwo. Hall, Carolyn and Pérez Brignoli, Héctor (2003), Historical Atlas of Central America, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Erquicia, José Heriberto and Herrera, Marielba (2017), ‘Presencia africana en la sociedad salvadoreña’, in: J.H. Erquicia and R. Cáceres (eds.), Relaciones interétnicas: afrodescendientes en Centroamérica, San Salvador: Universidad Tecnológica de El Salvador, pp. 14-41. K’añina (2004), Vol. 27. Kramer, Wendy; Lovell, George and Lutz, Christopher (1993), ‘La conquista española de Centroamérica’, Historia General de Centroamérica II, pp. 80-81. Konetzke, Richard (ed.), Colección de documentos para la Historia de la Formación social de Hispanoamérica, 1493-1810, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, pp. 1953-1958. Leiva, Rafael (1982), Tráfico de esclavos negros a Honduras, Tegucigalpa: Guaymuras. Lindley Dixon Powell and Epsy Tanisha Swaby Campbell v. Ministry of Public Education (1996), Supreme Court of Justice (Puerto Rico), Exp. 6613-95, N° 0509-96. 79 80 Rina Cáceres Lohse, Russell (2014), Africans into Creoles: Slavery, ethnicity and identity in colonial Costa Rica, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Lokken, Paul (2013), ‘From the “Kingdoms of Angola” to Santiago de Guatemala: The Portuguese Asientos and Spanish Central America, 1595–1640’, Hispanic American Historical Review 93:2, pp. 171-203. Lutz, Cristopher (1982), Historia sociodemográfica de Santiago de Guatemala 1541-1773, Guatemala: Cirma. Manning, Patrick (1996), Slave Trades, 1500-1800: Globalization of Forced Labour, Variorium: Aldershot. McLeod, Murdo J. (1973), Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520-1720, Berkeley: University of California Press. Molina Arguello, Carlos (1962), ‘Poblaciones fundadas en Nicaragua durante el Siglo XVII’, Revista Conservadora 5:27, pp. 31-44. Pérez Brignoli, Héctor (1988), Centro de Investigaciones Historicas 42: La población de Costa Rica según el Obispo Thiel, San José: Universidad de Costa Rica. Putnam, Lara (2010), ‘Eventually Alien. The multigenerational Saga of British West Indians in Central America, 1870-1940’, in: L. Gudmundson and J. Wolfe (eds.), Blacks and Blackness in Central America. Between Race and Place, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 278-306. — (2011), ‘¿Qué tan ajenos y qué tan extranjeros? Los antillanos británicos en América Central, 1870-1940’, UNESCO-UCR 5, pp. 2236. Rubio Sánchez, Manuel (1975), Historia de el Realejo, Managua: Banco de América. Senior, Diana (2011), Ciudadanía afrodescendiente. El gran escenario comprendido entre 1927 y 1963, San José: EUNED-UCR. Soto Quirós, Ronald (2008), ‘Imaginando una nación de raza blanca en Costa Rica: 1821-1914’, Les Cahiers ALHIM 15, pp. 233-271. Velásquez, Mélida (2001), ‘El comercio de esclavos en la Alcaldía Mayor de Tegucigalpa, siglo XVI y XVIII’, Mesoamerica 42, pp. 199-222. 81 The History of African Studies in Korea – Forty Years of Its Academic Development Yongkyu Chang Institute of African Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea Introduction The first institutionalization of African Studies in South Korea began in 1977 when a group of academics, diplomats, and other professionals agreed to set up a consultative body to the government’s decision-making process on Africa-related issues. This consultative body was embodied in the Institute of African Affairs at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (IAA-HUFS). Later on, IAA-HUFS changed its name to the Institute of African Studies and turned its attention to a more academic orientation. The Korean Association of African Studies (KAAS), a national level academic association, was founded in 1982, and the pedagogic institute of African languages (Kiswahili) took its first step in 1983. It was these institutes which truly laid the foundation for African Studies in Korea.1 This is remarkable because three major Africa-related institutes, which have led the development of African Studies, laid their foundations within a decade from 1977. There has been a long phase since then, and again from the advent of millennium, where either new institutes or transformed institutes have begun to emerge as some universities and para-governmental institutions partake in African Studies, thus expanding and diversifying the boundary of the study. One of the most recent institutionalizations was the Korea-Africa Center, a consultative institute which is affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. First established in 2015 under the name of Korea-Africa Future Strategy Center, it was restructured in 2018 as an independent foundation. 1 For the remainder of this article, the term ‘Korea’ will be used to refer both to South Korea and the Republic of Korea. 82 Yongkyu Chang Although not focusing solely on African issues, a number of research institutes began to strategically approach African issues. For instance, the Korean Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), a paragovernmental research institute focusing on economic investment and cooperation between Korea and the international societies, carries out measurable policy-based research on Africa. After 2000, civil societies and NGOs related to Africa have begun to grow rapidly and to engage diverse social and cultural activities with their counterparts in Africa. Today, African Studies in Korea has shown remarkable progress, although it still remains in a marginalized position compared to other major Area Studies. Another interesting development of African Studies in Korea since 2000 in particular is that a number of French departments began to branch out into African Studies, mainly focusing on French-speaking African societies, especially in Maghreb countries. Yet another intriguing feature is that Korean literature critics started to study African literature, searching for an alternative way of interpretation, utilizing the methodology of Korean literature criticism. It will be interesting to see how this field will develop further. As mentioned before, the way African Studies has developed so far in Korea is quite impressive, given the insignificant historical and practical relations between Korea and the African continent. Additionally, there are some positive indications for further development as the government has begun to provide a reasonable amount of research funds for African Studies. The most recent is the bill passed in the national parliament in 2016 to promote 54 global ‘strategic languages’ appointed by the government, five of which are African languages. Of course, the state of research is not comparable to that in Western countries that have a long academic history of African Studies, or even to that in some major Asian countries. Despite all these positive achievements, the prospects of Korean African Studies are not rosy. There are alarming voices from within the academic cycle of African Studies and, if it is not overly pessimistic, the current situation of African Studies is not satisfactory. I would, with a mix of optimism and pessimism, argue that the current situation of Korean African Studies is in a state of stagnation, or, at best, progressing very slowly. This paper is divided into three sections. In the first part, I will briefly sketch the history of Korean African Studies, and, for this purpose, the part will be divided into three consecutive phases. Firstly, from the 1960s The History of African Studies in Korea 83 to 1982, secondly, from 1983 to 2006, and lastly from 2007 onwards. This division of phases is based on national interests in Africa that have developed according to diplomatic activities, i.e., presidential visits to African countries, or the establishment of major research and educational institutions accordingly. In the second section, I will show the trend of Korean African Studies by analysing two major Africa-related journals published in Korea and other major publications. The analysis will clearly show the balance between African linguistics and literature on the one side, and political science and economics on the other in Korean African Studies. I will rely on four previous reviews on Korean African Studies which were published by Park (1996), Choi (2006), Han (2007), and Hong (2016) respectively. The section is followed by the challenges and some suggestions, which will diagnose the confronted problem of contemporary Korean African Studies. History of African Studies in Korea In this section, I am going to discuss the history of Korean African Studies, sub-divided into three phases: the first (1960s~1982), the second (1983~2006) and the third (2006~).2 This division is based on the increase of the national concerns in regards to the African continent and the subsequent implication of foreign policies towards Africa. Two presidential visits to African countries in 1982 and 2006 respectively were particularly crucial, as these visits resulted in the introduction of Africarelated research and educational institutions. A striking feature of these phases is that national concerns in regard to the African continent are implemented at private universities. In other words, private universities, not national universities, and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in particular, have taken initiatives for African Studies. Another feature of these phases is that, although there has been institutional development on African Studies, public knowledge and recognition of Africa and African Studies are virtually non-existent. This public ignorance is one of the major elements which has hindered the development of African 2 Park 1996: 4 categorises the history of Korean African Studies into two: the first stage from 1955 to 1980, and the second stage from 1980 to 1990. Similarly, Han 2013: 171 attempts to distinguish it into the first generation who had laid a foundation of African Studies, and the second generation who has developed its own academic identity as Africanists. 84 Yongkyu Chang Studies in Korea. It is quite interesting to observe that the development of African Studies runs in parallel with the development of political and diplomatic relations between Korea and African countries. The First Phase (1960s~1982) The diplomatic and political relations between Korea and African countries were feeble in this period, since most of the African countries preferred to build up a relationship with North Korea. Economic relations also only existed with a very limited number of African countries, i.e., Kenya and Nigeria. The problems arose from Korea’s internal situation: Korea was an underdeveloped country in this period and was preoccupied with building a nation from the debris left by the Korean War, which ended in 1953. The economic level of Korea in the 1960s was no better than that in some African countries; Korea also was one of the major recipients of international development assistance from the international community. Nevertheless, the Korean government tried to extend its diplomatic relations to newly independent African countries to gain support for joining the UN, something which was only realized in 1991. African Studies in this phase was in an ‘embryonic’ state. According to Cho (2012: 141), the first academic article on African Studies appeared in 1955 (Han 1955)3 and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs published its first Africa-related report in 1959. The first book publication on Africa was published in 1972 under the title African Politics. It has been called the founding book of African Area Studies. Park (1996) claims that two different styles of documentation on Africa have been published in this period. The first one is the academic publication, published and circulated in academia in the form of journals, books, and thesis. The second one is ‘regular’ reports on African countries and economics which were issued by governmental and para-governmental institutes, such as the Export-Import Bank of Korea (Exim Bank), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and so on. In this phase, special attention should be paid to the fact that in 1977 the first academic institute on African Studies was established at HUFS. The institute was initiated by Wontak Park, who was at that point the 3 The article is titled ‘The Concern of France over Violence in Africa’ and was published in Korean. The History of African Studies in Korea 85 head of the Turkish department.4 How exactly this came about is not entirely clear. He was chair of the IAA until he resigned in 1998. However, it is interesting to note that no single ‘real’ Africanist5 was involved in the initiation of the IAA. Presumably, Professor Park was a member of the consultative body to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for advising national policies on African countries. However, the IAA had only a limited consulting role to the government and was focused more on academic activities. The IAA opened up a master course and produced some graduates.6 With most of its professors coming from the department of Middle Eastern Studies, the IAA’s main area of focus was for the most part confined to Northern Africa, and more specifically, Maghreb countries. The methodology of political sciences and economics were utilized as the core analytical tools. In this sense, the IAA might not be seen as a fully-fledged and recognized Institute for African Studies, since its research boundary and academic disciplines remained within limited areas. The year 1982 was a turning point both for the diplomatic relations of Korea to the African continent and for African Studies. Three events, which were closely related to each other, took place in that year. The first visit of a Korean president to African countries (specifically Kenya, Nigeria, Gabon, and Senegal) was made in August of 1982 (Anon 1982a; Anon 1982c; Anon 1982d). A month earlier, a group of professors, researchers, and government officers had launched the Korean Association of African Studies (KAAS). The first meeting was held to build up mu4 I do not have any information on why a professor of Turkish studies took a directorship of an Institute of African Affairs. Prior to the establishment of the IAA, the chairman of The Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industry urged the establishment of the Institute of African and Latin American Studies in 1976 after visiting some African and Latin American countries (Anon 1976). It is not certain if this report had an influence on the establishment of the IAA, but I have been given to understand that social awareness of these countries’ economic importance began to be fostered during this period. 5 This means that they had never been to African countries for research purposes. They were ‘textbook Africanists’. 6 I was one of the master students at the IAA in 1987, but I dropped out after studying one semester, since there were no African specialists at the institute to guide students. I would argue that since their academic backgrounds were not in African Studies and they had never been to the continent, the professors had clear limitations in their understanding of African countries. 86 Yongkyu Chang tual understanding of African politics, societies, cultures, and economies (Anon 1982b). KAAS began with 20 members from universities, government research institutes, and diplomats. Since then, KAAS has remained as the sole academic association of African Studies at the national level. In conclusion, a notable thing in the first phase was the establishment of two major academic institutes on African Studies, which have been the leading institutes for African Studies since then. African Studies, in this period, was led by an exclusive group which could not really be called ‘Africanists’. They had neither majored in African Studies nor visited African countries for research purposes. Still, both institutes assumed that they could form a think tank to influence the government’s strategic approaches to Africa. The Second Phase (1982~2006) Throughout the second phase, African Studies remained in a stagnant state for a number of reasons. An initial stage of the second phase was demarcated by the establishment of the department of KiSwahili (African Studies) at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in 1983. The establishment of this department was significant since it was the first fully-fledged educational African Studies department in Korea. It would turn into the main source of producing Korean Africanists, especially in the Humanities, i.e., African languages, literature, history, and anthropology. Negotiations to establish this department had begun much earlier, in 1976, between the Ministry of Education and HUFS. An executive director of the Ministry of Education, Taesoo Jung, consulted on the possibility of the establishment of some academic departments on African and Eastern European Studies at HUFS. An emeritus professor, Hanjin Oh, from the department of Russian Studies, later recounted the moment when he and Jung wrote a proposal for the establishment of the department of African Studies at HUFS (Oh 1991). According to him, two special measurements were taken by the government to establish the department of African Studies, and two students were given National Scholarships on KiSwahili Literature and Language as a part of the founding process. Two students from the department of German Studies applied for (and were granted) the scholarship. They went to Germany for further study; one in the field of African literature and the other in African linguistics. The History of African Studies in Korea 87 The idea of establishing a department of African Studies emerged among the public officers, and the Ministry of Education finally gave a special allowance to establish the department of KiSwahili at HUFS in 1981. HUFS announced the first recruitment of students in 1982, and the first course was offered in 1983. Two students that had studied in Germany and England, respectively, returned over the next two years and began teaching students. The department has changed its name twice since7 and remained as the sole educational department of African Studies in Korea. The founding of the IAA, the KAAS, and the department of KiSwahili during the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s paved the way to a balanced development between research and educational dimensions. However, only after over a decade, when the first graduates of the department of KiSwahili had completed their studies overseas and returned to occupy positions in research and teaching, was that balance really achieved. The first graduate came back in 1998 and, since 2000, multiple graduates have come back to Korea after the completion of overseas study. Departmental graduates have become one group of Korean Africanists. Besides HUFS, since 2000, some universities (namely Seoul National University, Sogang University, Sookmyung Women’s University, and Kyung Hee University) have also shown interest in African Studies and started to offer some courses for students. They have opened general arts courses and master courses for humanities, political sciences, and developmental studies within the broader field of African Studies. It is also during this period that scholars from various academic disciplines turned their attentions to African Studies and enrolled at the KAAS. They mostly come from social science academic backgrounds, especially from political science and economics. Therefore, Korean Africanists can be roughly divided into two groups: HUFS-based Africanists who specialize in the humanities, and Africanists based at other universities who are focusing on the social sciences. Of course, this categorization, which is a gross oversimplification, carries the danger of being applied too strictly. HUFS has also produced political scientists, and other uni- 7 The department of KiSwahili has changed its name to “Department of African Studies” in the late 1990s, and then again expanded the structure into the “Division of African Studies” in 2008. 88 Yongkyu Chang versities, especially Seoul National University and Kyung Hee University, are strong in African literature. Observing from the institutional perspectives, the second phase might be seen as a period of academic expansion, as African Studies successfully pushed their boundaries both in quantitative and qualitative ways. Moving on from the first phase, more opportunities for research in Africa arose as the focus broadened from only covering African language, literature, and economics. Furthermore, the number of Africanists recruited from the graduates of the department of KiSwahili and scholars from diverse academic disciplines increased. Therefore, the second phase was a ‘transitional’ period of African Studies moving from the dominance of ‘amateur’ Africanists to that of ‘professionals’. This academic development does not correspond with the public’s views. Public interest in Africa has been set back since the first presidential visit to African countries in 1982. The image of Africa in the mind of the public remained in a ‘primitive’ state, as there existed virtually no relations between Korea and Africa; a state which even today has not changed much. With the physical and psychological distance between Korea and the African continent, public knowledge on Africa can be characterized as being ignorant, distorted, and manipulated. All through the second phase, even though there had been the historic presidential visit to some African countries, the government paid no particular attention to Africa, which, along with the general public’s ignorance of the African continent, meant that African Studies suffered from isolation in academic circles. The turning point came in 2006, when the President paid the second visit to African countries. The Third Phase (2006-) 2006 was the most dramatic year in the development of Korea-African relations. In March of that year, the President of Korea Roh Moo-hyun paid the second visit to African countries (specifically Egypt, Algeria, and Nigeria). The main purpose of this visit was to foster economic relations between Korea and African countries, which had been neglected for centuries. After the presidential visit, the first Korea-Africa Forum was held in Seoul in November that same year and the Korean government announced the intention to organize it as a triennial forum. Also in November, Korea joined the Development Assistant Committee (DAC), which opened the way to deliver Official Development Assistance (ODA) The History of African Studies in Korea 89 and Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF) to African countries. Korea, which once was the recipient of developmental help by other, more ‘developed’ countries, now was able to assist other countries which were less developed; this was seen as a positive thing. Accordingly, African countries, for the first time, really gained attention, and many developmental projects have been designed and delivered since then. Now, scholars from the field of developmental studies poured into the realm of African Studies, while some Africanists, especially those who had a background in social sciences, moved into the field of African developmental studies. The third group of African Studies, the most practical domain of African Studies, had emerged among scholars. The third presidential visit to African countries (South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ethiopia) took place in 2011 and, in the following year, the 3rd Korea-Africa Forum was held. In 2012, Korean Airlines launched a direct route from Incheon to Nairobi, three days a week.8 In 2013, the National Assembly Forum declared ‘Africa’s New Era’. The activity of NGOs and civil organizations on Africa began to flourish, as the government released ODA to many African countries. Public promotion to ‘know Africa better and correctly’ became a daily event. All of a sudden, the distance (both physical and psychological) between Korea and Africa began to get smaller. In this new social environment, African Studies have gained other opportunities for stepping up to the other stage, namely with the establishment of new academic institutes, while some pre-existing academic institutes have changed their research areas to the African continent for a variety of reasons. A significant move towards Africa comes from the departments of French of some universities. Faced with an academic crisis as their language is losing both its influence and popularity in Korea, these departments try to adjust their academic orientations and to expand towards Francophone Africa. Some departments changed their 8 The route stopped in 2014 after two years of operation. The official reason was to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus, which was spreading in several African countries. However, the main reason was due to the deficit operation of the route. Since then, there has been no direct route between Korea and the African continent, before Ethiopian Airlines launched its direct route between Incheon and Addis Ababa (which actually goes from Nagoya to Addis Ababa via Incheon). This shows that the distance between Korea and the African continent remains massive. 90 Yongkyu Chang names to “Department of Francophone Studies” or “Department of Francophone Africa”. The Institute of Francophone Studies, Seoul National University, which was established in 1989, has extended its academic orientation to Francophone African countries, focusing mainly on Francophone African literature. Yet another institute for Francophone African studies, the Institute of Maghreb Studies at Baejae University (2000s) focuses on Maghreb countries. Kyung Hee University has opened up the Institute of African Studies in 2013; interestingly, the institute’s main research area is on Francophone Africa’s folktales. Jeonbuk National University opened up the Institute of Francophone African Studies in 2016. The Institute of European and African Studies of Hanyang University has changed its name from the Institute of European Studies to deal with the political and economic situations in African countries in 2013. The Institute of Africa and the Indian Ocean was established in 2013 with the aim of researching the literature of the Indian Ocean regions, including East African countries. Yeongsan University also has an Institute of African Studies. It is inspiring to observe these institutes giving attention to African Studies and the founding of such institutions is a stimulating phenomenon, with the expectation of mutual collaborations to produce more qualified academic results. However, on the ground, the situation is more gloomy than rosy. Most, if not all, of these institutes are structurally fragile from a management perspective, since it is hard to secure management funds and human resources (paid researchers) from within. Therefore, institutes are heavily reliant on external research funds, such as the National Research Foundation, Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), etc., which do not allow long-term projects for reasons which are not quite clear. Besides, for unknown reasons, these academic institutes tend not to interact with each other. There might be a rivalry based on having to compete for limited funds, or there might be a question of academic authority between those who have initiated and dominated African Studies so far and those who have joined recently from other academic backgrounds. In any case, the tendency of keeping a distance from each other is a serious hindrance for African Studies in Korea. Despite all this, since 2006 the landscape of African Studies has faced a dramatic change as research institutes grow rapidly and more and more researchers pay attention to African Studies, which is helpful in promot- The History of African Studies in Korea 91 ing African Studies. However, there are critical voices, doubting the authenticity of these newer institutes, claiming they are not determined to carry on African Studies and are only showing a temporary interest in order to ‘pick up’ research funds. Nevertheless, in conclusion, the third phase is the most prosperous period for African Studies in terms of governmental attention and support to Africa in diverse ways, which has resulted in establishing more academic institutes on African Studies. Trends of African Studies Publication: Strong Political Sciences and Rising Humanities Korean African Studies throughout the decades have shown some interesting academic trends and, in order to explain them, I am going to discuss four review articles on African Studies in Korea: Park (1996), Cho (2012), Han (2013), and Hong (2016). Park’s article was the first analytical review on Korean African Studies and in his article he analyses a total of 363 academic articles related to African Studies, written between 1955 and 1995. During this period, based on his analysis, articles dealing with the economic relationship between Korea and the African continent were dominant (157 articles), followed by those from the political sciences, in particular those focusing on international relations (137 articles), and from the humanities, mainly dealing with literature and linguistics (69 articles). This had been a period of dominance of the social sciences, which reflected the Korean government’s diplomatic and economic interests on African countries. Therefore, the papers mostly take on an advisory and consultative perspective, rather than an academic one. In his paper, Park divides the development of African Studies in this period into two phases: from the 1950s to 1980, and from 1981 to 1995. In the first phase (from the 1950s to 1980), the total number of publications in the field of African Studies was 180.9 The number of publications massively grew in the second phase (from 1981 to 1995), as a total of 930 publications are registered.10 This was mainly due to the fact that a major academic institute on African Studies, the KAAS, had been established 9 155 academic articles, 20 books and five Master theses (Park 1996: 5). Not a single PhD thesis was published in this period. 10 681 academic articles, 145 book publications, 70 Master theses and nine PhD theses (Park 1996: 5). 92 Yongkyu Chang and started to publish a journal. In this period, only two journals were published: one by the KAAS and the other by the IAS-HUFS. Practically, the KAAS was also managed by the IAS-HUFS, which acted like the ‘headquarters’ of academic activities in Korea. The development of Korean African Studies after 1996 is analysed by Cho (2012), Han (2013), and Hong (2016) respectively. The analysis by Cho (which starts in 1955) paints a somewhat different picture than that by Park. Cho analyses academic articles, which occupied about 60 % of the total number of 1,418 articles published between 1955 and 2012. The economic perspective still occupies 37 % of total publications, which was followed by African politics and policies (28 %) (Cho 2012:139). Although there has been a slight decline in percentage, social sciences still make up over 50 % of total publications during this period. Cho’s argument follows Park’s analysis: it is after 1998 that academic articles have multiplied, especially after 2004. Over 50 academic articles are published annually in the two major Africa-related journals. After 2006, book publication also records double digits. The IAS-HUFS made an analysis of academic theses and articles in the field of African Studies between 1962 and 2009 (IAS 2010). Before 1982, the total number of academic theses was only 25. Between 1982 and 2010, the number grew to 291.11 Out of a total of 291 theses, the political sciences, i.e., African politics and economics, occupy 55 % (160). The dominance of the political sciences can be observed in academic article publication as well. According to the Journal of the Korean Association of African Studies, between 1986 and 2009, out of a total of 228 articles contributed to the journal, African politics occupies 26.8 % (61); followed by African economics 23.2 % (53), African cultures 16.7 % (38), literature 16.2 % (37), linguistics 12.3 % (29), and history 4.4 % (10). (IAS 2010: 5) There is only a small number of African countries being covered in research, such as Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa, due to Korean Africanists either having studied in these countries or being taken there for their field research. 11 The research was based on the theses registered at the library of the National Assembly. The History of African Studies in Korea 93 Figure 1: Academic Publications on African Studies (Cho, 2012) Figure 1 shows that academic journals (top graph) are the major outlet of publication on African Studies, and have dramatically increased since 2000. The two graphs in the middle are book publications and also show an increase after the year 2000. The number of theses (bottom graph) fluctuates more, having one high point during 1983/1989, and a second one that is rather recent. All these graphs show that African Studies begins to emerge, in a quantitative way, around the year 2000 and has continued to increase since. Han’s (2013) and Hong’s (2016) studies focus more on the academic trends of African Studies by addressing the fact that the vast bulk of published research only began at the beginning of the third millennium. Han argues that “the early studies are mainly comprised of studies focused on introducing and reviewing foreign scholars’ researches in the field of politics and economics” (Han 2013: 192). This is due to the fact that, in the ‘early’ stage of Korean African Studies, no unique academic perspectives had yet been established among Korean scholars, and so importing Western academic approaches without any critical review was inevitable. Since then, Western approaches on African Studies have been disputed, with most of the criticism coming from an anti-colonial perspective on literature. Nevertheless, in general, the understanding of the African continent among Korean Africanists remained poor, simply viewing the continent as still occupied by ‘primitive tribes’ and needing to be civilized. Hong’s analysis (2016) focuses on the publication of master and doctoral theses. According to her, there are a total of 686 master’s theses and 48 doctoral theses registered domestically to the Research Information Sharing Service (RISS). Figures 2 and 3, above, show the rapid increase of master and doctoral theses since the third millennium. The number of master’s degree theses, 94 Yongkyu Chang Figure 2: Number of Master Theses (Hong 2016: 376) Figure 3: Number of PhD theses (Hong 2016: 378) which exceeded 20 for the first time in 2008, has shown a quantitative growth, and especially since 2012, the number has grown up to 70 each year. Thanks to this increase, the number of master’s theses related to African Studies reached 680 by 2015. This data shows that the number of theses to obtain degrees in Korean African Studies has grown rapidly in a relatively short time, despite the limited research resources, and also indicates that the number of qualified scholars in future generations is increasing. However, the output of doctoral theses is slightly disappointing compared to the explosive growth of master’s theses. As Figure 3 shows, only a couple of doctoral theses have been produced every few years until 2000. There has been some progress since 2000; however, the number remains almost the same as before. Hong analyses the phenomenon as one of the main problems Korean African Studies are currently faced with. As most of the research of Korean Africanists still remains at an ‘introductory level’ or ‘the import of Western perspectives,’ it can hardly The History of African Studies in Korea 95 be expected that any profound scholarly knowledge will be reflected in students’ theses (Hong 2016: 378) and, as a matter of fact, the majority of master’s degree holders are willing to go overseas for further study. That is part of the reason of the sudden drop in the rate of doctorates. But the most central reason of this ‘academic discontinuation’ is the lack of opportunity for post-docs to find jobs. Given the way African Studies are marginalized in Korean academia, there is little hope that this structural problem will change. Facing Challenges and Some Suggestions The history of Korean African Studies has largely coincided with the developing history of the Korean government’s diplomatic relations with the African continent. Three review articles on Korean African Studies confirm that substantial development of Korean African Studies has only occurred since the 2000s, when the Korean government took positive actions in African countries (Cho 2012; Han 2013; Hong 2016). That was when the Ministry of Education showed interest in African Studies and began to support Africanists financially. Despite this development, some challenges for Korean African Studies have been raised continuously by scholars. Park (1996) argues in his review that African Studies are faced with three focal problems: the lack of the research funds, the shortage of researchers, and research environments dominated by political science. Twenty years later, Cho (2012) and Han (2013) point out the problems that Korean African Studies encounter, which are, by and large, concurrent with Park’s analysis, albeit with slightly different nuances. Cho analyses the problem by firstly illustrating how Korean African Studies have, since the 2000s, grown in quantity. The problem is that most of the academic papers being published fail to analyze issues currently facing Africa; they instead simply describe or introduce regional political, economical, and social situations (2012: 143-144). Cho then discusses another part of the problem, the lack of research funding, and then points towards the academic trend of ‘closing off ’, i.e., individual researchers or academic disciplines isolating themselves as another problem (Cho 2012: 144-145). Han also points out that the shortage of researchers poses a serious problem to African Studies and the unbalanced academic systems, i.e., education and research also cause challenges to African Studies. 96 Yongkyu Chang Han also criticizes the confrontation between two rival disciplines, i.e., humanities and political sciences, as the critical element hindering the development of African Studies (Han 2013: 168). He points out the structural problem of Korean African Studies. He classifies Korean Africanists into two groups: In the first group are only those scholars who have been trained in African languages and literature at HUFS and who have expanded their majors in humanities and social sciences. Scholars from the second group come from a range of disciplines, particularly the social sciences, and have designated African Studies as their subject of study. The former group suspects the latter of being not ‘serious’ and ‘unorthodox’ in regards to African Studies, because they take African Studies as a secondary or supplementary study to their own discipline. The second group argues that the first group lacks knowledge of the theories and methodologies of their academic disciplines, because they are merely ‘area specialists.’ The reason is the lack of academic communication between these two groups, and, although the KAAS accommodates both groups, their distrust of each other is a hindrance to academic cooperation. The number of Korean Africanists is relatively small, and without resolving the rivalry among themselves, the development of Korean African Studies might be faced with stagnation. The main challenges facing Korean African Studies, which are drawn from analyzing what the different studies have in common, are: the shortage of the number of research institutes and researchers, including the delayed training of junior researchers; limited research funds; the failure of interdisciplinary approaches; the shortage of research materials. Some of these points merit some more discussion. The small number of professional Africanists is certainly a problem for the development of Korean African Studies, and when compared to the size and number of Africanists in other Asian countries, the problem becomes even more obvious. However, I do not agree with the idea that this problem has hindered the development of Korean African Studies. The number of Africa-related research institutes is high enough to contribute to the development of the field, and I do not think that we need even more institutes. I would rather argue that the question is not the number of institutes, but their capabilities and efficiencies. Unfortunately, most of these academic institutes do not function properly. This is due to their struggle to get even the basic requirements for existence, i.e., researchers, proper research funds, and administrative back-ups. Although most of these institutes are affiliated with universities, they The History of African Studies in Korea 97 do not get financial and administrative support from the universities. Accordingly, these institutes have to heavily rely on external research funds and most of their researchers are employed temporarily and only when the institutes manage to secure research funds. So most research institutes do not meet even basic requirements for carrying out consistent research projects, and are without sustainable support from external sources. In this area, the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) acts as a major supplier of funds. The distribution of research funds on international Area Studies in Korea is lopsided, because the focus is on countries which hold strategic importance for national interests, such as South East Asia, China, Japan, and so on. Accordingly, African Studies has always been excluded from gaining major research funds. To give just one example, ‘Humanities Korea’, the largest research project ever, initially claimed to prefer supporting so-called ‘isolated’ or ‘marginalized’ Area Studies. Because they were working in a typically ‘isolated’ area, Korean Africanists were awaiting huge research funds which would revitalize the inert Korean African Studies. However, African Studies were only given the minimal amount of research funding. Another problem concerning research funding is that it is virtually impossible to fund a long-term project, and in general the longest projects are given a three- to five-year term. Under these circumstances, research institutes cannot plan for the long term. This is one of main causes hampering the development of African Studies.12 The failure of interdisciplinary approaches poses another problem to the development of African Studies in Korea. Long-standing rivalries between the humanities and the political sciences in the circle of African Studies on the one hand and African Studies as Area Studies and other ‘pure’ academic disciplines on the other have posed serious problems in the community of Africanists. For instance, the discrepancy between 12 There are two exceptions: IAA-HUFS has been conducting a ten-year research project, called “Humanities Korea – Overseas Regional Research” since 2010. The project’s aim is basically to support the humanities, i.e. literature, linguistics, history, and so on, which have lost their academic competitiveness in academia. “Humanities Korea” is divided into two categories: The Humanities Research Field and the Overseas Regional Research Field. In the Overseas Regional Research Field, a total of 26 academic institutes are being supported by NRF, and the IAA-HUFS is one of them. NRF also sponsors a ‘New Areas Studies’ Project and another institute for African Studies has been selected for the project in 2013, for nine years. Therefore, two academic institutes on African Studies are currently conducting long-term academic projects. 98 Yongkyu Chang African Linguistics/Literature and African Politics/Economics is huge enough, so communication between them is virtually impossible. Additionally, there is another huge gap between African Studies as Area Studies, which is a very practically-minded field, and other ‘pure’ academic disciplines, which further hampers the cooperation between them.13 Are there possible solutions? The reviews discussed in this study suggested paths Korean African Studies need to follow for its future development, and I agree with those, for the most part. Nevertheless, to my regret, all these reviews have missed a crucial reason for the stagnation of Korean African Studies. The problem is not solely caused by the shortage of researchers and the inadequate number of institutes. Additionally, not enough research funding is also one of conditions which hinders development. However, the most serious problem we are faced with is the lack of ‘affection.’ Korean Africanists or those who are interested in the domain of African Studies critically lack the seriousness of study. This may sound unscientific and unacademic, but, based on my experience as a Korean Africanist, I assume that Korean Africanists do not take the profession seriously. Conclusion The Korean government declared the year 2010 as the “year of strengthening diplomatic relationship with Africa.” The National Assembly organized the ‘Africa, New Era Forum’ in 2013 along with a triennial Korea-Africa Forum. KOICA and the Korea Exim Bank begin to strengthen their aid efforts to African countries. NGOs and civil organizations held regular public seminars to promote a new image of Africa. Towards the end of 2016, the Korean government suggested a project for the promotion of global strategic languages to enhance the relationship with globally marginalized countries, and the national parliament passed the bill. The bill covers 54 chosen languages in the world and 13 The Korean Association of African Studies (KAAS) is a multi-disciplinary body in which, ideally, diverse academic disciplines share and exchange academic knowledge, or try to converge these diverse disciplines in order to achieve a better understanding of diverse African issues. However, in practical terms, there is a somewhat large gap between the social sciences and the humanities, and even professionals from each academic discipline do not understand each other, and do not even try to. That is one of the crucial issues Korean African Studies is faced with. The History of African Studies in Korea 99 the government allocates funds for the project. The project includes five African languages: Amharic, Hausa, Kinyarwanda, Swahili, and Zulu. Furthermore, Africa-related research and educational institutions are able to begin the sustainable development of African Studies because the project is a long-term project as the national parliament has signed on the bill. This is a good sign of structural transformation of Korean African Studies, and, in addition, the mood of fostering Korea-Africa cooperation has never been this high before. However, Korean Africanists are still in need of proper support and attention from the government. There is a feeling right now that African Studies still remain in a state of marginalization in Korean academia and, as I have indicated, the government’s indifference and public ignorance are two critical elements causing the current stagnant situation of African Studies. As I have suggested, a certain ‘affection’ towards African Studies would be a positive contribution to the development of the studies. ‘Cliquish’ attitudes among researchers, institutes, and academic disciplines are the most profound dilemma that must be dealt with. Positive collaboration among them is required for the development of African Studies and building up affection among researchers is one major way, I would suggest, to bridge the gap. Acknowledgements This paper has been sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the National Research Foundation of Korea in 2010 (NRF-362-2010-1-B00003). The paper is the edited version of my presentation at an international conference invited by the Institute of African Studies, University of Bayreuth. References Anon. (1976), ‘Institute of African studies and Latin America urgently needs to be set up […] Construction and export potential is great’, Daily Economics, 18 October, p. 7. Anon. (1982a), ‘President Chun, National visit to four African countries and Canada’, DongA Daily, 18 June, p. 1. 100 Yongkyu Chang Anon. (1982b), ‘The establishment of the Association of African Studies, Dr Park, Sang-shik was elected as the first president’, Kyunghyang Daily, 20 July, p. 11. Anon. (1982c), ‘President Chun, National visit to four African countries: arrives in Kenya tomorrow’, 16 August, p. 1. Anon. (1982d), ‘Korea-Senegal, agreed on a free trade zone in Dakar’, Daily Economics, 27 August, p. 1. Cho, Wonbin (2012), ‘Korean Research Trends in African Studies’, Asian Review, 2:4, pp. 129-148 (in Korean). Han, Geonsoo (2013), ‘A Methodological Reflection on African Studies in Korea and a Review for Research Topics’, Asian Review, 3:5, pp. 159-193 (in Korean). Han, Giryun (1955), ‘The Concern of France over Violence in Africa’, Regional Administration, 4:10, pp. 18-22. Hong, Myung-Hee (2016), ‘The Current State and Task of African Studies in Korea’, Cross Cultural Studies, 44, pp. 373-391. Institute of African Studies (2010), ‘Africa, Crossing Boundaries: Building a Korean Paradigm for African Studies’, Research Proposal for Humanities Korea, Institute of African Studies, HUFS (in Korean). Oh, Hanjin (1991), ‘Recruitment of the Department of Eastern European Studies and KiSwahili’, in: C. Taesso and C. Kyuhyang (eds.), The Developmental History of Korean Educational and Policy, Seoul: Yejugak, pp. 765-767 (in Korean). Park, Wontak (1996), ‘Current situations and questions of African Areas Studies’, African Studies, 12, pp. 1-15 (in Korean). 101 The African Presence in the Caribbean: Some Considerations Marta E. Cordiés Jackson Centro Cultural Africano “Fernando Ortiz”, Universidad del Oriente, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba Introduction The history of the Cuban people is tinged with maroon rebellions, uprisings, and resistance against foreign interference. It is the history of the struggle of nascent peoples that found in their own misfortune and marginality the necessary strength to become nations. In what can be considered a difficult and labyrinthine history, the relationship between popular culture and politics cannot be separated. Rather sententiously, Patrick Jones says in reference to the people of this part of the world that history was preserved through popular culture while discontent was expressed through politics (1978, p. 74). When talking about the African ethnos, its presence, permanence, and importance in Cuban culture, Fernando Ortiz (1973) defined it through the culinary analogy of the ajiaco: a tasty chili sauce. This analogy can also be extended to the Caribbean identity. Through this reference, I attempt to appraise this ingredient in its own right: as the pinch that defines the dish and determines the seasoning, making it a unique meal out of other similar dishes. Such is the case of the American and Caribbean ‘meal,’ where all our people share a common past that begins with aboriginal presence, proceeds through the period of European colonization, and is characterized by the wailing, pain, and blood triggered on our coasts by the Transatlantic trade. This central fact of ethnic multiplicity that underlies our social ethnos cannot be avoided when carrying out studies on the countries in this area, given that we are the result of a series of cultural mixtures. From the very beginning, our people were not uniform, whether you are talking about the ethnic composition of those that came from Europe to the New World in Colón’s caravels to ‘discover’ and later on to colonize us, those who ravaged Africa through 102 Marta E. Cordiés Jackson slave capture, or the large human groups held captive in factories awaiting transportation to uncertain destinations determined by the Transatlantic trade. Dissimilar nationalities and extremely varied cultures converged, confronted each other, and fused over several centuries. We descended from this interbreeding, heirs of those that arrived and those that were already here, thus forming a synthesis of a new, powerful culture sui generis through what Fernando Ortiz referred to as a transcultural process (1978, p. 74).1 The Africans were present since the very moment of the conquest, because, as Isaac Barreal affirms, “With the first Spaniards arrived the first blacks” (Barreal 1966, p. 20), and when the Indigenous genocide created the necessity for an alternative source of manpower, they brought thousands of Africans in successive waves through the terrible business of the slave trade. I will not delve into a full-fledged discussion of the slave trade or what it meant for Africa. Rather, I will briefly discuss the fundamental aspects of this people, and how they integrated into their new habitat, becoming part of our culture and an important element in defining the historical subject this side of the Atlantic. The first thing to consider is that these men and women came to the New World with nothing apart from their memories and traditions. However, even that was not complete, because for the most part, only the youngest and strongest ones were actually shipped away and this set of people did not yet have ample knowledge of their tradition and culture. This can be explained by the fact that many African societies have a stratified socio-cultural set-up that is based on initiation. This means the individual is granted knowledge to certain cultural norms mainly in accordance with their age. With more years comes more knowledge and more experiences. Accordingly, as strong and apt for work as they were, many of the Africans taken to the Americas had different levels of knowledge about their cultures. That is why they fused memories and knowledge in the magnificent act of reconstructing and safeguarding cultures. 1 Fernando Ortiz, 1881 – 1969. A pioneer in studying the African presence in Cuban culture and society. His theory of the transcultural developed in his work Contrapunteo Cubano del Tabaco y el Azúcar (Ortiz 2002) supposes that, when two cultures are in contact during a long period of time, a new culture will emerge as a result of their interaction. This new culture, on account of having elements from its progenitors, has new elements that result from fusion and exchanges of cultural norms and practices. The African Presence in the Caribbean: Some Considerations 103 In Les religions africaines au Brésil: Contribution à une sociologie des interpénétrations de civilisation, Roger Bastide aims to explain the theory of memories. According to Bastide, at a certain point in time, because of the diverse ethnicities that comprised the group, its different members combined their memories and their life experiences to create a solid basis upon which they could found a new conception of the world. This led to the creation of a new culture, which included reconstructed myths, rites, cultural ceremonies, music, literature, etc. (Bastide, 1960/1998). It will be relevant now to discuss the concept of memory as the reservoir of the group and the role it plays in this complex framework. In an attempt to conceptualize, we can say that the word “remembering” is used in reference to a concrete fact. For example, “I remember the beautiful wooden coffee grinder which my grandmother used in grinding freshly roasted coffee.” Memory, on the other hand, would extend much further, not only to involve the beautiful coffee grinder, but all the circumstances surrounding it, as well as the connotations that the act of ‘grinding coffee’ had for my grandmother and her relatives. It can be concluded that memory is, or might be considered, as ‘the universe,’ that is to say, an archive where a community keeps all of the relevant facts of its history, be they private histories, family histories, daily realities, or experiences pertaining to the community at large. From this premise, it becomes easy to understand how the process of cultural resistance by the so-called subaltern cultures survive and continue to flourish in the face of ‘official cultures’ in contemporary times. If we abide by the preceding postulations, we could take as a point of departure Victor Hugo Quintanilla Coro’s definition of memory: […] as a set of fortuitous and circumstantial knowledge and practices, the product of processes that are subject to constant change of scenes and fields of meaning. Memory, in this sense, constitutes a form of continuous re-definition of all those moral values, beliefs and daily practices that safeguard cultures and communities […] against degradation to which they would be condemned was memory to be limited only to a repetition of traditions or to the preservation of rituals in the face of oblivion (Quintanilla Coro 2004, p. 1). It is a fact that even today, inherited behavioral norms are repeated and reproduced in the collective unconscious, fixed in an indelible way by memory and converted into a resource for the symbolic matrix and the social ethos of the people. 104 Marta E. Cordiés Jackson Secondly, in societies that were not mostly based on writing culture or who preferred oral transmission even when they had a writing culture, knowledge was passed on from one person to another and from one generation to another through the spoken word and was preserved in the memory of those who never renounced their cultural values. Thirdly, from the very beginning of their long sojourn in the slave ships, the enslaved persons began to tease together the compound framework of memories, fusing elements and cultures with the sole aim of holding onto their African roots. As such, the majority of the African deer, to quote an obvious and precise example from folktales, were replaced as kids, rams, oxen in the Caribbean version. Wild beasts were converted into wild dogs. Accordingly, in the tales of Anansi, whose opponent is the Tiger, the original connotations were lost, giving way to new meanings in the Americas. In the tales about the Spider, there is no real connection between the character of ‘Tiger’ and the actual African big cat. The baobab becomes a ceiba and so on. As can be inferred from the above, this system of substitutions and transformations leaves the inner essence of the element in question intact, making it acquire the necessary connotations in order to survive in a completely different cultural environment. Faced with a different social and environmental reality, they began to take whatever was familiar, common or at least known to them to reconstruct the legacy for future generations. Fourthly, however, there was no unique approach of integration into the nascent national culture. The Creole, a term referring to someone ‘born in these lands,’ was an individual who, from the onset, felt entitled to occupy the land, being its product. That was not the case with the African. The latter was characterized by a spirit of rebelliousness and a sense of belonging to a distant ancestral Africa underlined by the sentence: “I am not from here, they brought me here.” This “They brought me here,” this feeling of a land where their presence was not desired despite the fact that their bodies were being utilized, is what kept alive the desire of returning to the continent and the sense of ‘belonging’ to it. Such sentiments were so deep-rooted that right up to the early 20th century, there existed movements advocating for the return to Africa. Even today, there are still groups claiming their African origin. “They brought me here” is the basis of such a strong cultural resistance that it permeated all levels of society, becoming an important ingredient in our national existence. However, even though the African ethnos constituted an integral part of the national culture, the same cannot be said of the African people. The African Presence in the Caribbean: Some Considerations 105 Even when we talk about how much we owe to their culture or about the role and integration of their culture in ours, the social treatment of the Black people leaves much to be desired. Prejudices persist and, in some places, openly discriminatory practices are directed against descendants of the African people who are, at this point, undoubtedly citizens of the Caribbean. We need to define the framework of our reflections with regard to the theme of orality as a basis for an analysis of the American society. Considering Cuba as part of that universe, cultural analogies can be seen as a result of the same historical subject, allowing us to talk about it and, by so doing, understand a part of our history that is not in the books, but in the memory of people. In accordance with this approach, we take as starting points the following concepts: Context, oral literature, and the meaning of the term Caribbean, since these are the central elements in our discussion. Context is the space where the complex process of the surging of the Caribbean crystalized, including its own oral literature that flourishes across the spectrum of traditional popular culture. Above all, context is where history and cultural exchanges between our people took shape, and through the interlacing of its symbolic matrix, it allows us to talk of the Caribbean ‘self ’ and of a common historical subject. The study of orality is generally accepted as an undeniable source of knowledge regarding the history of the Caribbean people. Following this past that is transmitted from generation to generation, leaving perceptible traces in each of them, makes it possible to penetrate deep into the past of humanity2 itself. In its general linguistic meaning, context is the relation between structures of language and social structures given that utterance acquires meaning in the situation in which it is realized, depending on the personal experiences of the recipient of the message or the linguistic and communicative competence of the participants in the dialogue. We can assume that – linguistically speaking – context is a way of organizing which specific properties are determined by the intention behind the communication, the communicated meaning, and the (possible) interpretation made by the recipient. This is due to the fact that the context assumes the laws that govern reality, individualizes meaning, deriving 2 On the question of orality and its role in history, see the works of David Gonzalez, Paul Thompson, Jan Vansina, and others. 106 Marta E. Cordiés Jackson the particular from the general in the message, and highlighting explicit or implicit markers that make communication easier. In all this, orality is both the general background, as well as the reservoir of the most pertinent aspects of the people’s memory and oral literature. This presupposes a specific use of language structures within the framework of a determined social stratum, where decoded messages are exchanged amongst people that are conversant with the same codes. This is independent of the fact that not everyone belongs to a particular social stratum. Orality can establish links between social strata as long as speakers pertaining to the same or different communities share common linkages and connections in their past and present. The way I use the term context in this paper intends to go beyond the linguistic meaning. I take this latitude following the criteria set down by Tatiana Slama-Cazacu, which state that the sign has various nuclei of significance and that only the context delineates meaning. That way we can use the term context to express the conception of the universe, place, and most importantly, a space of convergence of an intercultural encounter that radically changed the conception of ‘the world’ at a given time in history. There were different ways in which this encounter made an impact. Either way, it left profound effects both on the ‘discovered’ and their ‘discoverers,’ giving rise to new concepts, such as ‘the colony,’ which influenced the geopolitics of the epoch. This legitimizing concept of domination and foreign interference emerges in the Caribbean and America at the very moment the Spaniards arrive. With regard to the term “colonial period” and its semantic connotations, Alejo Carpentier writes that: The notion of the colonial period was born with the discovery of America. It is common knowledge that before coming to America, the Spaniards […] the Portuguese had been to the confines of Asia […] but never thought of establishing colonies per se. They created some warehouses for commercial exchange […] negotiated, traded. There were some few cases where they settled with their families, but not enough to qualify them as colonies. On the contrary, Spain did enter America with that notion. And the first great colonizer that enters America after the discovery is the firstborn son of Christopher Columbus […] who founded a small renaissance court in St. Domingo. (Carpentier 1981, p. 23) The colony was a melting pot of cultures. Most importantly, however, it was the place where a specific group, from a position of power, sought to forcefully impose ‘themselves’ (their habits or way of life) on another The African Presence in the Caribbean: Some Considerations 107 group. This led to a split into two highly distinct groups of people that would, in time, become designated along ‘social ranks.’ On the one hand, the colonizers turned into the dominating class, that is, the absolute owners of all rights; on the other hand, the colonized turned into the dominated class, the ones that lack absolute rights. However, they developed a culture that preserved the most precious elements of their ‘social being’ and later influenced their worldview. They further succeeded in converting this culture into a homogenous culture that ended up assuming the status of national culture in these lands. This is the sociocultural context that will provide the spatiotemporal framework for our reflections. Obvious examples of how this complex process of cultural resistance and transculturation was accomplished can be found in several manifestations of our culture. In music, for example, even more important than the re-creation of the wooden instruments using metal, was the maintenance of the playing style and the rhythm, so that the sonorous image of African music could be transferred over to the new instruments while retaining the sound of ‘ancestral’ Africa. From a religious dimension, given that evangelization was used as the main pretext for the slave trade, Africans used the imagery of Catholicism to keep their own gods intact, making good use of the outward traits of Catholic saints to be able to worship their black gods behind the church altar. The notions of good and evil in African philosophy fitted well into the paradigm of Heaven and Hell, while what had on the African continent been songs of work now turned into religious songs. The personification of natural forces became the different orishas: all the Catholic hagiographies were connected to the stories of African saints. We have already seen a similar case within oral literature, in the animal tales, where the big cat ended up being converted into the dog Jivaro, while the antelopes and impalas were gradually turned into kids and rams. Nothing got lost; on the contrary, the culture was enriched. Through a generous and fertile process of integration and collaboration, a new national and cultural identity was formed that was completely Caribbean. In all of the examples discussed above, orality was the vehicle of transmission and memory served as the archive of the aforementioned traditions. A major part of the social and hierarchic structure, the internal organization of the Town Council, its dances, songs, etc., were passed on from one generation to another through verbal testimonies such as 108 Marta E. Cordiés Jackson in the case of the Regla Ocha or Santería, the Conga or Palo Monte. Popular religions of African origin preserved their legacy (transmitted by slaves) in the same way. In both cases, orality fulfilled the two fundamental premises in relation to society: preserving the social structure across time and fulfilling the social-environmental adaptation of memory and culture. The process of cultural resistance of Africans in the New World registered success the very moment these men and women, without any weapons other than their memory, established a socio-cultural context in their new environment in which they had been resettled against their will. In that way, oral testimony managed to fulfil a social function: it enabled the preservation of values necessary for the formation of the identity of the peoples of Cuba, fulfilling its function both at the level of the entire group as well as the subgroups, the true custodians of tradition. To understand its function and significance, both in relation to society and as a mere formality, two fundamental aspects must be considered in the analysis: The adaptation of this society to its environment and the preservation of the social structure across time. Every society has a different contextual notion and the new universe: the Caribbean forced the several ethnic groups that converged in that space to claim, abandon, and reformulate this contextual notion according to the assimilation of linguistic and social structures. Darcy Ribeiro discusses the concept of new people, which implicitly takes a notion of the characterization of these identities in which oral literature also became something new because it harmoniously combined and recast all the constituent elements of the nationalities that converged in the territories. In that way, it incorporated European, African, and autochthonous elements and at least in some Caribbean (and even Asiatic) islands. Therefore, when talking about Caribbean language, we do not have to refer to the term’s limited geographical meaning of territorial space, but to its cultural meaning based on the conceptual frame suggested by René Depestre: […] the planet’s crossroad ‘where’ history has created a particularly complex nexus of civilizations where the baroque, the picaresque, the magical, the epic and the marvellous penetrate and undercut each other […] in the political, social, religious and cultural fields. Nevertheless, five centuries of existence offer the necessary perspective for the understanding and identification of a historically constituted family […] The Caribbean […] has been defined for a long time not for its peculiar realities but rather by reference to Europe, Africa and the rest of America. Nowadays it is possible to study, to interpret and to understand the internal system of the inherent The African Presence in the Caribbean: Some Considerations 109 values of our societies from within. On the global stage, the Caribbean is present with its singular problematic, its music, arts and letters, its crises of identity and the dynamics of its efforts of mutation (1981, p. 16). Thus, it is not surprising that such a heterogeneous situation was the focal point of a process of cultural resistance, unique in the history of humanity, which made it possible to talk today, at the dawn of the third millennium, about traces, remnants, and costumes. But most importantly, it enabled a discussion about an authentically Caribbean culture that looks a lot like its forebears but has even more of its own authentic self. We have to consider the fact that, at first, this process was not in any way simultaneous in time and space. The colonization of the Caribbean was gradual and involved many different European powers, each leaving its mark on the territory. On the other hand, there was a pre-existing society in the conquered territories on which the newcomers with their corresponding cultures imposed themselves. As Manuel Moreno Fraginals affirms, the culture that took shape in the Caribbean was initially based on African values and patterns, elaborated or transmuted in a complex process of cultural resistance (as discussed above) and then further developed as part of an enduring class struggle. In that struggle, the dominated faced the repressive system of the colonizers who resorted to de-acculturation as a weapon given that they pre-fixed religious models, behavioural rules, dietary habits, housing, and sex regimes for the subdued ethnic groups. These were the historical and social conditions that underlined, defined, and configured the rise of the Caribbean as a region. Of course, there were many forms of resistance by the slaves against the terrible process of de-acculturation to which they were subjected. From the imperative not to forget who they were, where they came from, their tales and traditions, etc., they resisted from within their own culture the impact of the others on them and recreated their African way of life. When the resistance flourished creatively and the deep anguish of the slave condition fed into the great African dynamism, this produced results, not only in the religious sphere but also with regard to music, dance, language, literature and arts, family and social life, the culinary, and costumes, and general expressions of their wisdom, vivacity, and optimism. All these had an irreversible impact on the mestizo identity of Latin America (Picotti 1998). 110 Marta E. Cordiés Jackson With regard to language, there still exist traces of African languages that are subjected to in-depth studies today due to their important lexical contributions to the constitution of American Spanish as well as other Creole languages spoken in the rest of the Caribbean. It is necessary to start by mentioning the emphasis African cultures place on the word, considered something sacred. In addition to the rich and substantial lexicons that we inherited from the African languages, is added the ‘mode’ of usage. It is effectively the treatment of the word in the African manner that made possible the emergence of mixed languages like the Creole and Papiamento, thus preserving and reconstructing the Garifuna language or the black Caribe. To the extent that if the essence of a language is considered to be the grammatical structure and not the vocabulary, it will be necessary to consider recent neo-African and nonindo-Germanic languages (ibid). Manuel Zapata Olivella offers interesting reflections as a starting point for a global analysis of the evolution, permanence, and transculturation of language in America, stating that: […] Irrespective of whether the colonized ever set out willfully to recreate new idioms or dialects, their sentiments and interpretations inflected in the imposed language a new substratum that in the successive and continuous processes of acculturation and endo-culturation constitutes the most important contribution of Africa. Equally, in the case of Latin America [and the Caribbean], we must underscore the fact that African influence was produced largely in the spoken language given that Africans were systematically deprived of formal learning of the oppressor’s language so as to maintain them in a state of illiteracy. The result of this double linguistic repression has been the enrichment of the oral tradition in the communities of African origin. Due to the overcrowded nature of their living spaces and marginalization to which they were subjected, their expressivity could flourish freely without the oppressor's intervention. (Olivella 1988, p. 49) With this premise that places us fully in a new context of an identity constituted by multiple roots which overlap in an objective reality with an absolutely unequal correlation of forces and power, we can understand the development of Caribbean languages and consequently decipher, from the linguistic point of view, how they originated. The African Presence in the Caribbean: Some Considerations 111 “Kuntu”3 is the reigning category of African philosophy that presided over the complex process of transculturation which characterized the arrival of these thousands of men and women in the Caribbean. But during that process, as we indicated at the beginning of this paper, African people were not included. Due to their exclusion, the nation that was being formed could afford to incorporate elements of their culture while keeping at bay the bearers of that culture, considered as they were as mere merchandise. They were denied access to culture in a wider sense of the term and were kept in a condition of servitude and inferiority. As a social group, they continued to be relegated and denied access to possibilities of education and integration into the Creole society that was taking shape. We have to face the fact that slavery did not simply end with the juridical decree that abolished it. Just like the status of servitude, other evils followed four centuries of actual slavery and left racial prejudices intact. The racial antagonism which had hitherto paved the way for discrimination persists even today, in one form or the other. It is against the refusal to recognize black contributions and roles in the constitution of the cultural identity and the historical subject of our culture that scientists and researchers of the calibre of Fernando Ortiz have fought ceaselessly. The refusal to accept the African factor is common to all American and Caribbean mestizo societies. Even today, there are instances where black presence is denied in spite of detailed studies of the cultures and ethnic characteristics of their citizens and unimpeachable proofs of their impact in our material culture. An urgent and terrible problem faced by people of America today in varying degrees is that of denying the African presence as a subject and a component of American history. This is a legacy left by four centuries of slavery and slave trade which even the 20th century with all its scientific advances and great ideological changes has not been able to erase. A good example of this deplorable reality is the more than 40-year old Cuban Revolution which, despite having created a new generation of open-minded citizens and built a society in which (at least from state perspective) people have full access to education and culture, we can still find personal attitudes that, time after time, blatantly portray vestiges of racial prejudice. It is ironic that even with all the opportunities that a 3 The African philosophy establishes four main categories: Muntu, man; Kuntu, way; Kintu, animals; bintu for things, about this, see: J. Jhans el Muntu 112 Marta E. Cordiés Jackson radical process like the Cuban Revolution has yielded, the country still faces similar racial issues as in the pseudo-republican epoch when there was little access to education and culture. It is true that the clarion call from Yara and Cespedes’ heroic gesture that granted liberty to the slaves marked a new dawn for Cuba. People began to respect each other, and there was no more the question of the color bar which gave way to equality based on human blood. Participants in the war efforts took up positions in former palenques – the free towns for escaped slaves – and military life converted each and every one into soldiers such that at the turn of the 19th century one could say to the other, “You were born here and as for me, they brought me here: but blood, pain, and war made us one.” The cultures of America, of which Cuba is no exception, are permeated by this ingredient. Notice that I use the term mestizo in this paper not with regard to its racial dimension, but rather to its connotation of mixture and melting pot where knowledge and idioms of many peoples have fused: those that were here, those that came here by their own volition to forge a different world, as well as those that were brought here against their will, chained and made inferior by their captors who tried desperately to rid them of their human condition of being substantial ingredients in this dish, the ajiaco of Cuban culture. References Barreal, Isaac (1966), ‘Tendencias Sincréticas de los cultos populares de Cuba’, Etnologia y Folklore 1. Bastide, Roger (1960), Les religions africaines au Brésil. Contribution à une sociologie des interpénétatrions de civilisation, Presses Universitaires de France. Carpentier, Alejo (1981), ‘Lo que el Caribe ha dado al Mundo,’ El Correo de la UNESCO 34:12, pp. 4-9, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ ark:/48223/pf0000047576_spa. Accessed 16.05.2019. Cazacu, Slama (1974). Lenguiaje y Contexto. La Habana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación. Depestre, René (1981), ‘Una ejemplar aventura de cimarroneo cultural,’ El Correo de la UNESCO 34:12, pp. 16-20, https://unesdoc.unesco. org/ark:/48223/pf0000047587_spa. Accessed 16.05.2019. The African Presence in the Caribbean: Some Considerations Jones, Patrick (1978). Documentos de la Reunión sobre el Caribe, UNESCO. Revista Correo No. 34, número especial sobre el Caribe, 74. Olivella, Manuel Zapata (1988), ‘Descolonización de la tradición oral africana en América,’ Oralidad 1, pp. 46-50, https://unesdoc.unesco. org/ark:/ 48223/pf0000214862? posInSet=4&queryId=8a5c073f2c40-495a-a8d8-8df410611128. Accessed 16.05.2019. Ortiz, Fernando (2002), Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y del azúcar, Madrid: Cátedra. Ortiz, F. (1973). ‘Los factores humanos de la cubanidad’, en: J. Le Riverend (sel. y pról.), Órbita de Fernando Ortiz, La Habana: Colección Órbita, pp. 149-157. Picotti, Diana V. (1998), La presencia africana en nuestra identidad, Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Sol. Quintanilla Coro, Victor Hugo (2004), ‘Memoria e Imaginario Social. De la oralidad a la escritura’, Oralidad 12, p. 25-34, https://unesdoc. unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000262619. Accessed 16.05.2019. Ribeiro, Darcy, Los Procesos Civilizatorios, La Habana: Letras Cubanas, 1998. 113 115 The African Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington (USA) John H. Hanson Indiana University, Bloomington Introduction Scholars associated with the African Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) are leaders in research and teaching about Africa in the United States. No single conceptual or methodological approach defines this research: IUB’s more than eighty African Studies scholars are housed in numerous College of Arts and Sciences departments and professional schools at Indiana University. Many IUB African Studies scholars engage issues associated with multiplicity and relationality in Africa and its relations with the world, producing new work that places emphasis on connections, networks, and processes in their analyses. In this essay, I will offer an overview of the African Studies Program and discuss an African Studies Program research project entitled “New Media and Global Africa,” which illustrates the theme of multiplicity and relationality. The African Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington The African Studies Program (ASP) was founded in 1961 at Indiana University’s main campus in Bloomington (IUB).1 The ASP grew under the founding director, J. Gus Liebenow (1961-1971), and continued its expansion under his successors: Patrick O’Meara (1971-1993), N. Brian Winchester (1993-1995), York Bradshaw (1995-1999), John H. Hanson (1999-2007), Samuel Obeng (2007-2015), and Hanson again from 2015. 1 The ASP’s website includes information about its faculty and staff, ASP courses and degrees, IUB African Studies resources, and many other aspects of IUB’s ASP (African Studies Program 2018). 116 John H. Hanson Currently the ASP covers all regions of the continent (north to south, east to west) and draws on the expertise of over eighty IUB faculty members in the arts, humanities, and social sciences as well as several professional schools (business, education, information science, international and global studies, law, media, public and environmental affairs and public health). IUB’s African Studies resources are extensive. They include the print and audio materials at the Herman B. Wells Library, IUB’s main library and one of the largest university collections of African Studies materials in the U.S.A. Africana materials extend to archival documents and material objects in various repositories and museums. For example, IUB’s Eskenazi Museum of Art has one of the largest university collections of African art, its Lilly Rare Book Library holds the private papers of several African literary figures and other rare materials from Africa, IUB’s Archives of Traditional Music has extensive materials recorded in Africa beginning in the early twentieth century, and other repositories hold unrivalled collections of materials from Liberia and Somalia. Some of these audio, visual, and print materials now are available digitally, and efforts are ongoing to add more Africana to IUB’s online offerings. The ASP’s staff includes a director, associate director, administrative coordinator, and a student services assistant. IUB’s African languages program, offering seven African languages at three levels on a regular basis, is based in the ASP. The instructors include one clinical professor who also serves as the language program’s coordinator supervising three senior lecturers and seven associate instructors. For the past twenty years the ASP has been the editorial home of Africa Today, a quarterly, peer-reviewed, academic journal publishing original research on the arts, humanities, and social sciences; six ASP faculty serve as its editors, a graduate assistant is its managing editor, and the ASP director is Africa Today’s editor-in-chief. The ASP promotes the interdisciplinary study of Africa by coordinating instruction in African languages and cultures at IUB. The ASP offers African language courses and coordinates the African Studies course offerings of affiliated faculty in IUB departments and schools. The ASP awards several undergraduate degrees, including a minor and certificate in African Studies, a minor in African Expressive Culture, and a minor in African Languages; students may receive a major in the International Studies Department with an Africa concentration. Graduate degrees include: an MA in African Studies, a dual MA in African Studies and Master of Library Science, a joint MA in African Studies and Master of Public The African Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington (USA) 117 Affairs, a dual MA in African Studies and Master of Public Health, and a PhD Minor in African Studies. The program also promotes the exchange of students, faculty, and materials and engages in collaborative activities with other universities and institutions. In 1965 the ASP became a National Resource Center (NRC) for Africa under Title VI of the U.S. National Defense Education Act, maintained NRC status as the program moved into the U.S. Department of Education, and held it continuously until 2014. Despite the recent loss of NRC status, the ASP continues to offer Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships to students studying African languages and is seeking to regain NRC status in the 2018 Title VI competition. Whether serving as NRC or not, the ASP has engaged in outreach activities to extend knowledge of Africa beyond IUB. Outreach involves activities targeting schools, colleges, universities, communities, businesses, and other organizations to promote cultural, artistic, musical, and other activities related to Africa. These efforts include the development and dissemination of resources for a broad range of non-specialists interested in teaching about Africa, engaging in activities in Africa, and other initiatives linked to Africa. The resources include a website, podcasts, interactive instruction (e.g., video conferencing), film and print media materials, and library online services. It also engages in outreach activities that lead to personal, community, or institutional enrichment. The ASP outreach activities build on collaboration with the State of Indiana’s Department of Education (IDOE), IUB’s School of Education, other IUB Area Studies centres, and an emerging partnership with African Studies scholars at Indiana University’s urban campus at Indianapolis (IUPUI – Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis). The ASP’s outreach initiatives focus on teacher training to rural and urban schools in Indiana, including a new initiative to reach out to teachers of children from Central African refugee families – who now comprise one of the largest refugee populations in Indiana. The ASP also has connections to minority-serving institutions throughout the U.S.A. providing enhancements to their curriculum and professional training. Collaborating with IDOE and other IUB Area Studies centres, ASP provides expertise for the state-wide Global Employability Initiative to prepare a workforce that engages with the world. The ASP also partners with other Title VI centres, such as IUB’s Center on International Business Education and Research. 118 John H. Hanson The ASP is one of many IUB Area Studies centres within the recently established Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies (HLS). It is a school within the College of Arts and Sciences. HLS’s founding dean, recruited after a national search, heads a unit that incorporates IU’s Area Studies centres and several departments: three Area Studies departments (Central Eurasian Studies, East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) and the new Department of International Studies, formed from the International Studies Program which had a B.A. major within the College. HLS moved into a newly built Global and International Studies Building in 2015. Although HLS operates within the College of Arts and Sciences, it has partial autonomy, as do two other schools within the College, the Media School and the School of Art, Architecture + Design. Languages are critical to international and global studies, and the opening of HLS encouraged a major change for the African Studies Program: IUB’s African languages program, which had been administered in the IUB’s Department of Linguistics, moved to the ASP. IUB is one of only a few U.S. universities that offer African languages within an African Studies Center: the University of Wisconsin-Madison has its own department, but most schools place African languages in departments serving other primary functions, such as Linguistics or African-American and African Diaspora Studies. The current arrangement allows the ASP to serve as an advocate for African languages that might otherwise be neglected within the university.2 The constitution of HLS, with its new International Studies department, allows for new degrees. The MA in International Studies was launched this year, and the next task is to facilitate the integration of Area Studies possibilities into the new MA program. One new development may well be the creation of new area certificates associated with the various Area Studies centres. Some units, such as African Studies, already have an MA degree and many dual degree options with professional schools in business, library and information science, public health, public and environmental affairs, etc. These stand-alone and dual degree options will continue, but the Area Studies centres will have new opportunities to fashion a new certificate to accompany the new International Studies MA degree. 2 The ASP organized a symposium to discuss the integration of African Studies centers in new schools of global and international studies. Revised papers appear in a special issue of Africa Today (Africa Today 2017). The African Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington (USA) 119 In addition to these roles, the ASP encourages IUB faculty research on Africa. IUB supports faculty projects through various university seedfunding initiatives; IUB African Studies scholars develop Africa projects and receive competitive national and international research grants and prestigious fellowships. The ASP also helps coordinate research on Africa. I now turn to one of these initiatives. New Media and Global Africa This research initiative analyses how new media transforms African cultural expressions and how these expressions shape the contemporary world in Africa and beyond. “New media” includes recent developments in digital formats and earlier innovations in cinema, music, photography, and radio. “Global Africa” refers to local, regional and global networks on the continent and beyond to capture interconnections and cultural influences as Africans circulate between cities and rural areas and as they form communities abroad associated with historical and contemporary population flows.3 The transformations associated with new media in Africa require a fresh approach to understanding the historical, socio-political, and creative forces at work. Informed by recent work on modernity and ‘hybridity’, this project engages the specific transformations associated with technological change. It builds on the notion that Africans do not reside in impenetrable cultural spheres, but engage other Africans as well as newcomers to the continent, including recent arrivals of entrepreneurs from Brazil, India, and China. Three themes are foci of this research project. One theme is mobility. Recent African expressive forms do not emerge exclusively in cities, but urban spaces are vibrant sites of creativity where the absence or breakdown of infrastructure often gives rise to groundbreaking innovations. African cultural production reflects not only the complexity and diversity of urban experiences but is also stimulated and enriched by the movement of people, ideas, and commodities across boundaries. Some are local, rural-urban circuits within national boundaries, while others are regional and international networks connecting 3 This initiative draws on the conceptual and methodological approaches in Adesokan 2011; Bouchard 2012; Buggenhagen 2011; Goodman (forthcoming); Hanson 2017; Moormann 2008; Moyd 2014; Reed 2016. 120 John H. Hanson Africans in diasporas emerging across the continent and beyond. External diasporas connect new immigrants with those associated with previous movements in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds: cultural processes, therefore, emerge not in an on-or-off the continent binary, but out of connections, historical and contemporary, between Africans on the continent and elsewhere. Such processes also manifest themselves in more transformative senses than those typically associated with cultural identity, making it necessary for scholars to go beyond research on ‘global flows’ and their appropriations on the continent or the emigrants living in various diasporas. Africa is not the only continent to experience these processes, and our focus on global Africa will be relevant beyond those interested in Africa and its diasporas, highlighting productions that emerge from various connections and intersections while taking account of historical experiences and specificities. A second theme is the de-centred productions made possible by recent technologies. Beginning in the early 1990s, an explosion of FM radio stations began broadcasting in different national languages and produced commentary and debate, bringing often neglected rural voices into national debates. Political and religious leaders also turned to new media, initially cassette tapes, then DVDs, and now social media, to communicate with various publics and disseminate ideas. There has been a similar growth in initiatives such as innovative publishing ventures dedicated to publishing new writings in different genres as well as arts, film, and hip-hop festivals which provide forums of exchange for diverse publics. This flourishing of expressive forms and initiatives has taken place in a context of widespread economic volatility where the state has been decapacitated by structural adjustment and neoliberal reforms. They engage with, and often grow out of, the economic and political challenges that women and men across the social spectrum face in their everyday lives. The changes in media provide access to voices that are not “new” but no longer suppressed. This democratization, made possible by the media but made relevant by African participants, is a source of vitality and creativity at the heart of this project, but it also provides opportunities for undemocratic movements to convey messages and recruit. Performance is a third theme. This research theme emerged in the 1970s as a new approach in several disciplines interested in artistic production, from music and spoken word through ritual to visual arts and dance. This research project builds on this approach, and it extends the inquiry by conceptualizing performance as a space that is transportable, The African Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington (USA) 121 from rural to urban contexts and back as well as to communities in diaspora. Performance in this project is a creative space of heightened reflexivity. It is an arena where identity is formed, contested, and changed. It is a space that is fluid, where performers and audiences interact. The space also is adaptable, from a rural site illuminated by headlights or gas lamps to urban nightclubs and international venues producing streaming videos. The aesthetics of this performance space is one aspect of this theme, but another is the practical issues of copyright and piracy, legal domains that define and open creative spaces to the globalized economy of the current era. The researchers are Indiana University scholars working on African topics in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The initiative began with NEMLIA, “New Media and Literary Initiatives in Africa,” as a crossdisciplinary group formed in 2011 to explore relationships between different modes of literary and media production in literature, film, photography, art, and music and issues of intellectual property, copyright, piracy, and access.4 The “New Media and Global Africa” involves Akin Adesokan, Media School and Comparative Literature; Vincent Bouchard, French and Italian; Beth Buggenhagen, Anthropology; Jane Goodman, Anthropology; Marissa Moorman, Media School and History; Michelle Moyd, History; Daniel Reed, Folklore and Ethnomusicology; with ASP Director John H. Hanson, History, as its head. Its activities include workshops and symposia on this topic: one example is the recent conference, “African Practices and New Media,” held at the Indiana University Global Gateway in Berlin, a collaborative event with scholars at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth and scholars at the University of Humboldt. The next major conference will occur in Cape Town, South Africa after the Indiana University Global Gateway is opened in 2020. Other activities include special issues on this topic in Africa Today, books published with Indiana University Press, and the development of digitized materials, blogs, and podcasts focused on new media in Africa. 4 For more information on the project, see Nemlia n.d. 122 John H. Hanson Conclusion The ASP serves many roles at IUB. It coordinates a broad range of African Studies and African language courses and provides students with an opportunity to specialize in African Studies by obtaining undergraduate and graduate degrees, minors, and certificates, participating in study abroad, research, and internship opportunities in Africa, and attending events such as lectures, conferences, films, and other academic initiatives. The ASP also conducts outreach activities to serve wider communities in Indiana and the U.S.A. Encouraging research on Africa also is another ASP activity, and the recent initiative on New Media and Global Africa expresses one of several research initiatives undertaken at IUB under ASP leadership. These initiatives draw on African Studies expertise, but they also stress connections across regions and continents, recognizing the wide range of networks that link Africa to the world. The ASP’s integration into IUB’s new Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies reinforces activities that stress multiplicity and relationality in Africa and beyond. HLS seeks to actively promote activities and conferences that transcend regional and disciplinary boundaries and that challenge conventional binaries between area and global studies and between the social sciences and the humanities. HLS and the ASP at IUB integrate diverse perspectives into discussions relating to Africa and its role in the world. References Adesokan, Akin (2011), Postcolonial Artists and Global Aesthetics, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. African Studies Program (2018), ‘Welcome to the African Studies Program’, http://www.indiana.edu/~afrist. Accessed 28.05.2019. Africa Today (2017), 63:2. Bouchard, Vincent (2012), Pour un cinema léger et synchrone!, Lille: Presses Universitaire du Septentrion. Buggenhagen, Beth (2011), Muslim Families in Global Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Goodman, Jane (forthcoming), Cultural Encounters in Uncertain Times: Algerian Actors Tour the United States, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. The African Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington (USA) Hanson, John H. (2017), The Ahmadiyya in the Gold Coast: Muslim Cosmopolitans in the British Empire, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Moorman, Marissa (2008), Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, from 1945 to Recent Times, Athens: Ohio University Press. Moyd, Michelle (2014), Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa, Athens: Ohio University Press. Nemlia (n.d.), ‘Welcome’, nemlia.org. Accessed 28.05.2019. Reed, Daniel B. (2016), Abidjan, USA: Music, Dance, and Mobility in the Lives of Four Ivorian Immigrants, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 123 125 African Studies at UCT: An Overview Lungisile Ntsebeza Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa Introduction This article is about the notion of ‘African Studies’ at the University of Cape Town (UCT)1. Its main conclusion is that, more than 43 years after the formal establishment of the Centre for African Studies (CAS) here at UCT, a serious debate and discussion about what we understand and what we mean by African Studies at UCT has yet to happen. The article is based on research that I have been conducting intermittently since the end of 2007, when I did research for the then-Vice Chancellor Njabulo Ndebele on an issue involving UCT’s non-appointment of a South African born African academic, Professor Archie Mafeje in 1968 and the early 1990s. The results of my research led to UCT making a formal apology to the Mafeje family (Ntsebeza 2008 and republished with slight amendments in 2014). This initial research aroused my interest in the Centre for African Studies at UCT, and I started a more extensive research on the Centre towards the end of 2009. This new research project was interrupted by my involvement in a process that eventually led to the establishment of a new School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics (AXL). I led the discussions for the establishment of this new School between March and October 2011. In June 2012, I was appointed as the holder of the A.C. Jordan Chair in African Studies, which carried the responsibility of being the Director of CAS, among others. Although the archival aspect of the research on CAS, as well as the conducting of interviews have been affected by my added responsibilities, my involvement in the discussions about the new School, as well as 1 This paper is based on the presentation at the conference in Bayreuth in 2017. A slightly different version was published as ‘The ebb and flow of the fortunes of African studies at the University of Cape Town: an overview’, Social Dynamics, 46:2, pp. 356-372, 2020. DOI: 10.1080/02533952.2020.1815335. We thank the publishers for the permission of the secondary use. 126 Lungisile Ntsebeza directing CAS, put me in a position to comment knowledgeably about developments regarding African Studies at UCT. This is by no means a detailed account of the evolution of the concept of African Studies at UCT, but an overview based on work-in-progress; it is thus more suggestive than conclusive. The Genesis of African Studies at UCT The roots of African Studies at UCT go much deeper than the establishment of the Centre for African Studies in the mid-1970s. These can be traced as far back as the 19th century when missionaries such as W.A. Norton were keen to have a Chair of Bantu philology established in the Cape (Gordon 1990: 17). Norton, according to Robert Gordon, was a Church of England missionary “who was on friendly terms with several Cape Town professors” and also assisted missionaries to “overcome barriers of misunderstanding by providing them with proper language training” (Gordon 1990: 17). Howard Phillips tells us that Norton “had mastered several African languages in the course of his mission work in Africa earlier in the century” (Phillips 1993: 21). At the same time, the “native question” posed by the dilemma of a foreign minority ruling over an indigenous majority, in the vein of Mahmood Mamdani’s theory (Mamdani 1996b), pre-occupied colonialists and became a subject of serious discussion when moves were afoot for the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910. The Milner Native Affairs Commission of 1903-5 is a case in point. UCT was not an uninterested party in these processes. According to Gordon, the University publicly announced the establishment of the School of African Life and Languages “at the height of the Parliamentary debate on the Native Affairs Bill which created a permanent advisory Native Affairs Commission” (Gordon 1990: 18). It seems clear that UCT saw a role for itself in providing resources in the formulation and implementation of the ‘Native policy’. However, the formation of the Union of South Africa, as well as the First World War, shifted focus away from the common interests between state and university. Soon after the War, Norton resuscitated debates around “the scholarly study of the indigenous African population”, eventually convincing “several leading men” in academic and government circles of the importance and urgency of the issue (Phillips 1993: 21). This time round, Norton explicitly linked this endeavour with the development of govern- African Studies at UCT: An Overview 127 ment policy in its attempt to deal with the ‘Native problem’. He argued that knowledge of the African population would lead to a solid ‘Native policy’. Earlier on, in 1916, he had addressed the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in these terms: “Many a fatal mistake not only in dealing with individuals but also of general policy might have been avoided by a grounding in ethnology and comparative religion” (quoted in Phillips 1993: 21). Norton published a paper in 1917 entitled, “The Need and Value of Academic Study of Native Philology and Ethnology” in which he reasoned that “the study of language was the best ‘index to their [Natives] psychology’” (Gordon 1990: 17). For him, it was absurd for a South African university to ignore, as Gordon puts it, “the languages and customs of five-sixth of the population” (Gordon 1990: 18). Norton’s efforts were rewarded when the government approved the creation of a chair in Bantu Philology in 1917, a chair which he was to occupy. However, this chair was “suddenly frozen as part of the state’s wartime economy drive and Norton had to bide his time until it was re-instated in 1920” (Phillips 1993: 21). Norton never tired and gave evidence to a Government committee of inquiry into university grants in 1919. This inquiry wanted to address “problems whose solution is necessary for the future safe development of a country in which white and black are to live side by side” (quoted in Phillips 1993: 27). In the final analysis, the Union government endorsed the idea of establishing a school at UCT and the latter presented a plan of the school to the government in 1920. According to N.J. van der Merwe, the vision was that the school would be “a sizeable faculty presided over by a dean, teaching in languages as far afield as Swahili, and with research interests in such diverse subjects as the ethnology, religion and psychology of African peoples” (van der Merwe 1979: 62). A recommendation was made for the establishment “of a comprehensive, two-professor School of Bantu Life and Languages at UCT with a 3000-pound p.a. grant guaranteed for five years” (Phillips 1993: 22). Norton, at the time 50 years of age, was appointed chair of Bantu Philology in April 1920. He suggested a name change to “African”, so as not to limit his chair to “Bantu-speaking zones only”. The second chair was named “Social Anthropology”, rather than “Ethnology”, the name suggested by the committee of inquiry (Phillips 1993: 22). Although an initial budget of 3000 pounds was approved by the government, it was cut in half on the 24th of December 1920 (van der Merwe 1979: 62). Norton was appointed, initially, at a professorial level 128 Lungisile Ntsebeza in Bantu Philology, but for financial reasons was eventually appointed a lecturer in Bantu Languages and Literature, a position that was converted into a Professorship of Bantu Philology in 1921. The other chair of the School went to Alfred R. Radcliff-Brown, a 39-year-old Cambridge graduate. Based on the above, it can be argued that the University of Cape Town must be the first university on the African continent to form a school that would focus on African Studies. Furthermore, it is clear that the genealogy of the concept of African Studies at UCT cannot be divorced from the colonial strategy of ruling over the indigenous people. The role that Radcliffe-Brown and by extension anthropology played in this regard is of particular interest. According to Gordon (Gordon 1990: 15), there was clear complicity between Radcliffe-Brown and the colonial project, something which had far reaching implications for the discipline of Anthropology and its implication not only in the colonial project but also in the elaboration of the apartheid project in the 1940s and later (Gordon 1990: 15). Gordon cites Paul Rich (1984) in noting that General Smuts personally invited A.R. Radcliffe-Brown to establish the social anthropology course at the University of Cape Town in 1921, leading to the establishment of the first distinctly South African anthropological journal, Bantu Studies (Gordon 1990: 16). Meyer Fortes remarked that “at the time” there was “not a single full-time professorship of anthropology in any British university” (quoted in Gordon 1990, p. 16), suggesting that the first full-time professorial position in the British system was awarded to Radcliffe-Brown, at UCT. According to Phillips, Radcliffe-Brown tried to convince the government of the importance of the school. As Phillips puts it: Thus, he organised intensive vacation courses in African life and languages for missionaries and civil servants, testified before a Government commission of inquiry, gave several extension lectures in the Peninsula and beyond and delivered a series of impressive talks to the annual conference of Transkei magistrates in 1924. (Phillips 1993: 24). As Chair of Social Anthropology, Radcliffe-Brown was also head of the School (van der Merwe 1979: 62). He was seemingly a popular teacher, drawing large numbers of students. Relations between Radcliffe-Brown and Norton were apparently not the best. Norton’s main interest, Phillips seems to suggest, was research, rather than teaching. His courses never attracted more than one student African Studies at UCT: An Overview 129 a year, something that was not appreciated by both Beattie, the principal, and his colleagues. He enjoyed collecting “native lore and history” from the elderly which he wrote up and published as “intellectually lightweight papers” between 1921 and 1926 (Phillips 1993: 2). On his part, RadcliffeBrown despised the work of Norton as the following quote shows: “[A] trained anthropologist with no knowledge of the languages will do work of infinitely more scientific value than an untrained man with a perfect knowledge of the language” (quoted in Phillips 1993: 23). RadcliffeBrown wanted the chair of Philology to go. This eventually happened in 1923. Although he was supposed to resign effective from the 1st of April 1925, Norton was forced to leave on the day of his resignation. This, according to Phillips, spelt the decline of African languages at UCT, with the school being a school in African languages only in name (Phillips 1993: 24). Radcliffe-Brown resigned in 1925 and went to the University of Sydney to take up a newly created chair in social anthropology, “frustrated by trying to extract research funds from unimpressed colonial bureaucrats” (Gordon 1990: 16). Indeed, on the year he assumed duties in 1921, the government grant was halved again, from 3000 to 1500 British pounds. He apparently left the School in a state of disarray, under the leadership of “his erstwhile research assistant, AJH Goodwin, who became acting professor and two postgraduate students as temporary replacements” (Phillips 1993: 25). Whilst assisting Radcliffe-Brown, Goodwin developed an interest in “archaeological artefacts” (Phillips 1993: 25). He went on to introduce a new course in Ethnology and Archaeology in 1929. Tom Barnard took over from Radcliffe-Brown from 1926 to 1933. According to Phillips, he “left no mark as an anthropologist on South Africa; in fact, after leaving Cape Town, he dropped anthropology altogether for botany” (Phillips 1993: 26). During his tenure, the School’s grant from the Government was further cut. His response was to forge closer ties with the colonial government and try to attract students by offering “vocationally-orientated courses”, geared towards “‘native administrators’ and missionaries” (Phillips 1993: 26). However, the response to these courses was poor for the simple reason that, while the Native Affairs Department offered bonuses “to officials who gained the diploma”, the Public Service Commission “refused to recognise the diploma for promotion purposes” (Phillips 1993: 26). This, naturally, did not make the Diploma attractive to administrators. According to Phillips, between 1923 and 1930, the courses “drew exactly two Native Affairs Department 130 Lungisile Ntsebeza men” (Phillips 1993: 26). Politicians saw the School as dealing with “the ‘native problem’ in a far too academic way” (Phillips 1993: 27). As a result, it never had a direct influence on policy, something that had been envisaged when the school was established. However, Phillips does concede that “by its focus on the traditional elements of African society, it is possible that [the School] contributed in some degree to the development of the ideology of segregation which became the direction ‘native policy’ took between the wars” (Phillips 1993: 27). By 1933, eight years after the resignation of Radcliffe-Brown, the then Principal of UCT, Sir Carruthers Beattie, was to confide “to his old friend C.T. Loram” as follows: At present I look upon the school as our worst effort. We were unfortunate in many ways in getting Radcliffe-Brown – a careerist – and Norton – a fool. I have taken on my job for another three years […] One of the objects will be to pull this school together or get rid of it. (Quoted in Gordon 1990: 22). As will be seen below, Beattie did not jettison the idea of the school, only the name changed. Notable is that in his account of the formative years of African Studies at the University of Cape Town up to 1948, Phillips makes sympathetic observations about the school that may have important lessons for UCT today, particularly in relation to debates concerning the sizes of departments, as well as debates on inter/trans/non-disciplinarity. According to him: UCT’s School of African Life and Languages provided the exemplar for the study of African societies at university level in South Africa. By 1930 three similar schools had been founded at the country’s main universities, all of them based on the UCT interdisciplinary model. Moreover, such a framework permitted the new disciplines of social anthropology and archaeology to develop at a time when their practitioners would have been hard put to justify their creation as independent university departments – the fate of Bantu Philology shows what could happen to a department which did not prove its raison d’etre to the academic community. It should also be borne in mind that, though neither Social Anthropology professor undertook much original research, the School itself acted as a fruitful training ground for several of South Africa’s pioneering anthropologists and archaeologists and as a conduit for generous research funds from the Government. (Phillips 1993: 26-27). Important as these lessons are, the colonial heritage of the school is important to bear in mind as the story of African Studies at UCT unfolds. African Studies at UCT: An Overview 131 The School of African Studies: 1933-1974 As already noted, Beattie, despite his sharp criticism, never closed the school. When the Great Depression was over, Beattie persuaded the University to reinstate the chair of Social Anthropology which had been frozen when Barnard resigned in 1933. He also recommended the establishment of a full-time chair of Bantu Languages (Phillips 1993: 270). The name of the school was changed to the School of African Studies. The first Chair of the ‘new’ school was Isaac Schapera, who assumed duties in 1935. As with Goodwin, Schapera was Radcliffe-Brown’s student, did a “Masters with the master” (Gordon 1990: 23). Apart from social anthropology, the other departments that were associated with the School of African Studies were: African languages, archaeology and native law and administration. The latter changed its name to Comparative African Government and Law under the headship of Jack Simons from 1938 to 1966, the year in which he was banned by the apartheid government. Notable names in the other departments include G.P. Lestrade (Chair in Language, 1935-1962) and A/Prof John Goodwin (UCT staff in archaeology between 1923-1959). The latter, according to van der Merwe, co-authored The Stone Age Cultures of South Africa with Clarence van Riet Lowe in 1929. In 1945, he founded the South African Archaeological Society, “with Prime Minister J.C. Smuts as the first life member” (van der Merwe 1979: 63). The following quotation from Phillips provides an idea of the activities of the school up to the introduction of apartheid in 1948: With two committed and industrious young men filling these core posts from 1935, the School was revivified. Under the new name of the School of African Studies, it launched a multidisciplinary survey of life in Langa location with the aid of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation, instituted a sub-department of Native Law and Administration and in 1942 recommended publication of its research in a new series of “Communications from the School of African Studies”. By 1948 nineteen such “communications” had been produced, emphasizing that, though students might be few and the School’s prime purpose, training administrators and missionaries, largely unfulfilled, its output of original research was high. This helped temper the feeling in more traditional academic circles that the School and what it taught were otiose oddities, with as dubious a claim to a place in a university curriculum as Norton’s Bantu Philology Department had been in the 1920s. (Phillips 1993: 270). The “two committed and industrious young men” Phillips is referring to were Schapera and Lestrade. With regard to the series, “Communica- 132 Lungisile Ntsebeza tions from the School of African Studies”, most reviews sang songs of praise of the School of African Studies at UCT. Once again, and as Phillips has observed, the study of Native life was, as was the case with the previous school, the main focus of the successor. As before, the purpose was to inform government and equip it with strategies of ruling ‘Bantu people’, as the following quote by Beattie clearly shows: “People were often apt to forget that the European race was not the only civilised one, and they could never hope to legislate for the Bantu people without a knowledge of the civilization of those people” (quoted in Phillips 1993: 167). For Phillips, Lestrade was “so immersed […] in the peculiarities of individual Bantu languages that he energetically campaigned for their use in African schools as part of the promotion of what he perceived as a distinct “Bantu culture”, a fact not unnoticed by the Bantu Education authorities in the 1950s as they drew him into their syllabus-planning committees (Phillips 1993: 271). This, however, was not the case with Schapera who, according to Phillips, did not share his colleagues’ “one-dimensional view” and never succumbed to the training of the founding fathers of the discipline: Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski at the London School of Economics (LSE). In the mid-to-late 1940s, the School of African Studies was joined by two scholars of repute: A.C. Jordan in 1946 and Monica Wilson in 1948. Jordan was a lecturer in Lestrade’s Language section of the School of African Studies and had by then published his classic, Ingqumbo yeminyanya (The Wrath of the Ancestors). He became the first black African to be awarded a PhD in African Languages at UCT. Electronic correspondence with his wife, Phyllis Ntantala, paints a picture of the calibre of Jordan. She recalled how Jordan responded to criticism of him leaving Fort Hare University for UCT in these terms: “I am going to UCT to open that door and keep it ajar, so that our people too can come in. UCT on African soil belongs to US too. UCT can and will never be a true university, until it admits US too, the children of the soil. I am going there to open that door and keep it ajar!” (Ntantala 2012).2 Monica Wilson had also briefly lectured in the Department of African Studies at Fort Hare University before taking up appointment at Rhodes University where she was when she joined the Department of Social Anthropology 2 A.C. Jordan, alongside Archie Mafeje and Mahmood Mamdani, will be a subject of detailed study in my longer term and in-depth study of African Studies at UCT. African Studies at UCT: An Overview 133 within the School in 1948, the year the National Party came to power and introduced apartheid. In 1952, Monica Wilson became the head of the School. This was at a time when the apartheid regime was formulating legislation that would entrench separate development in South Africa. One such legislation was the so-called extension of Universities Act of 1959 which effectively introduced Bantu Education in tertiary education. A.C. Jordan found apartheid unbearable and ended up resigning from UCT to, in the words of his wife, “go start afresh somewhere, thus forfeiting all his Pension Rights except what he had paid into” (Ntantala 2012). Things were not becoming any easier in the 1960s, as Jack Simons was banned from teaching and forced to leave on an exit permit in 1965. His daughter, Mary Simons, who taught in the same Department as her father, was also banned from teaching in 1976. There was also what has since been referred to as the Mafeje affair of 1968, when Archie Mafeje was appointed senior lecturer but his appointment was rescinded as a result of what the UCT Principal at the time, Sir Richard Luyt and Council, claimed was interference by the apartheid regime. The decision to rescind Mafeje’s appointment was roundly criticised.3 The actions of the apartheid regime suggest that the once cordial ties between some members of the School and the government were becoming a thing of the past. But it is not clear what conception, if any, of African Studies was upheld by the school. What seems clear is that the resignations and harassments of members of the school weakened it. Apart from the external threats from government, van der Merwe introduces internal dimensions and sees the weakening and eventual demise of the School as firstly, “a process of internal fission with the establishment of independent departments of African Languages (in 1967) and Archaeology (1968). These sections had grown to the size of departments in their own right” (van der Merwe 1979: 63). Secondly, van der Merwe observes that “courses with the “African” prefix were starting up in subjects like history and economic history” and “many other departments”, concluding that “having achieved its goal of making UCT community aware of the continent they live in, the School engineered its own demise”. The last reason was the retirement of Monica Wilson in 1973, “who had laboured hard and long on behalf of the school” (van der Merwe 1979: 63). 3 For a detailed account see Hendricks 2008. 134 Lungisile Ntsebeza It is worth noting that the first two internal reasons advanced by van der Merwe for the demise of the School can be instructive for current debates and discussions about Centres and Institutes of African Studies, not only at UCT, but across the African continent. Also of current interest would be an examination of the notion of an ‘Africa’-focus in Departments. What did it mean then and what does it mean now? The Centre for African Studies The demise of the School of African Studies did not deal a death blow to the notion of African Studies. Barely a year after the resignation of Wilson, discussions on African Studies at UCT were underway. Interviews I conducted and van der Merwe’s account show that there were members of the academic staff, students and administrators who were keen to pursue the study of Africa. This led to a series of public meetings. Van der Merwe, who joined the Archaeology Department in 1974, recalled that he found himself chairing these fiery sessions, probably because he “did not really understand what was going on”. Later, he remarked that the way universities operate is “by catching you unawares” (van der Merwe 1979: 64), an observation I would certainly agree with, given my own experience. These discussions led to a proposal for the establishment of a Board of African Studies “to coordinate research and teaching among the many departments involved in the subject” (van der Merwe 1979: 64) in 1975. Interviews show that young academics and students in departments that constituted the School of African Studies worked hard to ensure that African Studies as an interdisciplinary space was revived.4 The possibility of revitalising African Studies at UCT received a boost with its approval by the Vice Chancellor, Sir Richard Luyt, and the Senate. Another important development that took place at the same time as these discussions were taking place was the involvement of Harry Oppenheimer, who was at the time Chancellor of UCT. In my interview with UCT academic Ron Davies, he recalled that senior members of the Anglo American and De Beers Chairman’s Fund were scouting to establish a ‘special project’ in UCT to commemorate the Chancellorship of 4 These academics included the then recently appointed Nick van der Merwe, Mary Simons from Comparative African Government and Law (CAGL), Martin West from Social Anthropology and Martin Hall from Archaeology and Ron Davies. Amongst students can be mentioned Mugsy Spiegel and Patrick Harries. African Studies at UCT: An Overview 135 Mr Harry Oppenheimer and at the same time mark the UCT 150 Appeal then gaining momentum. In that exercise Sir Richard Luyt, on 10 June 1975, at a meeting with its Chairman, Mr Michael O’Dowd, drew the attention of the Chairman’s fund to the idea of supporting the development of African Studies at UCT. Interview with Ron Davies at UCT on 8 April 2011 The outcome was a donation for the establishment of a Centre for African Studies. Some of the funds were to be used to develop a library on African Studies so as to support the work of the Centre while the rest would be invested so as to generate income for the Centre’s activities. Apart from the library, it was envisaged that the activities of the Centre would include invitations to prominent scholars in African Studies, recruitment of post-graduate students from countries on the African continent, as well as the facilitation of visits within the continent of UCT staff members. The Centre was approved by the Council on 28 July 1976 and was affiliated to the Harry Oppenheimer Institute which would provide funding for the activities of the Centre. Professor C. de B. Webb from the Department of History was the first chairperson of the Board of African Studies, with Professor Nick van der Merwe from the Archaeology Department the first Director of CAS. The Centre was not based in any particular department but the following Departments formed its core: African Languages, Anthropology, Archaeology, African History and African Economic History. It was open to any interested member of the academic staff or post-graduate students involved with African Studies in its broadest sense. There was no dedicated budget to employ permanent academic staff members. Administrative support was provided through projects such as the South African Labour Development Research Unit (SALDRU) which had been doing research on the broad field of African Studies and had affiliated to CAS. At the time CAS was established, it did not offer any courses of its own.5 The reasoning was that CAS would promote African Studies across the University by influencing Departments to have an African Studies component in their courses. 5 Note the striking similarities with CAS when it was resuscitated in 2012. 136 Lungisile Ntsebeza The main activities of the Centre in the initial years took the form of weekly lectures on “the historical background of South Africa’s diverse peoples” and on “contemporary problems and planning in education, medicine, urbanization and economics” (van der Merwe 1979: 65) and, in 1979, “colloquia on current research” (van der Merwe 1979: 65). As part of the celebrations of 150 years of UCT, the Centre hosted the national conference of the professional societies of anthropologists, archaeologists, economists and geographers in 1979. However, the greatest achievement of the Centre appears to have been the establishment of the African Studies Library, which, as van der Merwe puts it, “amassed a vast amount of primary source material at which scholars […] [were] just beginning to nibble” (van der Merwe 1979: 65). Research results were also striking with members associated with the Centre, making up about 30% of members of the Arts Faculty and yet producing “nearly 50 per cent of its research publications in 1978” (van der Merwe 1979: 65). In his response to Mahmood Mamdani in their exchange over the teaching of African Studies at UCT (see below), Martin Hall gave a succinct account of the activities of the Centre in the 1980s: [S]ince the beginning of the 1980s, the Centre had developed an interdisciplinary curriculum, both in an undergraduate “introduction to Africa” and in post-graduate Diploma and Honours courses that linked a wide range of disciplines […] and framed them within contemporary affairs […] In the face of attempts by the apartheid state to stifle all opposition […] the Centre organised seminars and conferences that critiqued the state and presented the policies of banned organisations. All of this is on record: the Centre’s publications, the long Africa Seminar series, reports, documents and curricula. (Hall 1998: 87). The dramatic developments of the late 1980s and early 1990s, leading to political negotiations for a democratic South Africa resulted in discussions in the Centre that led to the establishment of the A.C. Jordan Chair in African Studies in 1993. For Hall, this was part of a “drive to reverse isolation and connect South Africa to its continent.” (Hall 1998: 88) It is clear from the discussions of the selection committee for the A.C. Jordan Chair (Ntsebeza 2014) that the Centre was still grappling with what African Studies would entail at UCT, particularly given the looming possibility of the demise of apartheid and rule by the ANC. The first African Studies at UCT: An Overview 137 meeting of the selection committee was on the 11th of October 1993.6 The “nature of the Centre and what African Studies should be” were central to the discussions of this and subsequent meetings. These were some of the requirements for the incumbent: “somebody with an established research record, a commitment to multi-disciplinary approaches, admin experience as at some time this person will serve as Director of the Centre; and also have considerable contacts in Africa”. It was also disclosed that “(p)art of the reason why Anglo American has given the funding for this chair is to develop links with the rest of the African continent”. One member was clear that they did not want “somebody who would be a clone, the same as before”, the Centre, according to the member wanted a person who would take it in “new directions and who has a new network and new background”. At the same time, the new person was expected “to also consolidate the work that is being done in the Centre”. It is also clear that the selection committee was committed to appointing a black person. There can be little doubt that the above process was destined to set UCT on a new path in terms of African Studies, radically different from what UCT had ever known and experienced. However, as I argue in my article published in the Codesria Bulletin in December 2008 and in Social Dynamics in 2014 on the relationship between Archie Mafeje and UCT, the manner in which some senior members of the selection committee handled themselves casts serious doubt on their commitment to the sentiments expressed in their discussions about the qualities of the incumbent. Mafeje’s pedigree, based on his writings, international standing, referees and the fact that he was appointed at UCT on merit in 1968 as Senior Lecturer, made him a natural candidate for the job. It is now common knowledge that he was not even interviewed (Ntsebeza 2008; 2014). However, the appointment of Mahmood Mamdani in the second round of the selection process for the A.C. Jordan Chair could in many ways be seen as a corrective measure, if not, as developments below show, an accidental appointment based on possibly not knowing the person. Mamdani was appointed in September 1996 and within a month of his appointment put forward his vision of African Studies at UCT. Very succinctly, Mamdani’s key question was what a centre for African 6 The proceedings of the meeting are recorded in File 300, Box 44.1.3 (2), Administrative Archives, UCT. The rest of this paragraph will quote from this source. 138 Lungisile Ntsebeza Study should be in the context of post-apartheid South Africa (Mamdani 1996a: 1). He contended that “there is hardly any comparative work that relates South African themes to developments north of the Limpopo, much less to north of the Zambezi”, leading him to come to the conclusion that the name, Centre for African Studies is “a misnomer” (Mamdani 1996: 2). Mamdani was particularly critical of the colonial study of Africans as ‘the other’ and the notion of what he referred to as “South African exceptionalism”, emphasising the importance of “locating South Africa in the African experience” (Mamdani 1996a: 4). According to him, African Studies should be “an institutional home for the study of ourselves” and “a way of understanding the world we live in from different, multiple and simultaneous vantage points” (Mamdani 1996a: 6). He continued along this line of criticism in the much-publicised seminar held at UCT on the 22nd of April 1998. The circumstances leading to this seminar are part of my much broader study of the history of African Studies at UCT and will not be subject of discussion in this contribution. Suffice it to say that Mamdani was, after a year of his appointment, requested to draft a curriculum for an introductory course on Africa. A committee was set up to assess the curriculum. There was disagreement between Mamdani and members of the committee over the teaching and content of the course. He was subsequently suspended from the committee and a substitute course replaced the one he had designed. Mamdani felt that this response warranted open debates. The April seminar was the outcome of this. Mamdani (1998) launched a scathing criticism about how Africa was taught in the past, that it was developed outside the African continent, studied by non-Africans within the context of colonialism and later the Cold War and apartheid. He again raised the issue of South African exceptionalism, largely drawn from his award-winning book, Citizen and Subject (Mamdani 1996b). He attacked the substitute course for having a racialised periodisation along the lines of suggesting a pre-colonial past without the white person, Africa under white rule and Africa after the White Man relinquished political control. He championed a de-racialised curriculum, which would draw primarily from discussions forged in the academy in independent Africa. Mamdani’s provocation elicited responses from Johann Graaff (1998), who was a member of the committee, and Martin Hall, who was not a member of the committee but was drawn in in the drafting of the substitute course. Again, it is not my intention to get into the nuances of their responses in this overview. What I can highlight here is that Graaff ’s African Studies at UCT: An Overview 139 response was largely based on pedagogical issues with an emphasis on the importance of focusing on the honing of the academic skills (argumentation, essay writing, synthesis and analysis) of first year students. Both Graaff and Hall, who held similar views, suggested, in my view, that Mamdani raised the bar too high in terms of course content and prescribing primary texts written by African scholars. Mamdani had interpreted this as of form of or an extension of Bantu Education to UCT, a claim that his colleagues strenuously rejected. Hall’s response was more substantial and tackled Mamdani on his claims about racism and South African exceptionalism. Almost all the people I interviewed and who witnessed these discussions were of the impression that they were acrimonious and according to Ron Davis, “unnecessarily conflictual”. However, none doubts that the positive outcome of this process was, in the words of one of my interviewees, “an exceptional and invigorating level of verbal and written academic debate between senior role players”. These discussions, unfortunately, were never pursued as Mamdani resigned and took up appointment in the United States. From there on, the Centre for African Studies was never the same and, for reasons best suited for another discussion, gradually “deteriorated” to a point where by 2009 there was a distinct possibility that it would be “disestablished”. The Current Situation and Beyond The possible disestablishment of the Centre was not only viewed by some academics at UCT with concern, particularly considering its history, but was seen as something of a contradiction, given that Vice-Chancellor Max Price (2008 – 2018) had a vision of making UCT an Afropolitan university. Although for the two terms he served, he never elaborated on what the term meant, there was an expectation from some UCT academic that the Centre for African Studies would play a role of clarifying the meaning and significance of the term. In this regard, the possibility of closing the Centre down would seem to be a contradiction. A task team, of which I was a member, was set up, whose brief was to conduct a series of consultations and discussions both inside the faculty and across the university more widely in order to develop a number of possible scenarios, to offer debate and decision by the faculty and the university which relate to the future role of the Centre for African Studies. However, just 140 Lungisile Ntsebeza as we were beginning to focus on the task, two more departments, the Institute for Gender Studies and Social Anthropology, were included. Following a series of discussions, members of the task team came up with a proposal for the establishment of a new school that was tentatively named The New School for Critical Enquiry in Africa. This proposal was accepted by the faculty executive but there were problems with its implementation resulting in the collapse of the process at the end of 2010. A series of developments, not least the involvement of students mainly in defence of CAS, led to a Humanities Faculty forum meeting which was held on the 25th of February 2011 to discuss possible ways of taking the collapsed process forward. At a subsequent faculty board meeting, I was appointed to facilitate discussions that would lead to the establishment of the new school – involving the three departments, the Linguistics unit and three NRF research Chairs, including mine, based in the Humanities Faculty. After lengthy discussions, all participants, including students, agreed to establish a School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics. The proposal was accepted by all university structures and the school started its business at the beginning of 2012. The importance of articulating an intellectual direction for the school was acknowledged, but there was also recognition of the fact that time was needed to debate the differences that led to the collapse of the earlier attempts to set up a school. In this regard, it was proposed and agreed that these debates would take place within the new school and that the process would be reviewed after four years. A review of the School was conducted in 2016 but it is beyond the scope of this article to go into details of the outcome of the review save to say that the School is established and has a Director, Professor Shahid Vawda, who is also the holder of the newly established (2017) Archie Mafeje Chair. At the same time, there was agreement that the A.C. Jordan Chair in African Studies, which was held by Mamdani and was frozen when he left at the end of 1998, would be re-advertised, with CAS assuming its original role of being a University facility promoting African Studies across UCT and beyond. In June 2012, I, the author was appointed the AC Jordan Chair of African Studies and Director of CAS. The main mission of the revived CAS is to promote African Studies across departments and faculties at UCT and beyond, particularly within the African continent and the global South. CAS is committed to creating an interdisciplinary environment facilitating discussions, research and teaching on Africa, while at the same time taking a leadership role in establishing African Studies at UCT: An Overview 141 and consolidating links with universities across the African continent and the global South in particular. In line with its mission of promoting African Studies, conversations were initiated with colleagues who do and/or are interested in doing research and teaching on Africa across departments and faculties. Preliminary research was conducted to get a sense of research and teaching on Africa done at UCT. This initial stage focused on the Humanities Faculty and involved the collection and analysis of departmental course outlines and the UCT Humanities handbook, for Africa related courses and literature sources. With course outlines in particular, the research aimed at also identifying how literature by African scholars was prescribed or not prescribed. This is ongoing research which will gain intensity, especially given the research questions that arose with the eruption of the studentled protests ignited by the #RhodesMustFall campaign of March 2015. Although not formally assigned with teaching responsibilities, an activity that is in the hand of the African Studies Unit of AXL, CAS initiated the establishment of a University-wide course on the study of Africa. In this regard, CAS invited the then Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon, Professor Akosua Adamafo Ampofo, to facilitate a workshop drawing lessons for CAS based on the university wide course that is taught at the University of Ghana. The workshop was held on the 3rd of October 2012, four months after the relaunch of CAS. The University of Ghana made this course compulsory to all its graduates since the early 1960s. The thinking in CAS is that a university wide course on the study of Africa would be the most effective way of promoting African Studies at UCT, that is, through teaching and curriculum design. Following this, CAS established in 2013, the African Studies at UCT committee, comprised of colleagues who participated in the workshop and others from various departments and faculties at UCT, including colleagues from the newly established School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics (AXL), CHED, African Languages and Health Sciences. Discussions for the establishment of a University-wide course are high on the agenda and there are various proposals as to how that course should be taught that are under discussion. CAS has also played a prominent role in the establishment of an Undergraduate Major in African Studies which is taught under the auspices of the African Studies Unit in AXL. The need for this course came in the midst of discussions for the promotion of a University-wide course, 142 Lungisile Ntsebeza outlined above and the eruption of the student-led protests of 2015 and 2016 which demanded, among others, curriculum reform and putting Africa in the centre of knowledge production. The course was launched in 2017 at a first-year level and is now, 2019, offered up to the third year. In terms of research, CAS hosts a range of projects, including the following flagships: the meaning of democracy for people living in areas under the control of traditional leaders (chiefs of various ranks); farm workers and dwellers on commercial farms; land use and livelihoods; the pre-colonial historiography of southern Africa and the role of landbased social movements. Apart from the A.C. Jordan Chair in African Studies, CAS hosts the National Research Foundation (NRF) Research Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa. The two chairs have since 2018 been linked and are both held by the author. Important to note is that UCT has up to now refrained from making a long-term commitment to CAS by way of providing funding to employ a permanent Director at professorial level and an administrator. This is the least that one would expect the University to do. This, as can be seen from this overview, is the history of UCT and African Studies. By Way of Conclusion This takes us back to the point I raised at the beginning, namely the place and space of African Studies at UCT and what this means, has yet to be discussed in earnest. The discussions leading to the establishment of the school in 1920 did not address the issue; the discussions were more about setting up a school and postponed dealing with the tough issue of what the intellectual business of the school will be and how, if at all, the school will address the issue of African Studies at UCT. We have seen that in the period leading to the demise of the School of African Studies in the early/mid 1970s, there were attempts to challenge the need for an independent school that would focus on Africa. The claims made were that it should be task of each Department to have a component of Africa in its course, thus making a separate school or centre redundant. These claims continue to pop up whenever the question of African Studies at UCT is raised. They question the very notion of Africans studying themselves, which sounds absurd in the context of objections that Africans are “othered” by North scholars who regard themselves as Africanists. The above raised questions as to who should study Africa, if not by Africans themselves and by non-Africans. This is an issue that UCT must African Studies at UCT: An Overview 143 grapple with and rigorous and vigorous research in this regard should be encouraged and promoted. Given the distinct possibility that most academics would not be in the forefront of these debates and discussions, largely due to their disciplinary anchors, CAS has to take the lead and use its strength of being by nature inter-trans-disciplinary to create platforms for academics from various Departments to come together and discuss their research, methodologies and findings on similar topics with their counterparts in other Departments. CAS should also take a lead in discussing the history of African Studies at UCT. While it might be true that no clear-cut notion of African Studies can be discerned at UCT, it is obvious that certain individuals or groups of individuals in various positions of power have held their own conceptions of African Studies. These need to be uncovered and put on the table for robust debates. Crucial to this project would be a review of the Mamdani debate of the late 1990s as well as the selection process for the AC Jordan Chair that the late Archie Mafeje applied for but was not even interviewed (Ntsebeza 2008; 2014). The latter would entail a deeper understanding of the intellectual and scholarly contributions of Mafeje that established him as a world-renowned scholar. There is a lot that can be learned if this exercise were to be allowed to take place without interference. To make this task possible, University records would have to be opened to those who are keen to pursue this task. Finally, there seems to be no better time to intensify research, debates and discussions of African Studies at UCT than 2020, when UCT will be commemorating the centenary of the formal establishment of the School of Bantu Life and Languages Bantu Life in 1920, arguably the first to formalise the study of Africa and its people in the Western world, if not the world over. Acknowledgements I am grateful to the late Emeritus Professor Ronald Davies for sharing his ‘timeline’ on the Centre for African Studies. I am using it as a guide in my project on African Studies at UCT. 144 Lungisile Ntsebeza References Gordon, Robert (1990), ‘Early social anthropology in South Africa’, African Studies 49, pp. 15-48. Graaff, Johann (1998), ‘Pandering to pedagogy or consumed by content: Brief thoughts on Mahmood Mamdani’s ‘teaching Africa at the post-apartheid university of cape town’’, Social Dynamics, 24, pp. 76-85. Hall, Martin (1998), ‘“Bantu education”? A reply to Mahmood Mamdani’, Social Dynamics, 24, pp. 86-92. Hendricks, Fred (2008), ‘The Mafeje affair: The University of Cape Town and apartheid’, African Studies, 67, pp. 423-451. Mamdani, Mahmood (1996a), ‘Centre for African Studies: Some preliminary thoughts’, Social Dynamics, 22, pp. 1-14. (1996b), Citizen and subject, Cape Town: David Philip. - (1998), ‘Teaching Africa at the post-apartheid University of Cape Town: A response’, Social Dynamics, 24, pp. 40-62. Ntsebeza, Lungisile (2008), ‘The Mafeje and UCT saga: An unfinished business?’, CODESRIA Bulletin, 3&4, pp. 36-43. - (2014), ‘The Mafeje and UCT saga: unfinished business?’ (updated version of the 2008 article), Social Dynamics, 40 (2), 274–88. Phillips, Howard (1993), The University of Cape Town 1919-1048: The formative years. Cape Town: University of Cape Town in association with the UCT Press. Van der Merwe, N.J. (1979), ‘African studies’, in: A. Lennox-Short and D. Welsh (eds.), UCT at 150: Reflections, Cape Town: David Philip, pp. 62-67. 145 Challenges and New Possibilities – African Studies in Brazil and the South-South Connection Livio Sansone Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador da Bahia, Brasil Introduction I assume I owe the invitation to contribute to such a prestigious book to my experience in the Centre of Afro-Oriental Studies (CEAO) of the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, which was created in 1959 and is one of the oldest in Latin America, more than to any actual specialization in African Studies. In my work as facilitator of African Studies in Brazil, maybe even as passeur of African Studies, together with a group of colleagues, I have tried to incorporate African Studies in the mainstream of social studies as part of a larger effort to decolonize our production of knowledge by developing new South-South links and promoting what I call a new horizontal curiosity, as a way to counter our historical vertical obsession with the Global North. This is being done on shifting grounds as the political context has changed considerably over the last couple of years. In terms of US-Brazil relations, we have moved rapidly from a horizon dominated by the couple Obama-Lula to a very different one defined by the match between Trump and Temer,1 and from a world where there seemed to be no end to globalization and in which the US was central to a different world dominated by the globalization of nationalism. This is a world characterized by anti-globalization feelings and by what Zygmunt Bauman and Carlo Bordoni called the “loneliness of the global citizen” (Bauman & Bordoni 2014: 55) – in which, again, the US is central and a bad example. This challenges many tenets of globalization theory and also shows that national borders are in many ways stronger than 1 [Editor’s note: Michel Temer, President of Brazil at the time this article was written; the President of Brazil at time of publication is Jair Bolsonaro. Lula = Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – President of Brazil 2003 – 2010.] 146 Livio Sansone ever; visas have become harder to get (even, and most painfully, SouthSouth) and Northern donors have decreased their commitment to social research in Africa and Latin America as they thoroughly changed their agenda from development aid and governance to prevention and control of immigration. It goes without saying that these new developments have had an impact on African Studies in Brazil. In fact, in preparing this text I could rely on a number of older and more recent reports on African Studies in Brazil written by ‘proper’ Africanists. Some were more positive, such as Zamparoni (1995), Trajano (2012), Marques and Jardim (2012), and Macagno (2014); while others, such as Michel Cahen’s 2013 study, were more critical. As we all know, African Studies are not a natural fact and, in each country, there is a history of social engineering behind it, and Brazil is no exception to that. When discussing African Studies in Brazil, maybe more so than in other countries, ethnicity and demography have to be kept in mind, because they end up representing motives for developing African Studies: in Brazil, whites account for just about 45 percent of the total population and in certain states they are well under 30 percent. The majority of the population is of African and/or of mixed African/Native American/ white origin. On top of this, even more than in most other countries in the Americas, with the possible exception of Cuba and Haiti, in Brazil, Africa has historically been an important topic that has never left our national and foreign commentators indifferent (Luis Felipe de Alencastro 2000; Schwarcz 1999; Sansone 2003 and 2011). When it comes to the racial composition in Brazil, these commentators either loved it or abhorred it. The percentage of ‘Africans’ among the Brazilian people and, accordingly, the ‘African’ content in Brazilian popular culture, has started to acquire more positive connotations as of late, after having been considered an onus or a ‘problem’ for centuries. This has happened through a process of inversion of meaning and patrimonialization of an intangible culture, thus transforming it into a ‘heritage.’ This heritage has also come to be seen as something that contributes to make the country (and its people) ‘special,’ on account of its blackness and African origin (cf. Sansone 2013). Of course, in such a context (similar to the US), politics of identity or race have impacted the development of African Studies. The main difference in this respect between the US and Brazil, besides the relative precariousness of our academic establishment when compared to that of the US, is that the relationship has been thus far more virtuous than vicious African Studies in Brazil and the South-South Connection 147 – there is no major tension between the more consolidated tradition of Afro-Brazilian Studies and the more recent tradition of African Studies.2 In many ways, African Studies have come to the fore in our universities as part of the overall process of social reparations for the historical racial injustice in our country, often as a result of powerful claims lodged by black activists as well as from within Afro-Brazilian Studies. Hence, African Studies have had a profoundly political history in Brazil: as has been said, they owe a lot to Black activism (which means a vast array of organizations and movements, from a wing of the Catholic Church to Marxist and more radical groups) and the world of Afro-Brazilian religion – where memories of Africa have been cherished even in the toughest times – as well as to a pioneering group of anticolonial and left-leaning historians who, starting in the 1980s, have insisted that the history of Africa is important to Brazilian history and society. Even in terms of timing, politics are quite present in our history. Sadly, a comprehensive history of the South-South still needs to be written. It would be beyond the scope of this short paper to write exhaustively on the topic, so the focus will be on the development of African Studies in Brazil during two specific periods of our history, corresponding to two attempts to reposition Brazil along the South-South axis. African Studies originated with the progressive government of Goulart3 and his new foreign politics, interrupted by the 1964 coup; from 2002 onward, they were revamped by Lula and Dilma4, whose government was unfortunately the victim of a new, now more silent, coup in 2016. Since then, the growth of African Studies, as well as the investment in the African continent from the side of the Brazilian government, have come to a new halt. The period between 1958 and 1964 was seminal. With the support of the Foreign Office, as well as some academic support, and very much in line with the then new foreign policy, which meant a de facto association of Brazil with the Non-Aligned Movement, two research centres were created: in 1959 the Centre of African and Oriental Studies (CEAO) at 2 In fact, the only MA and PhD program in African Studies in Brazil, and one of the very few of Latin America, is the Posafro (Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Ethnic and African Studies) at the Federal University of Bahia, which started in 2005. 3 João Belchior Marques Goulart, 24 president of Brazil, 1961-64. 4 Dilma Rousseff, 36th President of Brazil, 2011-16 (impeached and removed) 148 Livio Sansone the Federal University of Bahia and later the Centre of Afro-Asian Studies (CEAA) at the Candido Mendes University in Rio de Janeiro. In the period between 2002 and 2016 there was a number of quite important changes that contributed to the creation of a more positive political and cultural climate for African Studies: in 2003, the 10369 Federal Law made the teaching of African and Afro-Brazilian culture compulsory at all levels of education. However vague and underfunded the program was, the law was a Copernican Turn and led to a new multiculturalism in education which, coupled with affirmative action in university admittance (which also became a federal law soon afterwards), created a new positive climate for a thrust towards internationalization. All of a sudden Africa – and blackness in general – changed status ‘from onus to bonus.’ The next point of discussion will be the current status quo. These days there is a number of centres that operate as a network, often exchanging contacts and visiting scholars from the African continents: The CEAO in Bahia – plus the unique Posafro (interdisciplinary graduate program in ethnic and African Studies), the Centre of African Studies (CAA) at the University of São Paulo (USP), the CEAA and a Research Group in African History at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) in Rio, plus a number of new Centres of African Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte, the University of Brasília (UNB) and the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) in Recife – these are generally part of the office of foreign relations of the university. In the northern town of São Luis, at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), a group of young scholars recently has set up a centre and an undergraduate program in ethnic and African Studies. Last but not least, there is the University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (UNILAB) – the new university founded less than ten years ago at the height of the Lula government, which focuses on the integration of Brazil with Lusophone Africa. Here, approximately 30 percent of the students are Africans (mostly from Guinea-Bissau) or from Timor. A few years ago, the Brazilian African Studies Association was founded and, in 2018, has over 350 members. There are two academic journals covering African Studies, Afro-Ásia in Bahia, which is freely available online in pdf (Afro Asia 2018), and Africa in São Paulo (África 2015). There were a number of translation projects into the Portuguese language, also in partnership with UNESCO, that have aimed at translating the classics and at producing much-needed teaching material for middle and higher African Studies in Brazil and the South-South Connection 149 education. Moreover, with more intensity since 2002, many junior and senior African students and scholars have been invited to Brazil to teach or to take courses, as well as for intensive doctoral schools such as the Fábrica de Ideias (Factory of Ideas), which has taken place once a year since 1998. Some of them have established themselves within Brazilian academic life. The next section of the paper will focus on a number of challenges. Because of insufficient funding, it has been hard to stabilize and consolidate South-South exchanges. During the period from 1998-2015, the resources for making the South-South interchange happen came mostly from the Dutch foundation South-South Exchange Programme for Research on the History of Development (SEPHIS) (which was closed down in 2016, by the, at that time, much less progressive Dutch government), a number of funds of the Ford Foundation (especially focusing on South Africa) and, increasingly, Brazilian federal funds. There has been very little funding from private companies. The second challenge, if not bottleneck, is the limitation of geographic focus. Brazilian African Studies focus on the PALOP countries (Portuguese-speaking African countries), on account of the common official language and occasionally also because of historical connections; South Africa, on account of the opportunities offered by the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) connection as well as the existence of important points of comparison (such as the existence of extreme inequalities, the problems with HIV-AIDS, problems with violence, disputes about land rights, etc.); and Benin and Nigeria, on account of studies about slavery, Brazilian returnees to Africa, and Afro-Brazilian religions. The third main challenge derives from the kind of studies that can be undertaken, especially from a distance. There is a strong emphasis on literature: more than half of the PhD theses in African Studies are in the field of literature, with a focus on Mozambique, Angola, and Nigeria. On top of this, there is a lot of archival research – also thanks to networks and digital archives – done from a distance, not on the continent, coupled with very short, albeit intensive, periods of residence in Africa, whenever possible. Generally speaking, it has been difficult to do fieldwork in Africa, because of the fragility of the South-South partnership, but it has been done notwithstanding. Here, in passing, a comment needs to be made on the politics of funding: over the last two decades, Brazil has changed status from a country where ‘tropical research’ is undertaken to a ‘tropical research country’: 150 Livio Sansone quite an epistemological change, which is, of course, rife with contradictions. When compared to Europe, in Brazil there has not been a process of long-term structural investment in African Studies (or in any Area Studies, for that matter). When money was available, it was used to pay grants to African scholars or to enable fieldwork in Africa, rather than in establishing institutions or libraries. This kind of funding has certainly contributed toward making African Studies in Brazil exciting, but it has also led to a certain institutional fragility. Let me now turn to a number of bonuses of our effort to develop African Studies. In spite of its inherent precariousness, African Studies done from Brazil (or from any other place in the so-called Global South) can offer refreshing and new perspectives on Africa, if only because of its different angle of observation and, in general, less of an ‘imperial aura.’ This becomes evident when the research topics of the projects, all of which in some way reflect the Brazilian context, are considered: inequality and poverty reduction, land rights, female leadership in social movements, slavery and its aftermath, returnee black Brazilian communities, heritage and national biographies, Creole cultures or populations. In Brazil, and, arguably, all over South America, African Studies cannot and must not be developed along the same lines as in the Global North. Brazil does not have the same (colonial) history or the same resources for doing that; nor is there a similar ethnographic or historiographical sensibility. It is imperative that Brazilian African Studies ask their African colleagues, and their organizations for the social sciences, such as the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), what they need and expect. And that question should be asked over and over again. The good news is that there is a growing ‘horizontal curiosity,’ in both Africa and South America, and this should be built on. Much more than before, Brazilian PhD students opt to spend their very valuable ‘sandwich grant’5 in an African university – we should bear in mind that it is difficult to travel internationally from Brazil and for many young Brazilian scholars the PhD travel grant or, in some cases, a post-doc grant is an important investment in future contacts. Traditionally, Brazilian social scientists prefer to travel to the US, France, and the UK – and tend to go back to the same foreign institution after obtaining their PhD, whenever they can get funding. 5 A colloquial name for the PhD travel grant received by young Brazilian scholars. African Studies in Brazil and the South-South Connection 151 Doing African Studies from Brazil is also a way to decolonize the minds of scholars, as well as ‘oxygenating’ their curricula, stimulating a South-South perspective at the cost of Brazil’s historical ‘vertical obsession’ with the North. This is a very good reason for putting so much energy in this avenue of research rather than repeating what has been done in terms of African Studies in the Global North. Furthermore, this is not only an attempt to add something new to Africa Studies, but also to establish connections that, if only on account of the precariousness, are on a less unequal basis. In closing this first part of my paper, I want to stress that the SouthSouth is still fragile and very much subject to the ‘whims’ of national and international politics. Generally speaking, progressive governments emphasize it more than conservative governments which, at least in our region, tend to be more in line with the US. I would therefore like to suggest to organizations such as the biannual European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) to make it one of their priorities to help making the South-South axis more sustainable. The encounter across continents can stimulate research and support the re-orientation of funding towards the South-South. This is especially important in our changing world, where, for instance, three of the BRICS countries are in a crisis and under the risk of isolation. In sum, the following are the challenges for the near future: Consolidating centres, journals, and programs, thus guaranteeing their sustainability; finding a place for African Studies in the main disciplines of the humanities (in Brazil, there are no development studies); contributing to the empowerment of graduate studies in African countries, also in association with CODESRIA and the Latin America Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) in the context of the social sciences. In Brazil, the development of African Studies has to do with a relatively new and growing South-South curiosity and perspective. The SouthSouth perspective is an urgent and topical political project, especially for the development of a truly ‘universal’ perspective on issues of identity formation on either ethnical or regional basis, nationalism, racism, the interconnection of racism and populism, the reproduction of difference, and the impact of technology on identity formation and cultural production. We are also convinced that the production of knowledge for such a purpose needs to be interdisciplinary and multicentered. However, for this very reason, the South-South connection and its perspective are not a natural fact in the social sciences and require quite a degree of social 152 Livio Sansone and theoretical, methodological, and political engineering – even more so in the present ‘era of extremes.’ It is worthwhile to ask ourselves why it has taken so long for it to make its way into the ‘mainstream’ of the social sciences – that is, to move from being a political manifesto, the intellectual penchant of the Bandung conference movement, on to become a tool towards decolonizing our practice as researchers. We need to discuss the future of South-South exchanges, with special emphasis on Africa. This is especially important nowadays, because even though most of the researchers and research centres in the South have historically had many connections with African Studies in the North, and many of these contacts and networks have been very important in our effort to re-position African Studies from the South, I am afraid we have to start imagining a situation co-determined by decreasing support from Northern donors. Many agencies from the Global North are withdrawing their support and are leaving the Global South to fend for itself. All this considered, in order to develop a new agenda, I suggest a number of steps: To begin with, the South-South requires a new ethnographic sensibility: Historically, as seen from the South, our curiosity has mostly been focused on South-North, rather than South-South. This is the way the study of poverty, violence, and ethno-racial tensions has developed as social problems in Latin America. Furthermore, regional comparisons, such as the inequalities in education, have mostly been made between, for example, Brazil and the US or France, rather than between Brazil and, for instance, South Africa. This is due to a number of reasons, related to funding, networks, academic careers, global hierarchies in specific fields of study and, more generally, the geo-politics of knowledge. These determine what the places are where research is to be carried out and what those are where data is processed, stored, and made available through publication. However, over the last two decades, there have been some changes so that; today, in investigating the ways in which Brazil can contribute to the development of Africa, we can even speak of a certain South-South Orientalism and Africanism. Orientalism and Africanism were the quintessence of the way people in the Global North were conceptualizing the Global South. Nowadays, images of the South also travel across the South itself. China, Malaysia, South Africa, India, Turkey, and Brazil especially have become new actors in the Global South, making new things happen and creating new images of (under) development. Brazil is therefore part of a larger trend, but, at least when it comes to state-sponsored initiatives, is trying to make a difference, as African Studies in Brazil and the South-South Connection 153 Brazilian policy makers claim. So, in their statements, Brazilian diplomats argue over and again that, unlike China, Brazil is not just in Africa to make money. In reality, however, Brazilian companies in Africa have been pursuing profit just like any other company, and they often operate (for instance in regards to pollution, corruption, or labor relations) as ruthlessly as most other companies. However, because they operate in close connection with Brazilian diplomacy in Africa, they are compelled to keep a certain ‘developmental’ profile, at least in their public narrative. It is necessary to deal with this larger complexity of South-South economic exchanges as well as to focus on a number of academic exchanges that show both the advantages and drawbacks of South-South connections. There are a number of concrete cases of Brazil-Africa projects that can be seen as good news. To name just two examples, there is first the the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). It has for almost two decades managed the ProAfrica Program which requires that, in order to qualify for funding, the Brazilian research team needs to identify a research team in an African country of similar academic standing; accordingly, funding is in part made available directly to the African partner-team. Secondly, several Brazilian graduate programs, as part of their effort to internationalize, have singled out similar graduate programs in Africa with which they cooperate and exchange faculty as well as students on a somewhat equal basis, even though most of the funding comes from Brazil. In fact, during the creation and ‘coming of age’ of the social sciences in Brazil, the South-South connection was important right from the start, albeit more implicitly than explicitly. For Latin American Studies and especially Afro-Brazilian Studies this is self-evident. The construction of the notion of Africanism, largely through the pioneering work of Melville Herskovits from the 1930s, is a very good example of a process that, even if it was working ‘South-South,’ treated the South – that is, West Africa – more as a source of inspiration and gave it little agency of its own. Pretty much the same can be said in regards to many of the categories associated with the construction of race, racialism, and racism. In the construction of these categories, local and foreign agendas have been intertwined right from the start. In spite of this, it has proven quite hard, in the case of Bahia, to make the move from object to subject in the social sciences (Sansone 2012). Soon the notion of Africanism travelled back to Africa, as well as the idea that Africans can be divided 154 Livio Sansone into two big groups, the Bantu and the Sudanese, roughly corresponding to Nietzsche’s division between Apollonian and Dionysian – a polar perspective held by Ruth Benedict and later Melville Herskovits and the Brazilian researchers inspired by him (Herskovits 1941). This polarity was a South-South creation, relating West Africa to Brazil by reminding of and even re-establishing historical links where time had severed the cultural continuity between the two shores of the Atlantic. It was largely the result of the work of those that one can call the ‘white heroes of the Black Atlantic’ (Melville Herskovits, Pierre Verger, and Roger Bastide). Brazilian scholars (first of all Edison Carneiro and Arthur Ramos) and African scholars take part in it mostly as ‘informants.’ Over the last few decades, the sociology, flows, and networks of the South-South has been changing thoroughly. Nowadays, this process is taking place in a context that is changing even more rapidly, due to the advance and consolidation of globalization. Below, several examples of this change, along with new actors or catalysts, will be discussed: • South-South voyages are no longer the prerogative of priests, anthropologists, and diplomats. In recent years, they have involved black activists, capoeirists, musicians, candomblé priests, students, business leaders, Pentecostal pastors, advertisers and marketeers, as well as adventurers. Researching these new personal trajectories and the survival strategies that these evince strikes me as important. There are those of better-known characters, such as the famous musicians Gilberto Gil and Martinho da Vila and the lesser-known, but more numerous, Brazilian capoeira mestres (masters) who, over the last two decades, have been setting up capoeira schools and associations in several African countries. • The emergence of the internet6 and new communication technologies in general.7 6 It is worth noting that a large amount of information exists on the web concerning the topics discussed in this text. The exhibition on the web of what, until recently, were relatively isolated cultural phenomena continues to grow exponentially, shifting from invisibility to hyper-exposure. This should be taken into account in our research methodology, as well as in the subject-object relation during research. 7 See the exhibition “Africa Away From Home” curated by Antonio Motta, in 2011, at the Museu Federal da Abolição in Recife, which shows how much mobile phones, blogs, Orkut, Facebook, and Skype have altered the play of forces in day-to-day BrazilAfrica relations. African Studies in Brazil and the South-South Connection • • • • 155 The strengthening, now in the Global South too, of a set of international agreements and laws intended to support and divulge not just heritage per se, but more specifically intangible or ‘living’ heritage. There are plenty of publications on this topic starting from the early 1990s, the same years the term globalization started to be used in the social sciences (Featherstone 1990). The maturing of the democratic process, which has by itself generated a growing demand for internationalization and opening, both in Brazil (or Colombia) as well as in many African countries. While the Global North becomes increasingly invisible or unpredictable, as seen from the South, there are new economic actors in the South: BRICS and others. There has been amazing growth, both of the number of embassies across the South and of economic exchange – of course according to the rules of capitalism, but still a novelty. Presently, this general growth of interest in African cultures and commodities experiences a crisis since Brazil, South Africa, and India have become more inward-looking in terms of their foreign relations – for example, cutting down embassy personnel in the South to focus again on the North or making visas more difficult to obtain for citizens of the Global South. In the case of the Lusophone countries there is a growth – or, in a certain sense, the revival – of the influence of Brazil (and of Angola) in terms of culture, music, and popular religiosity, which has introduced more variety into the relationships with Portuguese-speaking countries – among which Portugal no longer dominates as a source of inspiration. Even though nobody knows exactly what the term ‘Global South’ means, a new field of studies has developed with at least three qualified journals that have the ‘catchphrase’ Global South in their title: The Global South Journal (Indiana University, merely one person from the Global South is on the editorial committee with approximately 30 people from the Global North); Bandung: The Global South Journal; and the E-bulletin Global South, once promoted by the now demised Dutch SEPHIS program. When all this is taken into consideration, several questions emerge. How can a new curiosity for the South in the South, within the humanities, be developed? How can the many peripheries of the Global South be engaged in this process? How can African Studies in Latin America and Latin American Studies in Africa be constructed? Such “Studies” have 156 Livio Sansone often been seen as a natural outflow of political priorities – such as in the case of colonial studies in Europe and Area Studies, especially in the US – as well as of intellectual dynamics and ethnographic sensibilities developed in the North, especially in the former colonial metropoles. One good example of what to develop further are joint research projects based on themes that are relevant to both Africa and Latin America, rather than centered on priorities established by Northern donors. Efforts in this direction have been made by CLACSO and CODESRIA. This could also help in seeing regional cooperation as a trampoline to transcontinental cooperation, rather than its opposite. Africa and Latin America are, in many ways, very similar and comparative; collaborative research could develop projects on a vast variety of topics, such as: the link between violence and poverty; durable and extreme poverty and the processes of identity formation and cultural production they engender; the impact of new communication technologies on daily life, especially socialization and economical activities; social movements; sexual culture; (dis)organized crime; urban (un)planning, especially patrimonialization of historical city centres; the globalization of UNESCO criteria which often operate as global icons with local meanings; the politics of tangible and intangible heritage. Looking at one of them, namely heritage, or heritage preservation and heritage economics, this is a topic that deserves a careful South-South perspective and that can offer interesting insights into how we can promote such a perspective. Many of the continuing contradictions and tensions notwithstanding, the overall quality of exchange between the North and the South has changed dramatically, and to the better. Over the last century and a half, we have moved from encounters in the North – such as expos, exhibits, museums, or circuses where a sort of exotic image of the South and the South-South was created – to collaborative projects with a somewhat equal distribution of power and responsibilities between partners in the South. The field of intangible heritage is especially interesting, if only because our two continents are, as it were, the continents of the intangible, with few regional exceptions (mostly Egypt and Mexico). They are, in any case, the regions where the list of intangible culture has grown the most over the last two decades. There is already at least one comparative South-South research into this topic, by Evaldo African Studies in Brazil and the South-South Connection 157 de Barros (2014), that compares the patrimonialization of the dance and performance of bumba meu boi in Brazil and timbila in Mozambique.8 Apart from the change in ethnographic sensibility discussed in the previous section, there are two more things that African Studies in Brazil need to do to create their new agenda. It requires improving the methodology by refining the techniques of comparison, not only questioning what is compared and why the comparison is made, but also going beyond the large scale of comparison that is commonly used. For instance, in ethnic studies, there is a tradition of comparing nations, or the colonial styles of different empires, but there has been much less of an endeavor to compare cities (conceived of as systems of opportunities), cultural phenomena and their reinvention or revival, the politics and practices of different heritage sites, biographies of national leaders, processes of patrimonialization of, for example, a music genre, politics of archeological excavation in various sites, and so forth. Lastly, there also needs to be an advance in terms of university politics and their general funding. In Brazil, the situation is ironic: The country is seen as too “wealthy” to receive funding from the US and, to some extent, from Europe, but the way the money is spent seems rather whimsical. The BRICS, which seemed the engine of the South-South, are nowadays much less evident as leaders. As has been said above, South Africa, Brazil, and India have become much more provincial. The real question is how to conceive the South-South exchange so as to make it sustainable. Based on our own resources (perhaps also crowd-sourcing plus the support of a selected number of private companies) as well as the support of key centres in the North such as the University of Bayreuth, ours ought to be an exchange based on the win-win principle, where both sides benefit somewhat equally. Personally, I am convinced that, rather than operating once again as gatekeepers between Africa and the Americas and arguing endlessly over what defines black cultures or what exactly ‘Africanism’ is, as scholars (especially anthropologists) from many countries have tended to do, social scientists from the North as well as the South should act as fa8 Bumba meu boi is a popular dance and music combination of African origin performed all over Northern Brazil which was declared a national cultural heritage about a decade ago. Timbila is also a music and dance combination which originated in central Mozambique and had become popular already under colonial rule; it was declared a national heritage of the country about ten years ago. 158 Livio Sansone cilitators, creating bridges rather than channeling or funneling, if only because there are millions of Afro-Latins and tens or hundreds of dynamic African cultures, i.e., too many to fit into broad categorizations of what being black, ‘afro,’ or African could be. In fact, in Brazil, we have also been challenged in our traditional description of the tenets of AfroBrazilian culture, for instance by the new Pentecostal churches and their increasingly influential political mouthpieces. Finally, there is the issue of how new communication technologies, in spite of the fact that they offer new challenges to the practice of the social sciences in the Global South, can also offer new opportunities for collaborative projects, based on new combinations of distance and faceto-face teaching/learning (such as in international doctoral schools), crowd-sharing, crowd-sourcing, and new forms of collective curatorship of research data in a variety of genres. Two examples of what can (and should) be done with a critical as well as creative use of communication technologies will briefly be expanded upon, although there certainly are more possibilities. The first example is the PhD intensive summer school ‘Factory of Ideas,’ which has been going on for the last 19 years and started to practice the South-South connection before the term “Global South” was even invented as a catchphrase. With a heavy teaching load and discussing projects in full-time immersion workshops, it creates networks and makes internationalization accessible to students from universities in the periphery and from disadvantaged backgrounds. The course introduces ideas from abroad, while presenting Brazilian research and ideas to a broader audience. The second project is the Digital Museum of African and Afro-Brazilian Heritage – a museum without ownership which is centered on four key notions: digital repatriation, digital donation, digital ethnography, and historiography (investigating on the net but also through the net) and, overall, digital generosity. The Digital Museum could very well be an important tool for a transnational South-South network centered on supporting the development of African Studies. Its technology is very simple and always based on “poor technologies” (Sansone 2013) as well as open sources software and platforms, and it can easily be shared. It could be a good tool for both teaching and doing research – as a digital repository as well as an instrument to circulate our research findings by means of digital exhibits. The Factory of Ideas has thus far managed to survive by becoming a network of graduate programs, which together produce and raise funds African Studies in Brazil and the South-South Connection 159 for this summer school (even though it is always a challenge to get funds for African students to attend). The Digital Museum, however, has a tougher time, struggling for sustainability in a context where, both in Brazil and on the African continent, thus far, there has been little investment in the field of digital humanities, despite the political progress in the field, such as adopting Creative Commons in our practice. Both projects, in order to yield their best fruits, require continuity of planning and investment, consolidation, and constant experimentation. This, again, begs the question of the politics of funding of the South-South. References África (2015), ‘Atual’, https://www.revistas.usp.br/africa. Accessed 20.05.2019. Afro Asia (2018), ‘Capa’, https://portalseer.ufba.br/index.php/afroasia. Accessed 13.05.2019. Alencastro, Luis Felipe (2000), O trato dos viventes. Formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul, S. Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Barros, Evaldo de (2014), ‘Bumbas e tambores num circuito translocal: notas sobre a construção translocal do patrimônio cultural do Maranhão’, Revista de Políticas Públicas, 18, pp. 1-9. Bauman, Zygmunt and Bordoni, Carlo (2014), State of Crisis, London: Polity. Cahen, Michel (2013), Rapport de la «mission longue» à São Paulo du 1er novembre 2012 au 31 octobre 2013 dans le cadre des Chaires françaises dans l’État de São Paulo. Featherstone, Mike (ed.) (1990), Global Culture, London: Sage. Ferreira Marques, Diego and Jardim, Marta Rosa (2012), ‘O que é isto: “a África e sua História”?’, in: W. Trajano Filho (ed.), Travessias antropológicas: estudos em contextos africanos, Brasilia: ABA Publicações, pp. 31-61. Herskovits, Melville (1941), The Myth of the African Past, Boston: Beacon Press. Macagno, Lorenzo (2014), ‘Estudos africanos no Brasil: uma questão de afinidades eletivas?’, Revista TEL, 5:3, pp. 124-137. 160 Livio Sansone Price, Richard and Price, Sally (2003), The Root of Roots. Or, How AfroAmerican Anthropology Got its Start, Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Sansone, Livio (2003), Blackness Without Ethnicity. Constructing Race in Brazil, New York: Palgrave. - (2011), ‘USA & Brazil in Gantois Power and the Transnational Origin of Afro-Brazilian Studies’, Vibrant, 8:1, pp. 536-584. - (2013), ‘The Dilemmas of Digital Patrimonialization: The Digital Museum of African and Afro-Brazilian Memory’, History in Africa, 1, pp. 1-17. Schwarcz, Lilia (1999), The Spectacle of the Races: Scientists, Institutions and the Race Question in Brazil, 1870-1930, New York: Hill and Wang. Trajano, Wilson (2012), ‘Introdução: perspectivas comparativas nos estudos africanos’, in: W. Trajano Filho (ed.), Travessias antropológicas: estudos em contextos africanos, Brasilia: ABA Publicações, pp. 7-27. Zamparoni, Valdemir (1995), ‘Os estudos africanos no Brasil’, Veredas. Revista de Educação Pública, 4:5, pp. 105-124. 161 Historicity: The Primacy of Contexts, Connections, and Networks – The Case of the International Project “African Ivories in the Atlantic World” José da Silva Horta / Carlos Almeida School of Arts and Humanities, Centre for History, University of Lisbon Introduction The point of departure of the discussion we make in this contribution is two key concepts proposed by the hosts of the International Conference African Studies – Multiple and Relational (University of Bayreuth, December 7-10, 2017), multiplicity, and relationality, previously developed as an epistemological proposal by the article of Eva Spies and Rüdiger Seesemann, as pluralicity and relationality. As the title of the latter suggests, the issue was to discuss the new directions of African Studies as a response to the tendency to subsume Area Studies ‘under the umbrella of Global Studies’ (Spies and Seesemann 2016: 134). We argue that the way time and historical frame have been devalued in African Studies is also part of the problem. Hence, historicity should also be considered as a key concept, complementary to multiplicity and relationality. History has been one of the pillars of African Studies since the foundation of this interdisciplinary Area study. However, in recent years, this status of history within the field is not so clear. Is it a general trend or a regional specificity? We examine two contrasting examples: the programs of the two major meetings on African Studies organized in Europe and the United States. We start with ECAS, the European Conference on African Studies, biennially organized by the network Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS). When we look at the program of the two last conferences (held in Paris in 2015 and Basel in 2017) of 235 (ECAS6, 2015) and 204 (ECAS7, 2017) panels, 34 and 23 respectively were related to history, cultural heritage or archives. This means history only made up 14.4 percent and 11.2 percent of the program (Figure 1). 162 José da Silva Horta / Carlos Almeida On the other hand, if we turn to the provisional program of last November meeting of the African Studies Association (ASA), we get a divergent picture. History, with 57 panels, was the second-most represented disciplinary section of the conference, after policy, politics, and international relations with 59 panels and followed by: women, gender, and sexuality with 25; music, performance, and visual culture, with 21; political economy and economics and religion and spirituality, both with 16; popular culture and media with 15 and finally, anthropology with 13 (Figure 2). However, due to the different criteria in the organization of the program, we can add some 43 panels related to history or including papers dealing with history. Thus, we have around 100 panels in some way connected with African history, corresponding to 45 percent of the whole program (Figure 3).1 However, this does not seem to have been a deliberate choice. There must exist deeper reasons which may explain this kind of trend (i.e., to take an overwhelmingly ‘presentist’ approach) among scholars who study Africa. This trend is reflected even further when looking at the kind of history preferred by the scholars in these two conferences, which is, again, not a homogenous picture. In fact, if we just look at the choices of time period covered in ECAS panels, this can be seen very clearly. In Figure 1: History at the European Conference on African Studies 2015 and 2017; data taken from ECAS 2015 1 We are aware that we might get a different picture of the relevance of disciplines if we knew the disciplinary affiliations of panelists at ASA and at ECAS. Nevertheless, being an important indicator of analysis, disciplinary affiliation is less relevant than theoretical trends, methodological perspectives, and prevailing subjects within African Studies. There are no disciplinary fields immune to the ‘sin’ of presentism, history included. The Case of the International Project “African Ivories in the Atlantic World” 163 Figure 2: History and other disciplines at the African Studies Association 60th Annual Meeting 2017; original data available at Moorman and Wing 2017 Figure 3: History at the African Studies Association 60th Annual Meeting 2017; original data available at Moorman and Wing 2017 ECS6 (2015), only seven of the 34 history-related panels cover any time period or sequence span that precedes the ‘colonial’ 19th century. In addition, of the other 27 panels, only six deal with the ‘early’ history of Africa. In ECAS7 (2017), among 23 panels we only can find two papers covering anything before the 19th century and only the panel we were co-chairs of explicitly mentioned an earlier time period. The great majority of panels were concerned with the 20th century (Figure 4). In regards to ASA, we have a somewhat different picture, which nonetheless fits into the overall trend discussed so far. From 57 panels labelled as ‘History’ or the set of 100 panels we may broadly define as historical ones, there are only seven panels with a pre-colonial chronology. In the remaining 93 panels, we can only find 13 papers with a chronology earlier than the ‘colonial’ 19th 164 José da Silva Horta / Carlos Almeida Figure 4: ‘Precolonial’ History at the European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) 2015 and 2017; original data available at ECAS 2015 Figure 5: ‘Precolonial’ History at the African Studies Association 60th Annual Meeting 2017; original data available at Moorman and Wing 2017 century or with a subject undoubtedly ‘precolonial’; the overwhelming majority concerns the last century (Figure 5). This is not a total surprise. Some scholars, such as Richard Reid, have already identified this tendency to marginalize the ‘precolonial’, early history of Africa, in favour of a presentist approach, dealing with African contemporary challenges (Reid 2011). His and our perception should not be seen as a corporate criticism of the underrepresentation of ‘precolonial’ themes, but rather as a wake-up call in regards to the methodological and theoretical risks of an approach focused on the short-term and on the so-called ‘challenges of the present.’ As a matter of fact, a number of these challenges, such as economic development, political authority, The Case of the International Project “African Ivories in the Atlantic World” 165 urbanism, environment, violence, warfare, and ethnicity, all of them the target of recurrent theoretical discussions, could be more thoroughly debated if the early past contexts and longue durée tendencies were considered (Reid 2011: 138; see also Diawara, Lategan and Rüsen 2010). It is in a long-term perspective, and with comparison with past situations, that one can evaluate the contemporary transformations in Africa and the extent of changes within the dynamics of continuity.2 Furthermore, historicity is indispensable to surpass the problems currently facing African Studies, namely the above-mentioned danger of being subsumed as an Area Study field within Global Studies. Discussion of African history has been crucial to identify the flaws of globalization theories. As Frederick Cooper warns: “The imagery of globalization derives from the World Wide Web, the idea that the web-like connectivity of every side to every other side represents a model for all forms of global communication” (Cooper 2001: 206-7). In truth, the mainstream approach of Global Studies is teleological: the connectivity in all directions would be a path of no return, with a resulting inevitable expansion of the integration processes at a planetary scale. This would imply the dilution not only of spaces, but of all sorts of boundaries, and political as well as religious links. This is a Global Studies trap, we would add, that African Studies should not become entangled in. History puts these supposedly general and irreversible movements in perspective, showing that, frequently, what is linked today had already been linked in the past and became separated only at a later point. Thus, in the past, there were contradictory widening and closing processes. Cooper shows, for instance, that colonialization was not a globalization process which ‘fell down’ on the African continent; on the contrary, it was a process of spatial, political, and economic disarticulation, focused on metropole logics of ruling. “The problem with making integration the standard – and measuring everything else as lack, failure, or distortion – is that one fails to ask what 2 “XI Congresso Ibérico de Estudos Africanos. Trânsitos Africanos no Mundo Global: História e memórias, Heranças e Inovações” (11th Iberian Congress in African Studies. Africa on the Move in Global World: History and Memories, Legacies and Innovations), which will be held in Lisbon, at the University of Lisbon, organized by the CH-ULisboa (Centre for History of the University of Lisbon) and CESA (Centre for African, Asian, and Latin American Studies), from 2-4 July 2020, intends to trigger approaches to the major challenges of Africa in the world, giving a core place to a historical perspective, which will include early history. For more information, see Centro de História da Universidade Lisboa (2018). 166 José da Silva Horta / Carlos Almeida is actually happening in Africa” (Cooper 2001: 206). In fact, Africa is far from being subsumed in a global totalizing process. As a matter of fact, it “is filled with areas where international investors do not go, even where there are minerals that would repay investors’ efforts” (Cooper 2001: 206-7). The right path would be to study connections without (necessarily, as we would add) thinking within the criticized global framework. The study of African History has contributed substantially to the field of World History (Manning 2013: 329). The historical perspective of Africa has widened the horizon of a non-Eurocentric (or ‘totalizing’) World History and other derivative labelling, such as ‘global,’ ‘connected, ‘entangled histories,’ Atlantic as a part of a ‘global history,’ etc. Similarly, as African History and African Studies cannot turn their backs on world/ global dimensions, even without a globalization rough perspective, they should continue, as Patrick Manning warns us, to pay attention to principles which are common to World History (Manning 2013). The first of these ‘world-historical principles,’ according to him, would be to “trace links and parallels among African regions,” searching for “distinctions, linkages and commonalities” (Spies and Seesemann 2016: 134-135). Here the question emerges whether it is better to research regions, or whether the focus should be put on rigid entities / units, as has been discussed by Spies and Seeseman (Spies and Seesemann 2016). But maybe we need these territorial references to understand actual relationality. The second principle is complementary with the first and reflects these world dimensions: “trace connections [of Africa] in all directions’ nonAfrican regions, oceans and continents, and African diasporas” (Manning 2013: 329). This way of thinking about World History has a lot in common with the approach of multiplicity and relationality. Within the field of African History, these concepts have already been implicitly integrated into historiographical debates. African Studies can benefit from strengthening historicity in its agenda precisely because African History has been confronted with these issues as a discipline. This does not mean that these issues have been totally solved. The discipline is, and should be, more deeply engaged in multiplicity and relationality approaches. We acknowledge that, in order to achieve it, we need more theoretical discussion on the somewhat artificial way historians frequently use entities and other rigid units as the key players of connections, relations, or entangled processes. This is clearly an issue to be addressed in the future. The Case of the International Project “African Ivories in the Atlantic World” 167 Nevertheless, historicity is a way of countering perspectives centred on rigid or essentialized units or entities, as well as to reconstitute world/ global dynamics which cannot be reduced simply to parts of a global, totalizing process. Thus, a global focus should start from Africa/African lifeworlds (Spies and Seesemann 2016) as loci of observation, beginning with a historicization of contexts, events, concrete life experiences. We need this methodological path to identify the different scales of connection, of web-like relations within Africa, its diasporas, or elsewhere. This approach is crucial in making a dynamic interpretation of the subsequent processes of blending and overlapping. The international project African Ivories in the Atlantic World illustrates this perspective. It is based at the Centre for History of the University of Lisbon in association with Portuguese and Brazilian universities. It includes scholars from the University of Lisbon, the University of Évora in Portugal, and the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil in a three-year study of African ivories and of ivory trade. The project is the first comprehensive study of 15th to 18th century African ivories extant in Portuguese and Brazilian (from the state of Minas Gerais) collections. It is also the pioneer attempt to achieve a reconstitution of the ivory trading networks in the Atlantic world. Within the project, the axis PortugalBrazil is not simply a link between two imperial spaces or a mirror of two national histories. In fact, the research scale is almost global, encompassing both the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean worlds connections. Nevertheless, the latter are just focal points of an Atlantic scale history whose core is made up of multiple African settings. In extant literature, the Atlantic ivory trade has been almost forgotten or neglected, being subsumed under the general picture of the Atlantic slave trade mainstream research.3 However, full evidence for an intense 3 Previous evidence and scarce research about ivory as a commodity in Atlantic Africa and the evolved European empires networks was summed up by Feinberg and Johnson (1982), more than four decades and a half ago. Supplementary evidence and trade figures were added by the authors on the Dutch West India Company and the Royal African Company imports. The historiography of ivory trade on Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean World offers a different scenario. Two examples of comprehensive works are Alpers (1975) and Sheriff (1987). A synthesis on the early history of the Afro-Asian trade in ivory can be found in Pearson (2005). Nevertheless, Portuguese archival sources have been overlooked, as well as the links of this trade with Brazil in the contributions published in English. The project African Ivories in the Atlantic World is working to fill this historiographical gap (Antunes 2017). 168 José da Silva Horta / Carlos Almeida circulation of raw ivory is found in primary sources. Ivory is often one of the most important merchandises, just after enslaved people, along the Western and West Central African exports from the 16th to, at least, the 18th century, the chronological limit of the African Ivories project.4 Ivory has not yet been the target of a specific inquiry other than as a counterpoint to slave transportation. The recent contributions of the African Ivories project and associated scholarship strive to follow the opposite direction.5 For the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a chronology of undeniably high rate trans-Atlantic slave exports, the project has uncovered apparently strong ivory trade flows and associated merchant contracts (Luís 2016; Correa 2017; Alves 2018). Preliminary figures of ivory circulation between West Central African ports such as Cabinda, Luanda, and Benguela, and Brazilian and Portuguese destinations (namely, Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon) balance the assumption of an almost exclusive relevance of slave trade Atlantic connections. Nevertheless, the African contexts which are the pillars of the abovementioned Atlantic connections remain to be addressed. A study is still to be done about the local contexts of the ivory trade beginning with hunting and/or gathering and the way tusks are commodified. Namely, how ivory became a commodity within the African worlds far away from the early long-distance trade routes, such as the Sahelian and the Eastern African ones. What were the meanings connected with these activities and how did ivory relate to ideas and practices of power? We need a political economy which considers the ivory cycle: men and elephant environments, hunting and/or gathering, local uses, flowing internal trade, Atlantic and global circulation. Furthermore, a political economy of ivory implied local multiple religious experiences or, conversely, a local absence of ritualization. Thus, multiple African lifeworlds have an explanatory power which reframes the connections with the Atlantic 4 Harms 1981 has thoroughly shown the importance of the ivory trade flowing from the Congo basin to the Atlantic coast. Although slave trade is the core of his book, his contribution remains an exception. Miller 1988 still is the milestone for slave trade in West Central Africa with useful insights to the connections with ivory trade. 5 For these African Atlantic regions, the project African Ivories has delivered the first attempts at a focused study of trade in ivory (Luís 2016; Soares 2017b: 59-86; adding to several contributions, such as Malacco 2017 and Malacco 2018, in Santos 2017b and in Santos et.al. 2018). The Case of the International Project “African Ivories in the Atlantic World” 169 world and contextualizes the globalization of the African ivory trade.6 The pattern of relationality is featured in multiple contexts and spatial scales which are not bound by regions as the sole references of Atlanticization and globalization. The perception of hunting and the very physical contact with ivory tusks may be in contrast within the same region. At this stage of project research, our conclusion is that market dynamics in the 16th and 17th centuries did not dramatically change Western Africans’ contrasting cosmological perceptions of ivory as raw material as well as carved pieces. European sources show that while in Northern Senegambia, anyone could collect abandoned tusks from deceased elephants (Barreira 1968: 164), that would not be the case in the Sapi cultural area (south of the Guinea Bissau region and mostly down to present-day Republic of Guinea and Sierra Leone), where the carved ivories were mostly produced. While in Northern Senegambia, as might be expected, hunting was a ritualized activity, in the Sapi area, on top of that, only the initiated were allowed to touch ivory tusks in a similar situation (e.g., Álvares c. 1615: fol. 65v). Elephant hunting seems to have been an activity reserved to initiates (probably in societies of power) with ‘mystical’ competence and special protections, which they used to hunt the animals (e.g,. Faro [1664] 1991: 203). It was also deeply connected to symbols of power, in the wider meaning Wyatt MacGaffey (2000) gives to this term (referring to Central Africa). In such conditions, we can suggest that any kind of ritual could make possible the commodification of raw ivory to fulfil the needs of the market. The project African Ivories also identified the absence of African historical contexts in the research of the carved objects in ivory which circulated around the Atlantic basin, eventually encompassing four continents. The literature on African ivories has hitherto focused on the so-called ‘Afro-Portuguese ivories’ and on Western Africa. Hybridity of motives and shapes was the hallmark of the sculptures which raised scholarly attention.7 In fact, one of the main features of these ivories is the use of iconographic elements pertaining to European visual culture, which they combine with typologies and forms that are typically African (Afonso and Horta [2014] 2013: 79). Whenever the evidence of any Eu6 For ivory as a global commodity, see Chaiklin 2010. 7 The catalogues raisonnés edited by Ezio Bassani (Bassani/Fagg (1998); Bassani (2000)) remain the most complete surveys of Luso-African ivories. 170 José da Silva Horta / Carlos Almeida Figure 6: Fragment of oliphant converted into a powder flask, ca. 1500-1550. Ivory. Length: 25 cm. Sierra Leone. © AR-PAB. (Bassani 2000: 252, cat.779) ropean model inspiration is absent, at least the ‘Portuguese’ themselves were a recurrent motif. Often, artefacts, and parts of them, were reused in new European and American lifeworlds (to Minas Gerais, Santos e Alves 2017). The research conducted before 2007 followed a formalist methodology, overlooking the context of production. But determining the provenance, material, and dating of African ivories was problematic for scholars who did not read or accurately consider Portuguese sources. These are crucial in making accurate interpretations of the objects’ iconography (Mark 2014, 2015). The traditional concept of ‘Afro-Portuguese’ underestimated these works as African ‘artistic’8 creations, while exaggerating Portuguese input. It also undervalued West Central African ivories and objects produced earlier than 1800, precisely because no European inspiration is evident. This meant, for instance, that the context of Congolese uses and ceremonial offers of ivories to European authorities remained untold stories until now.9 8 For a critique of the use of the concept ‘African art’ in an early history context of African material culture, see Diawara (1996; 2007; 2009) and Mark (1998). 9 Within the African Ivories team, Mariza C. Soares made a first approach concerning the power meaning of mpungi, ivory trumpets ritually used in Congo, documented as early as the 16th century (Soares 2017a); concerning the late 18th century and the early 19th century Kakongo, Ngoyo, and Loango regions, João Gime Luís wrote the first dissertation on trade and insignia in ivory (Luís 2016). The Case of the International Project “African Ivories in the Atlantic World” 171 Figure 7: Oliphant, ca. 1490–1520. Ivory. Length: 56.3 cm. Congo. © Jorge Welsh Works of Art, Lisbon / London The modern process of museums labelling their exhibits has for the most part gotten rid of the local, concrete, multidimensional meanings and uses of these objects (Diawara 1996, 2007, 2009). As soon as they were part of private collections, even their provenience began to be lost or confused with other non-Western ‘exotic’ origins. This can be most clearly seen by the tendency to classify West African objects as oriental (Bassani 2000: xxviii). In response to these historiographical and cultural heritage flaws, we start by identifying the diverse contexts of recollection of raw ivory and production of carved objects acknowledging the multiplicity of contexts. We have concluded that confined regions of production, as depicted by art historians, often do not correspond to historical context. The label ‘Sierra Leone’ applied to Luso-African ivories is a case in point. In fact, the setting to be considered is much wider, stretching from northern Senegambia — as concerns ivory gathering and elephant hunting — down to the south of present-day Guinea-Bissau, the northern boundary of the production of carvings which were exported to Europe (Afonso and Horta [2014] 2013: 93, n.6). At the same time, the project has identified other regions of production which were not considered so far (or undervalued), such as, generally speaking, the former Gold Coast or Calabar. Within the Gulf of Guinea, the focus had been a political entity such as Benin, which is not, in fact, a suitable spatial definition (Afonso and Almeida 2017). If ivory objects such as oliphants were insignia of power, the spatiality of their production was not just reduced to the supposed boundaries of a polity. In Greater Senegambia (Barry 172 José da Silva Horta / Carlos Almeida 1988; Dias and Horta 2007), production seems to be scattered along the rivers and sea ports attracted by the contact zones (Pratt 1992) or points of connection of local African communities with the Atlantic world, the same where Luso-African brokers concentrated themselves (Horta 2017b). Another case is the role of oliphants within West Central Africa lifeworlds, from the late 15th century to the early 19th century, at least. Their spatial distribution crosses different polities and power contexts, from the north of river Congo to Kwanza river or farther south (Almeida 2017; Soares 2017a). Hence, the resulting picture for Atlantic Africa is a polycentric, multiple production. Historicity means also to ‘historicize’ geography. If we refer to the meanings of the carved objects, which eventually were exported, the preliminary assignment to different centres of production enables us to recognize the prominence of local meanings, even in the production for foreign trade. On the one hand, we observe the continuity of decoration patterns; on the other hand, it seems that the introduction of European model-based elements did not change the grammar of ritual meanings of the artefacts, such as oliphants, associated with warfare, funerals, political ceremonies, and various sorts of religious experience (Cavazzi da Montecuccolo 1687: 120, 166; Cadornega 1972: 78; Figure 8: Toni Malau or Santo António da Figure 9: Santo António, 18th/19th century. Boa Sorte, Congo, 17th century? Ivory. Mu- Wood. Length: 12 cm. Collection Marcia seu de Lisboa – Santo António. © Museu Moura – Museu de Congonhas – Congonde Lisboa – Santo António. (LaGamma has-Minas Gerais © Ana Panisset 2007 2015:108) The Case of the International Project “African Ivories in the Atlantic World” 173 Almeida 2017, Horta 2017a; Malacco 2018). Local African meanings are engraved on the objects, even in those produced in response to European commands. Thus, there is not a clear distinction between the local and the global sphere. Rather, there is a multiplicity of meanings associated with the same objects. Moreover, the project identified a local production in Brazil related to Central African ivory pieces which was a transatlantic missing link. Ideas could survive beyond the materiality of sculptures. In the American context, namely in Minas Gerais, Brazil, we hardly find any African ivories. The local contexts are not reproduced in the Diaspora. Ivory arrives from Central Africa to Brazil as a prized commodity and the access of Africans to it as a raw material to sculpture is limited (Santos and Alves 2017; Paiva 2017; Chaves and Gomes 2018). Nevertheless, there is evidence of a transposition of iconographic models, such as the sculptures of Saint Anthony from Congo, the so-called ‘Toni Malau,’ to different materials, such as wood. And, in wood, they were part of the power experience of African-born or Brazilian-born slaves or freedmen, in small family shrines (Santos 2017a; Paiva 2018; Froner 2018). Global trade and the circulation of ivory, raw and carved, is a complex multidimensional process. It involved African actors, often EuroAfrican brokers, as well as African and European consumers. Local and external meanings, generated in specific contexts, mixed together in different power-imbued entanglements which connected Africa with global networks. If we start from African lifeworlds as a point of observation and connection, and follow historicity as the methodological path, provided that multiplicity and relationality are also the general precepts of our research, we will not just sit back and watch African Studies being subsumed within Global Studies. Acknowledgements This article is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) as the project African Ivories in the Atlantic World: a Reassessment of Luso-African Ivories, PTDC/EPHPAT/1810/2014. The authors wish to acknowledge Maria Groz-Ngaté for the insightful comments to our contribution. 174 José da Silva Horta / Carlos Almeida References African Ivories in the Atlantic World (2016), ‘Home’, https:// africanivoriesul.wordpress.com/. Accessed 28.05.2019. 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Spies, Eva and Seesemann, Rüdiger (2016), ‘Pluralicity and Relationality: New Directions in African Studies’, Africa Today, 63:2, pp. 132-39. 181 African Studies in East-Central Europe Petr Skalník University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic Introduction To clarify, the term Central and Eastern Europe, for the purposes of this essay, is understood as the four countries of the so-called ‘Visegrád Group,’ namely Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. The former German Democratic Republic, which turned into six eastern Bundesländer (German federal states) after the end of communist rule, could also be included in this designation. African Studies in these countries has no official colonial background. Polish African Studies is the largest with regards to the number of practitioners and its historical depth. Czech African Studies may be able to showcase the traveller and collector Emil Holub (1847-1902), but as an academic discipline emerged only in the second half of the 20th century. Hungarian research on Africa also has old roots. African Studies in Slovakia emerged only after the first group of students received their diplomas from Charles University in Prague. The purpose of this paper is not to reconstruct history or give a list of protagonists but, rather, to sketch the contribution of East-Central Europeans to African Studies during the last 50 years since the publication of two-volume Dějiny Afriky [A History of Africa] (Hrbek et al. 1966). I will focus mainly on Czechoslovakia because I have had first-hand experience - so to say observant participation - from building African Studies in that country. African Studies in Poland and Hungary Until 1990, the early steps of African Studies in the Central European region overlapped with the communist era. In general, the study of Africa was determined by an isolationist conceptualization of ‘socialist’ sciences as a cluster of disciplines diametrically different from ‘bourgeois’ science. The development of African Studies was understood as a contribution to 182 Petr Skalník the policy of support of national-liberation movements and the eventual emergence of socialist or pro-socialist regimes on the African continent (so-called “socialist orientation”). The example of Soviet African Studies was to be followed as faithfully as possible. Therefore, the protagonists of East-Central European African Studies were to be, following the Soviet example, members of the local communist parties. This was difficult to achieve, because the early development of African Studies was marked by de-Stalinisation. Poland and Hungary had their anti-communist protests in 1956, and Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring of 1968 was strangled by a Soviet military invasion and its aftermath. Whereas in Poland and Hungary a period of what can more or less be called ‘liberalization’ followed, allowing early Africanists to attend Western academic gatherings, the Czechoslovak Africanists had to face 20 long years of obscurantist isolationism and a return to pro-Soviet lackeyism. Polish péripéties of how to reach Africa and do research there were vividly described by Maciej Kurcz (2017). It is intriguing that important Polish Africanists such as Michał Tymowski, Jacek Łapott, and Ryszard Vorbrich were recruited from the participants in student expeditions. At the end of the 1960s, purges in Poland led to a serious weakening of the discipline, as a number of scholars went into exile. The Ethiopist Stefan Strelcyn left for Britain, the Hausa language specialist Zygmunt Frajzyngier escaped to the USA, and the couple Nina Pilszczikowa (Hausanist, student of Dmitri A. Olderogge, originally from Russia) and Szymon Chodak (political scientist and author of the monographs Systemy polityczne ”czarnej” Afriki [Political systems of ‘black’ Africa] and Kaplani, czarowniczy, wiedźmi [Kaplani, sorcerers, witches]) joined Canadian departments, while Rajmund Ohly (Bantuist) found refuge in Namibia. On the other hand, Michal Tymowski, a disciple of Marian Małowist, author of the untranslated monograph Wielkie państwa Sudan Zachodniego w późnym średniowieczu [The great states of the Western Sudan in the late Middle Ages], was active in Warsaw’s Studium afrykanistyczne [African Studies] and its periodical Africana Bulletin; he also published an important article in the French historical review Annales (Tymowski 1970). This brought him into the group of specialists working on early states. In the 1970s and 1980s, Tymowski participated in several conferences and their resulting publications. His work reached its peak with the monograph The Origins and Structures of Political Institutions in Pre-colonial Black Africa (2009) and Europejczyci i Afrykanie (2017). Andrzej Waligórski (1908-1974), an anthropologist and linguist who studied with African Studies in East-Central Europe 183 Bronislaw Malinowski in London during the 1930s worked in Kracow. After the war, he went to Kenya, and his two-year field research was published in Polish (Waligórski 1969). The sociologist Andrzej Zajączkowski (1922-1994) lectured in Ghana and Uganda during the Polish communist rule and his book Muntu dzisiaj: studium afrykanistyczne [Muntu today: an Africanist study] is used till today as a university textbook. He also published an anthology of Polish ‘sociologizing’ African Studies (Zajączkowski 1980). More recently, Polish African Studies were described by three Wroclaw younger authors (Czernichowski, Kopiński, and Polus 2012) who perhaps ‘forgot’ about Waligórski, Zajaczkowski, and Chodak, but underlined the work of physical anthropologist Jan Czekanowski (1882-1965) who participated in the expedition of the Duke of Mecklenburg to East Africa (Czekanowski 2001). These authors also mention the contribution to the study of Khoisan languages by the Kracow professor Roman Stopa (1895-1995). This article is valuable as it discusses the problem of Afrikanistik, which, like in Germany, is understood traditionally as the study of African languages and cultures and thus is a “fully autonomous field, a discipline in its own right” (Czernichowski et al. 2012: 177). For ‘core’ Africanists, “Africa as a research subject is unique and… requires methodological tools tailored specifically to its non-replicable features” (ibid.). The other approach, which is preferred by the authors, considers Africa as a continent and sees African Studies, accordingly, as Area Studies, similar to Asian or European Studies (ibid.). Since 1990, Polish Africanists of both ‘types’ are organized in the Polish Africanist Association (PTA) which has its seat in the Department of Languages and Cultures of Africa at the University of Warsaw. This association organizes all-Polish Africanist conferences, the last of which was held in 2018. Some Polish Africanists also participate in European conferences on African Studies (ECAS), but there is no formal cooperation between the Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS), and the PTA. For a discussion of Hungarian studies on Africa, there is a recent article in Modern Africa (Szabó 2013). But it is worth mentioning that, besides the new Africanist centre in Pécs, Hungarian Africanists were organized in the ‘Council for Economic Research on Africa’ during the Kádár socialist period. It is also worth pointing out that the Africanists and anthropologists Csaba Ecsedy and Mihály Sárkány gained a certain international reputation. Sárkány participated in the Hungarian Scientific Expedition to Africa in 1987-88, which traced Samuel Teleki’s ex- 184 Petr Skalník pedition from a hundred years earlier. Another Africanist, Géza Füssi Nagy (1946-2008), who studied Swahili in Leningrad and taught it in Hungary for his entire career, also participated in the expedition. Éva Sebestyén edited the writings of László Magyar (1818-1864), who explored and mapped south-eastern Angola and its adjacent regions for several years (Sebestyén 2009). After the fall of the Kadár communist regime, African Studies in Hungary struggled with a lack of both financial and moral support. In 1998 and 2007, two volumes of essays under the title Africana Hungarica were published in Hungarian. Bea Vidacs, an anthropologist, achieved international acclaim with her study of the socio-political aspects of Cameroonian football (Vidacs 2010, 2011). A comparison of Hungary and Sierra Leone was published by the field anthropologist Diána Szantó (Szantó 2016). African Studies in Communist Czechoslovakia In communist Czechoslovakia, where I lived until 1976, African Studies practically began with the ‘Africa Year’ of 1960. The unwritten rule of preferring members of the Communist party meant that the head workers such as Ivan Hrbek and Josef Muzikář were members, while the ‘aspirants’ in the Oriental Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University were not. The ‘key’ of being a member of the party played a role in being allowed to participate in international seminars, conferences, and study sojourns, but that was not all: Indirectly, the ‘key’ was applied to the allocation of stipends for the students of African Studies in the Soviet Union. I was one of them, along with Zdeněk Poláček. Both our parents were members of the Communist party. Two other students in Leningrad were Slovaks, Andrej Gorol and Jozef Dobrota. Gorol was sent to study in the Soviet Union and, after graduating, joined the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Dobrota joined the party while studying. The party committee considered inviting me into the party and sent Dobrota to tell me the news. I told him that I did not show any interest, pointing out Stalinist hecatombs. I was never asked again to join the communists! As a student, I participated in the 1st Conference of Africanists of the Socialist Countries in Moscow in April 1966. I was surprised that Czechoslovak Africanists were represented by the Arabist Josef Muzikář and not Hrbek, my Prague teacher of African history and, by far, the most important Africanist in the Oriental Institute. As Muzikář´s con- African Studies in East-Central Europe 185 tribution was full of inadequacies, he agreed that we publish an article in co-authorship (Muzikarzh and Skalnik 1967). I also remember that some other adepts of African Studies arrived for shorter stays in Leningrad. They were mostly non-party members (Otakar Hulec, Milan Kalous, Vlastimil Fiala). Party members were sent to conferences in other ‘socialist’ countries, African countries, and sometimes even to the West. The 1st International Conference of Africanists, held in Accra in 1962, was attended by Olga Skalníková as official delegate, while Hrbek and Petr Zima were also present. Zima was not a member of the Communist party and taught at Legon at the time. An exception to the rule was Ladislav Holý’s field research in the Sudan, taking several months and financed by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. Holý was no party member. While Holý was in the Darfur province in the Sudan, among the Berti, Olga Skalníková carried out urban research in the Conakry’s Boulbinet (Skalníková 1964). Holý attended a conference of the International African Institute (IAI) in Nigeria and, thanks to a sponsorship by the IAI, could continue his research in Darfur in 1965 (Holý 1967, 1974). In those liberalizing years, the Swahilist K. F. Růčička could visit Ghana, Hulec visited Tanzania and Zambia, and Z. Malý visited East Africa. All of these were non-party members working in the Oriental Institute. Jiřina Svobodová, a non-party member in the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, was sponsored for field research in the east of Senegal (Svobodová 1981). The twelve students of African Studies who studied in the years 1961-1966 did not visit Africa during their studies, but one of them, Viera Pawliková, could continue her studies at Makerere University College in Uganda, while Magdalena Slavíková left for Kenya to carry out a linguistic study while registered for a DPhil at London´s School of Oriental and African Studies. Ladislav Venyš spent two years studying African politics at Syracuse University, USA. Zdeněk Poláček managed to visit Ethiopia in 1968 at the invitation of his future father-in-law. Holý and Kalous were appointed to positions in Zambia and Sierra Leone respectively. Finally, Elena Zúbková Bertoncini, specialising in Swahili, married and moved to Italy, and worked subsequently as professor of Swahili language and literature in the Istituto Orientale in Naples. The Soviet invasion of 1968 profoundly shook the Czechoslovak Africanist scene. While Pawliková and Venyš returned, Holý, Kalous, and Slavíková remained abroad, where they built impressive careers. The ominous year 1968 with its hopes and bitter disappointment touched 186 Petr Skalník Czechoslovak Africanists very negatively. Communist ‘normalization’ almost destroyed the career of Hrbek. He surrendered his party ticket in protest against the Soviet invasion, and as a result, his participation in the editorial board of the UNESCO General History of Africa was suspended. Only after the personal intervention of the Secretary-General of UNESCO, Amadou M’Bow, who appealed to the Czech communist president, could Hrbek continue his very important work that made him famous in Czechoslovak African Studies. Otherwise, travels abroad were permitted only to ‘brotherly’ countries. I travelled abroad officially for the first time in 1975, when I was employed by Comenius University at Bratislava. I went to Leipzig to attend the conference on Diedrich Westermann from the viewpoint of Marxist-Leninist African Studies. Leipzig was to be a venue for unofficial friendly get-togethers between Zima and Siegmund Brauner. There were no business trips to the capitalist West. In 1973, I was allowed to travel to the USA to attend the World Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, but that was a private visit made possible by an exchange of US dollars arranged through a Slovak colleague whose nephew worked at the state bank in Prague. I could go again to the West in 1975, through the same banker. This time, it was to visit ethnological museums in the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Denmark, but I also attended a meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology held in Amsterdam. But once I was not politically screened in a “complex evaluation” and almost simultaneously obtained a six-month research fellowship in the Netherlands, I did not hesitate and forestalled an eventual dismissal by escaping to the Netherlands, where, in cooperation with Henri Claessen, I completed work on the international collective monograph, The Early State (Claessen and Skalník 1978). My affiliation in this volume was put as “formerly Comenius University, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.” In the following years, my career took place at the University of Leiden and the University of Cape Town. When I returned to Czechoslovakia in 1990 and was rehabilitated, I became a local Africanist in the Institute of Near East and Africa and India at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. In the years from 1992-1996, I worked as Ambassador of former Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic to Lebanon. In 2001-2002, I was a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), where I worked on my Ghana research data. In 2012, I was a Guest Lecturer at the Institute of African Studies, University of Bayreuth. African Studies in East-Central Europe 187 I did not mention Luboš Kropáček, an Arabist specializing in Swahili and African history, who was not a party member but used to travel to the West and Africa or the Arab world throughout communist rule because he was a collaborator with the state security service. Thus, he was in contact with foreign colleagues and could purchase the newest foreign literature (Zikmund et al. 2013: 88-93). After the Soviet invasion, purges took place in the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences and Charles University, and members of the Communist party of Czechoslovakia got jobs as lecturers and researchers. They were sent to Africa and even to the West. Marie Brzobohatá went to Ghana, Josef Poláček to the USSR. Hulec and Zima had to leave the Oriental Institute and only V. Klíma stayed. But he had to wait for his first trip to Nigeria until 1989, just on the eve of the fall of communism. However, Josef Kandert, who was not a party member, still could go to Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and other countries, because he was a museologist and as such belonged to the Ministry of Culture, at least in terms of administration. He published a study of Nigerian ceramics and a book on the society of South Africa in the time of Holub’s travels there (Kandert 1974, 1997). I should also mention Karel Lacina, the main Africanist of the ‘normalization’ period. He was an active party member, the head of the African department at the Oriental Institute and also the central Communist party apparatus for years. He frequented conferences in ‘socialist’ countries, states in the USSR, and visited some of the African countries of alleged socialist orientation, such as Ethiopia. As far as Czech and Slovak African Studies during communist rule are concerned, no internationally recognized contributions except those by Hrbek can be mentioned. Holý left for Zambia in 1968, where he was the director of the Livingstone Museum, but he remained abroad and eventually became a British anthropologist and Africanist. When he visited Czechoslovakia shortly before the demise of communist rule, his professional interest turned to post-communist changes in the Czech Republic. He did not contribute to African Studies anymore. After 1989 From the 1990s, further developments in African Studies came almost to a complete standstill. On the one hand, there were more contacts between Africa and the West. There was a conference comparing democracy in South Africa and the Czech Republic, and we celebrated 40 years of 188 Petr Skalník African Studies at Charles University (Kropáček and Skalník 2001). But soon afterwards, the teaching of African languages and history had to be suspended for lack of qualified personnel (Kropáček 2017). A certain revival came with the organization of the international conferences Viva Africa (since 2007) and the establishing of a Master of African Politics at the University of Hradec Králové. The Viva Africa conference, now held biannually, enabled more contacts among Central European Africanists and also led to the publication of several volumes by the LIT Verlag. Central European Africanists increasingly attend European conferences on African Studies (ECAS) and appear on other European and global forums of African Studies. Because Central European African Studies has not been burdened by colonial ballast, its contribution to the production of knowledge on Africa has become increasingly recognized (Skalník 2016). The Czech Association for African Studies, founded in 2013, is an associate member of AEGIS. The journal Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, published by the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Hradec Králové since 2013, has become a recognized periodical. African Studies at the University of Hradec Králové When the decision was to be made as to what kind of African Studies to start at Hradec Králové, the dilemma was whether Africa should be studied as a whole, or rather not to study ‘Africa’ but certain details within Africa. We were aware of the fact that Africa is no longer a continent of ‘traditional’ culture, but, rather, that profound changes have taken place in Africa both during the colonial and the independent periods (urbanization, education, travel, medical care, globalization, social media, internet, etc.). It was obvious that these changes can only be captured by interdisciplinary approaches. As politics appears to be the key to understanding modern Africa, it was decided to launch a Master program in African politics. At Hradec Králové, choosing this approach was made easier because there is no tradition of teaching African languages, literature, and what can be broadly called ‘culture.’ Thus, the scope of African Studies was defined more narrowly to what was affordable, but with the conviction that individual (sub-)disciplines produce deeper knowledge, while a complex understanding is becoming ever more difficult, while trying to see ‘the whole’ prevents noticing and understanding the small details. The ‘holistic’ approach appeared impossible at Hradec, as was African Studies in East-Central Europe 189 ‘traditional’ Afrikanistik. Thus, establishing African Studies which are limited in scope, while also being more specialized, became inevitable. This was also in accordance with developments elsewhere. This type of specialization in an already limited African Studies became a necessity within the Czech educational system as part of the Bologna system. A five-year Master program would be not affordable and would also suffer from a too small number of students. A two-year Master program means only one and a half years of actual instruction. Conceptually, the program relies on politics as the foundation for a further specialized study of linguistics, history, art, sociology, anthropology, geography, or economy. It was also necessary to resolve the dilemma of geographical concentration: Either limit the scope to one state and misunderstand the continent, or concentrate on the continent and ignore the details? The emphasis on student exchanges with African universities (Ghana, Nigeria, Cape Verde, Kenya, South Africa, and Rwanda; further exchange programs with Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Zambia are currently being prepared) has helped to resolve this dilemma. The movements of students in both directions are all financed by the University of Hradec Králové. Mobility with the University of Ghana is part of ERASMUS+. The main problem lies in the lack of knowledge about the Czech Republic and the resulting lack of interest in student mobility from Africa. Staff academic mobilities have also led to deeper studies of the particular countries visited. Of special interest here is Ghana. There is also mobility to Dalarna in Sweden. The main topics of research are Islam in Africa, South Africa, conflicts in Africa, and political development in Ghana. Thus far, staff mobility to other universities in Europe is limited. References Claessen, Henri J.M. and Skalník, Petr (eds.) (1978), The Early State, The Hague: Mouton. Czekanowski, Jan (2001), Carnets de route au cœur de l’Afrique. Des sources du Nil au Congo, (trans. Lidia Meschy), Montricher: Editions Noir sur Blanc. Czernichowski, Konrad; Kopiński, Dominik and Polus, Andrzej (2012), ‘Polish African Studies at a Crossroads: Past, Present and Future’, Africa Spectrum, 12: 2-3, pp. 167-185. 190 Petr Skalník Holy, Ladislav (1967), ‘Social Consequences of “dia” among the Berti’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 37:4, pp. 466479. - (1974), Neighbours and Kinsmen: A Study of the Berti People of Darfur, London: C. Hurst & Company. Kandert, Josef (1974), ‘Folk Pottery of Nigeria’, Annals of the Náprstek Museum, 7. - (1997), The Culture and Society in South Africa of 1870s and 1880s – Views and Considerations of Dr. Emil Holub, Praha: Národní Muzeum. Klíma, Jan, (2012), Dějiny Afriky. Vývoj kontinentu, region a států, Praha: Lidové Noviny. Kropáček, Lubos (2017), ‘Afrikanistika na Filozofické fakultě UK: Ambice a bolesti’, in: P. Skalník a kolektiv: Afrikanistika v českých zemích a na Slovensku po roce 1960: kritické ohlédnutí, Ústí nad Orlicí-Hradec Králové: Oftis, pp. 179-196. Kropáček, Lubos and Skalník, Petr (eds.) (2001), Africa 2000. Forty Years of African Studies in Prague, Praha: Set Out. Kurcz, Maciej (2017), ‘A Mission to Mars. Or, How the Second World Explored the Third One: African Researches in Eastern European Countries under Communism’, Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 5:1, pp. 109-123. Muzikarzh, Yozef and Skalnik, Petr (1967), ‘Afrikanistika v Čechoslovakii’, Narody Azii i Afriki, 1, pp. 229-232. Prouza, Jan (2010), Ghana: Volby, politické strany a stranictví, Olomouc: Periplum. Sebestyén, Éva (2009), Kaland és kutatás Afrikában – Magyar László életrajza, Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó. Skalník, Petr (2016), ‘African Studies in the Other Europe: A Legitimate Perspective on Africa’, Politeja, 42, pp. 7-15. Skalník, Petr a kolektiv (2017), Afrikanistika v českých zemích a na Slovensku po roce 1960: kritické ohlédnutí, Ústí nad Orlicí-Hradec Králové: Oftis Skalníková, Olga (1964), ‘Ethnographical research into the present changes in the mode of life of urban population in Africa’, The African Studies in East-Central Europe Proceedings of the First International Congress of Africanists. Accra 11th-18th December 1962, London: Longman, pp. 286-297. Svobodová, Jirina (1981), ‘Die Tradition der Nomadenlebensweise bei den Fulbe Viehzüchtern in Senegal’, in: R. Krusche (ed.) Die Nomaden in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Beiträge zu einem internationalen Nomadismus-Symposium am 11. u. 12. Dezember 1975 im Museum für Völkerkunde Leipzig. Veröffentlichungen des Museums für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig, 33, pp. 191-198. Szabó, Loránd (2013), ‘African Studies in Hungary: The African Research Centre of the University of Pécs’, Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 1:1, pp. 125-133. Szantó, Diána (2016), ‘The End of ‘The End of History’ – One Tale, Two Continents’, Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 4:2, pp. 4983. Tymowski, Michal (1970), ‘Les domains des princes du Songhay (Soudan Occidental). Comparaison avec la grande propriété foncière en Europe au début de l´époque féodale’, Annales E.S.C., 25, pp. 1637-1658. - (2009), The Origins and Structures of Political Institutions in Precolonial Black Africa. Dynastic Monarcghy, Taxes and Tributes, War and Slavery, Kinship and Territory, Lewiston and Queenston and Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press. - (2017), Europejczycy i Afrykanie. Wzajemne odkrycia I pierwsze kontakty, Toruń: Wydawnictwo naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika. Vidacs, Bea (2010), Visions of a Better World. Football in the Cameroonian Social Imagination, Berlin: LIT Verlag. - (2011), ‘Banal Nationalism, Football, and Discourse Community in Africa’, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 11:1, pp. 25-41. Waligórski, Andrzej (1969), Społeczność afrykańska w procesie przemian 1890-1949. Studium wschodnioafrykańskiego plemienia Luo, Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Zajączkowski, Andrzej (ed.) (1980), African Studies in Poland. Selected Papers in Cultural Anthropology, Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, Committee for Oriental Studies. 191 192 Petr Skalník Zikmund, Martin T.; Paulas, Jan and Kropáček, Lubos (2013), Po cestách kamenitých. O životě, islámu a křesťanské víře, Praha: Vyšehra. Appendix Structure of the MA program 1st year • Political anthropology • Geopolitics of selected regions • Political history of Africa 1 • Non-democratic regimes and theory of transition • Political systems of African countries • Comparative politics • French 1, 2 2nd year • Political history of Africa 2 • Sources of political instability in Africa • Africa in international relations • Electoral and party systems • Modernization and political transformation • Conflict resolution • French 3 There are also several mandatory subjects from which students have to choose: • History of insurgent movements • Diplomacy in practice • Ethnicity and regionalism in Ghana • Strategy of development in Africa • Arabic • Portuguese While the MA program in African politics was started in 2007, the PhD program in African Studies only followed some years later. Enrolment in the PhD program is limited to a few students only, but the students can choose the language of instruction (Czech or English). It is possible to African Studies in East-Central Europe 193 do internships at the Czech embassies in Africa (Morocco, Ghana, and Nigeria). The academic staff (including retired members) engaged in Africanist Research at FF UHK • Vlastimil Fiala: political parties in Africa, theory of partisanship • Jan Klíma: history of Lusophone Africa • Jan Prouza: politics in Ghana, theory • Petr Skalník: chieftaincy and state in Africa • PhD students: Various topics Publications Vlastimil Fiala: monographs on African political partisanship by country (thus far) • São Tomé e Príncipe, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Madagascar, Comores, Mauritius, Seychelles, Angola, Djibouti, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Senegal, Gambia, Benin. • In cooperation with other authors: Zambia, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Botswana, Malawi, Ghana, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Congo. • Theoretical works on the study of political parties in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. Jan Klíma: • History of Africa: development of the continent, regions and states (Klíma 2012). • Monographic history of states: Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé e Príncipe, Namibia, Guinea Bissau. • Country monographs: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé e Príncipe. Books on the Sokols of Cape Verde, on German colonial empire, last colonial war. Jan Prouza: Ghana: Elections, political parties, partisanship (2010). Petr Skalník (in English and Czech) • Chapters and articles on early Voltaic states, chiefdom of Nanuŋ, political culture in Africa, concept of the state, theories of ethnos in South Africa and USSR, tribe, modern state of Ghana, democracy in 194 Petr Skalník Africa, comparisons: Ghana and Czechoslovakia, South Africa and Czechoslovakia, local wars in Africa, obituaries. Other Africanist activities at the Department of Politics, University of Hradec Králové • The journal Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society. Since 2013 published by the faculty of Philosophy, University of Hradec Králové. Double-blind peer-reviewed, open-access, printed and eversions, bi-annual, three -five studies per issue, obituaries (Mazrui, Ranger, Goody, Harries, Balandier, Vansina, Lombard, Héritier), reports on conferences, book reviews. Open to all but seeks to publish African and East-Central European authors. • International conferences on African Studies „Viva Africa“, since 2006 in Plzeň (Pilsen), 2009-2017 organized by University of Hradec Králové and Metropolitan University Prague, in cooperation with Czech Association for African Studies. 11th Viva Africa will take place in 2019 in Olomouc. Participants from Europe (East and West), Africa. Collective monographs published by LIT Verlag in 2010, 2011, 2013, 2016. • Recently published collective monograph in Czech, Slovak, and English: Afrikanistika v českých zemích a na Slovensku po roce 1960: kritické ohlédnutí [African Studies in the Czech Lands and in Slovakia after 1960: A Critical Hindsight] (Skalník a kolektiv 2017), 19 authors (studies, reminiscences, centres). Bibliography of Czech and Slovak African Studies 1960-2016. 195 Is there a French Touch to African Studies? Céline Thiriot Les Afriques dans le Monde, Université de Bordeaux, France Introduction France and Africa have a long common history, for better or for worse. African Studies in the French academic and research system are a link to this history. It means that French African Studies are anything but neutral. On the contrary, they have been built in an act of militancy (a “fight” according to Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch (Coquery-Vidrovitch 2002), in order to exit the “colonial library” (Mudimbe 1988) inherited from the colonial period and after. This evolution is embodied in the shift from ‘Africanism’ to ‘African Studies’. In France, the first and oldest organization is the Société des africanistes, which has existed since 1930. However, in 2006, a second organization was created by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), at first as an RTP (Réseau thématique prioritaire, Priority thematic network) institutionalized in 2014 as the Groupement d’intérêt scientifique (GIS, Scientific interest group) études africaines en France, African Studies in France.1 Each of them embodies two different moments and conceptions of African Studies. The GIS is now a network of 23 research centres, belonging to 18 French institutions (universities, CNRS, Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ research centres,2 IRD3). It embodies the new African Studies in France, but the very idea 1 The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) is the major organization for public research in France. For more information, see Études Africaines en France 2019. 2 The French Ministry for Foreign Affairs has several UMIFRE (Unités Mixtes des Instituts français de Recherche à l’Étranger), seven of which are in Africa. See Unités Mixtes des Instituts français de Recherche à l’Étranger 2015. 3 IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement) is the former ORSTOM, with several research units based in African countries. For more information, see Institut de Recherche pour le Développement France 2019a and Institut de Recherche pour le Développement France 2019b. 196 Céline Thiriot of Area Studies is still hotly debated within French academia. Having the advantage of lending visibility to our ‘exotic fields’, it can give the wrong idea of a homogeneity. Beside the GIS études africaines, the CNRS has supported the creation of other GIS in Area Studies.4 Speaking of Area Studies is clearly political and instrumental (Bayart 2016), especially after 2001, when most of those countries started to be perceived as a possible threat to northern countries. This continues to be the case now, in the migrant crisis affecting European countries. French academics are not naïve; even though they benefit from this ‘Area Studies fashion,’ they do not accept it as such, as the new research projects developed clearly prove. A survey of the last decades in French African Studies suggests a shift in the dominant paradigms, fields, and topics, which will be discussed in the first part of the article. The data and graphics presented in this article are drawn from the first Livre blanc sur les études africaines en France (‘White book on African Studies in France’), published in 2016 (GIS études africaines 2016; here and in the following cited as Livre Blanc). Nowadays, African Studies are surfing the strong wave of the revival of Area Studies in France, but this should not hide the challenges at the current juncture, which will be the focus of the second part of the article. General Trends and Evolution in African Studies in France The GIS Etudes Africaines en France has published the Livre Blanc in 2016. The data and quantitative analysis presented here have been produced by colleagues from Nice: Jocelyne Streiff-Fénart, under the supervision of Pierre Boilley, the director of the network.5 Global Trends Several factors have shaped and are still shaping the evolution and the global trends of African Studies in France. First, the national – meaning colonial – tradition has a strong influence on the perception of the geographical area. For a long time, French academics did, for the most 4 These are the GIS Moyen Orient-Mondes musulmans, GIS Études asiatiques, Institut des Amériques. 5 For details on who did this quantitative analysis and how it was done, please refer to Livre Blanc 2016: 72 and 108-115. Part of their analysis was used to create Figures 1-6. Is there a French Touch to African Studies? 197 part, consider the former French colonies, with a strong focus on North Africa. African Studies have been influenced by intellectual modes, and by political issues (French perspectives and interest in African political issues). The second factor is the evolution of scientific disciplines, of their topics, and theoretical backgrounds. The structure of the French academic system and the evolution of institutions and funding opportunities has been and still are determinant. Within those conditions, French academics have been engaged in building a militant and independent science. Roughly speaking, one can identify four different periods. The first ‘Africanism’ was a colonial one. The ‘colonial library’ (Mudimbe 1988) of Africanism consisted of studies of the African populations made for – and often by – French administrators. Their purpose was to find a way of understanding African societies in order to help the colonial administration to establish its control. The colonial Africanism consisted mainly of ethno-geographic and law studies, with the main interest being ruling and managing African populations. Then the anthropologic perspective began to ask questions differently, within the ‘colonial situation’ identified by Georges Balandier (Balandier 2002). Questions of power, of domination, and legacy began to be asked. The 1950s-1960s saw the emergence of modern Africanism, with Balandier as the father (Jewsiewicki 2002). Step by step, African Studies have been built by questioning this ‘original sin’ of colonialism. The 1970s-1980s saw the emergence of African Studies, with different disciplines building contemporary and modern perspectives on Africa. The period was highly ideological. Researchers in anthropology, history, or geography chose to study Africa with a militant spirit. After the colonization and the decolonization fights, choosing to work on Africa was ‘a fight.’ Marxism was a strong ideology for that, as well as Dependency theory. This explains why African Studies have always had strong ties with the economy. Historians and anthropologists have been studying inequalities, social domination, power confiscation, etc. This was possible thanks to disciplinary (R)evolutions. An important turn came with L’École des Annales and in the 1970s with CoqueryVidrovitch. Political sciences were strongly oriented in the 1980s with the politique par le bas (“politics from the grassroots”) perspective supported by François Bayart, Christian Coulon, Denis-Constant Martin and the review Politique Africaine. Politically, there was hope for change in 1981, with the election of the first socialist president in France, François Mitterrand. His Minister for Development, Jean-Pierre Cot, wanted 198 Céline Thiriot Figure 1: Evolution of the number of theses since 1930 (Livre Blanc: 74) to change French-African relations. Many French scholars believed in him and counselled him. Unfortunately, Cot resigned after only two years, under pressure from some African autocrats. Unfortunately, too, the 1990s and 2000s were lost decades for African Studies in France. At that time, Africa as a field of study had little, if any, legitimacy in most of the disciplines, with some exceptions. Africa as a field of study was more central in geography, anthropology, and history. But to be considered as a true political scientist or as a true economist, you were not supposed to mention African examples and experiments. There was almost no recruitment of specialists for Africa then. The political context is another explanatory factor. With the end of cold war, the African continent lost any strategic interest. The current period can be qualified as renewal of African Studies. The leading French research institutions proved to have a strong commitment in supporting the recruitment of new researchers and the funding of research programs. However, this renewal is occurring in a quite competitive context, with the emergence of Post-colonial and Global studies (Byfield 2006: 57). The central issue for African Studies nowadays is to consider African fields as areas where theory can be developed, and not only transposed. Is there a French Touch to African Studies? 199 PhD Theses on Africa in France The evolution of PhD theses (data from 1930 to 2014) reflects the evolution of African Studies in France. One specificity of French African Studies is the multiple disciplines that investigate African societies and topics. Figure 1 shows the evolution of the number of theses on Africa between 1930 and 2014. The number of theses increased significantly after independence. One reason for that is the easier access of African students to graduate studies compared with the colonial period. Another reason might be the new interest in studying African independent states facing so many challenges, like democracy, development, ethnicity, etc. Figure 2 shows the distribution of theses on Africa according to academic disciplines, with cumulative figures. Figure 2: Disciplines of the theses, numbers, and percentages (Livre Blanc: 76) Of course, this reflects history and the importance of the respective disciplines, as law and languages were placed first. Therefore, it is not surprising that their presence is the most important in terms of quantity over the whole period. Generally, the distribution reflects the overall balance between disciplines in French universities, except maybe for anthropology, for which Africa is the main field. Figure 3 shows the changing distribution of disciplines of theses on Africa more clearly. 200 Céline Thiriot Figure 3: Evolution of the most represented disciplines (excluding theses in general categories such as ‘African Studies,’ ‘human and social science’) (Livre Blanc: 78) Law and linguistics are dominant up to 1970. After 1970, African fields and problems became the field of studies by new or renewed disciplines, such as economy, history, geography, and political sciences. Articles published on Africa in France The comparison of the detailed lists of the topics developed in scientific publications between 1960-1970 (Figure 4, on the left) and 2000-2013 (Figure 5, on the right) is of greater interest. In both periods, some topics remain central, such as the economy, labor, or territorial studies. However, between the first and the second period, other topics have gained increased visibility, such as politics, public administration (seven percent of the publications in the 1st period, 43 percent in the second one), culture, identity, and ethnicity. Some topics have literally emerged somewhere in the time between the two periods under review like communication, sexuality, and social troubles. On the other hand, some topics have quite disappeared. Those ‘has-been’ topics are ethnic monographies, the tradition/modernity opposition, traditional societies, or kinship. The Livre Blanc publishes a state of research for each discipline. It proves how current research interests in French African Studies are a perfect reflection of the importance of understanding the burning issues on the continent in today’s world. To avoid embarrassing lapses, we are Is there a French Touch to African Studies? 201 Figures 4 and 5: Number of articles by topics 1960-1970 and 2000-2013 (Livre Blanc: 103-104) not going to mention any names here, but only topics and laboratories. There is a strong interest in religions, religious engagements, and dynamics, from the local to the most global (transnational) perspective. Africa is without any doubt a very religious continent. Religion is the main door for political and social participation. Political Islam is a powerful destabilizing factor in many countries (Al-Qaïda au Maghreb/Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, AQMI, Boko Haram) (IMAF,6 LAM7). The state is back, in two specific perspectives: the first is an ethnography of public services, of its materiality, for example, the administrative documents, and formal papers (CERI,8 IMAF). The second perspective is sectorial 6 IMAF – Institut des mondes africains (CNRS, IRD, EPHE, EHESS, Marseille and Paris 1 Universities). For more information, see Institut des mondes africains (2019). 7 LAM – Les Afriques dans le monde (CNRS and Sciences Po Bordeaux). For more information, see LAM 2019. 8 CERI – Centre d’études et de recherches internationales (CNRS and Sciences po Paris). For more information, see SciencesPo Centre de Recherche Internationales 2019. 202 Céline Thiriot public policy analysis, intending to demonstrate that ‘making public policies in the south’ is possible and to teach a lot to public policies specialists (LAM). There is also a strong interest in patrimony and the arts and the past and present role of culture in politics and identities (IMAF, LLACAN,9 LAM). More and more important are the inequalities of gender or, larger, the entirety of social inequalities, as well as mobilizations analyses (IMAF, LAM). The environment and resources are still important topics and shared by more and more disciplines (CESSMA,10 IMAF, LAM, PALOC,11 PRODIG12). For example, in archaeology the research dynamics are with palaeontology and paleo-environments. Migration has always been a central topic, but there are political incentives from the French government to investigate current migrations, and the prospects for settlement and incorporation into French society (MIGRINTER,13 IMAF, LAM, URMIS14). The urbanization process in Africa, concerning not only large metropolises, but also mid-sized cities, paves the way for urban studies and urban/rural relations (CESSMA, LAM, LAVUE15, PRODIG). Health issues are more present than ever, due to the incentives for wider interdisciplinarity (i.e., social and human sciences (SHS) with hard sciences) and of many calls for proposals. 9 LLACAN – Langages, langues et cultures d’Afrique noire (CNRS et INALCO). For more information, see LLACAN 2019. 10 CESSMA – Centre d’études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques (Université Paris Diderot, INALCO and IRD). For more information see CESSMA Centre d’études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques 2019. 11 PALOC – Patrimoines locaux et gouvernance (IRD and Muséum national d’histoire naturelle). For more information, see PALOC 2019. 12 PRODIG – Pôle de recherche pour l’organisation et la diffusion de l’information géographique (CNRS, Paris 1, Paris IV and Paris 7 Universities). For more information, see PRODIG 2019. 13 MIGRINTER – Migrations internationales (CNRS and Poitiers University). For more information, see MIGRINTER – CNRS 2019. 14 URMIS – Unité de recherches migrations et sociétés. For more information, see URMIS 2019. 15 LAVUE – Laboratoire architecture, ville, urbanisme, environnement (CNRS, Paris Ouest Nanterre and Paris 8 Universities, Ministry of culture). For more information, see LAVUE 2019. 203 Is there a French Touch to African Studies? Country Distribution according to Published Articles The colonial legacy has, for a long time, oriented researchers towards North African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) and the so-called pré carré in Sub-Saharan Africa (Senegal, Ivory Coast, Niger, Gabon, Cameroon, Congo, Chad). But in the 1970s and the 1980s, a new generation of French researchers, often trained in the USA and Canada, investigated English-speaking Africa (Botswana, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe …) and Portuguese-speaking countries (Angola, Mozambique …). Later still, from the 1990s onwards, French researchers have been working on Africa and its connecting spaces (through the Indian Ocean, or transatlantic connections with slave-made societies). This evolution is partially visible in the country distribution (as shown in the published articles) in Figure 6. Variation 1re/3e période : pays en régression Pays Côte d’Ivoire -8,87 % Cameroun -4,46 % Tchad -3,98 % Rwanda -3,20 % République -3,16 % du Congo Niger -3,01 % Madagascar -2,22 % Bénin -1,93 % Mali -1,53 % République -1,05 % centrafricaine Gabon -0,79 % Comores -0,77 % Burundi -0,64 % Sénégal -0,42 % Variation 1re/3e période : pays en progression Tanzanie Mozambique Burkina Faso Ouganda République démocratique du Congo Kenya Égypte Mauritanie Libye Afrique du Sud Maroc Tunisie Algérie 1,18 % 1,23 % 1,36 % 1,50 % 2,34 % 2,47 % 3,53 % 3,57 % 4,06 % 4,14 % 6,41 % 6,88 % 6,95 % Figure 6: Country distribution. 1st period: 1960-1979; 3rd period: 2000-2013, (Livre Blanc: 101). 204 Céline Thiriot The distribution of the articles published on certain countries in the two periods under consideration shows some significant patterns. The top five countries were and still are Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali, and Cameroon, representing one out of four articles on both periods. But some countries are more studied in the more recent period, like Mauritania, South Africa, Kenya, and less but increasing, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique. Those figures may have a bias concerning the ranking of North African countries. Their progression here is mainly due to the integration in the corpus of the Maghreb-Machrek Review in 2003, whereas this was not the case in the first period. Moreover, those figures maybe hide the vacuum left. There are few, if any studies, on Namibia, Zambia, and Malawi. However, more surprisingly, Congo (Brazzaville), Gabon, or the Central African Republic seem to be the ‘forgotten countries’ of the current period. The change from ‘Africanism’ to ‘African Studies’ and recent research trends in the topics and countries studied is a reality. Some wellknown researchers in Africanist studies strongly regret this, and in particular the weakening of the humanities (Ricard 2004). Yet, to understand these compelling changes, one requires an understanding of the institutions and rules of the French academic system. Institutional and Financial Constraints and Resources African Studies are trendy, in demand, in today’s France. This trend started at the end of the 2000s. The CNRS implemented a new policy toward Area studies in general and Middle East and African Studies in particular (Alliance ATHENA 2016). It proceeded to the recruitment of new scholars and supported the restructuring of the research centres. Meanwhile, financing research in the humanities and social sciences in general, and in African fields in particular, has never been so difficult. Les Afriques dans le Monde (LAM, Africas in the World) is a good example of those trends. The Restructuring of French African Studies The joint policies of universities and the CNRS, in some cases with IRD, together with the HCRES evaluations, led to an institutional restructuring of the humanities and social sciences in France. Several small groups Is there a French Touch to African Studies? 205 disappeared or joined to meet the new criteria (minimum size, financial capacity, scientific acknowledgement). As far as African Studies are concerned, several teams merged to build two main research centres: Les Afriques dans le monde (LAM) in Bordeaux and Pau, in 2011 and l’Institut des Mondes Africains (IMAF) in Paris and Marseille, in 2014.16 Both centres are living testimony to the way African Studies in France have changed. They are multidisciplinary, bringing together the humanities and the social sciences. LAM is more identified with contemporary political and social issues, whereas IMAF is more identified with issues of long history and anthropology. They are fully dedicated to the Africas. The plural, an anomaly in the French language (and each time corrected by the automatic correction!) is important there. The 54 countries on the continent are as diverse as European or American countries are, and this diversity must be accounted for. Moreover, the scientific program of those research centres provides an open conception of Africa, considered larger than just the continent. The aim is to document African connections and African presence in the world: crossing the Atlantic with societies that emerged from the slave trade; traversing the Sahara to North Africa and Middle East countries, crossing the Indian Ocean, or links to the North. The reconfiguration of French African Studies was the result of long reflection.17 The CNRS strongly supported this new institutional and scientific restructuring by creating the French network in African Studies: GIS études africaines en France. This network brings together some researchers belonging to 23 research centres, with only the two mentioned above being fully dedicated to Africa. Moreover, the recruitment policy of the CNRS privileges new researchers with interdisciplinary profiles in non-western fields that would not have suited university structures before. During the last ten years, 20 Africanist scholars have been hired. It is a huge effort considering the level of appointments. 16 IMAF is the result of the merging of three laboratories: CEMAF (Centre d’études des mondes africains, since 2006), CEAf (Centre d’études africaines, since 1957) and CHSIM (Centre d’histoire sociale de l’islam méditerranéen since 1994). 17 For more information on these reflections, see Darbon 2003; Chrétien 2004; Sabouret 2010. 206 Céline Thiriot Funding Matters In France, as everywhere, research is strongly dependent on financial opportunities for funding. French research changed at the end of the 20th century, and the funding logic moved from a model based on a regular basic dotation from the state to the laboratory, to a model based on the funding of individual projects. Consequently, basic state dotation decreased, replaced by calls for project proposals. In a research centre like LAM, 80 percent of the operating budget (besides salaries) comes from research programs. The annual basic budget allowance from our mother institutions (CNRS and Sciences Po Bordeaux) is around 20 percent. Laboratories had to find money together with other partners. Policy-driven programs now have a very important place in a laboratory’s budget, with a strong impact on how research is shaped and oriented. In Bordeaux, the Aquitaine region had a determinant influence. To be able to get their funding, research projects have to include partners from the private sector (companies, NGOs, associations) and to prove a social utility for the region. Different institutions provide funding for research. Primarily, the European Research Council (ERC) and the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR), whose call for proposal are free of direction, like ‘white ANR’ or ‘junior researchers ANR’. But the success rate is very low. ANR was created in 2005 by Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin’s government. It was supposed to be the principal way of allocating resources to research. But those resources keep getting reduced since 2005, drastically so since 2017.18 The total budget of the ANR was initially around €600m, but since 2010, it has been around €400m. The success rate was initially around 25 percent, but is now around 12 percent. In ten years, the numbers of projects submitted increased from roughly 5500 to roughly 7500 (+ 33 percent), but the number of projects accepted decreased from roughly 1500 to roughly 1000 (- 33 percent). The ANR claims 15,000 funded projects since 2005, 221 of which include the keyword ‘Afrique’.19 African fields are clearly marginalized, as shown in Figure 7. The situation is clearly not brilliant, especially when the general evolution of the ANR, and of the SHS particularly, are taken into consid18 See the assessment of the period from 2006-2016, Miquelard 2016. 19 The research for this part of the article and the accompanying figures was done on the website of the ANR, using the key word ‘afrique.’ Is there a French Touch to African Studies? 207 Figure 7: Africa-related research projects within the total of ANR projects funded eration. In 2016, the ANR gave financial support to 1143 projects, but only 20 had Africa as field, subject, or keyword; five only were for a SHS project on Africa. In 2017, ANR gave financial support to 914 projects, 27 on Africa, with five SHS projects. Figure 8: Rate of social and human sciences (SHS) projects within Africa-related projects funded by ANR The situation with the ERC is no better. France won ten ERC projects on Africa in SHS (2007-2017), but only two on Sub-Saharan Africa, both in 2017.20 20 Tatiana Nikitina (LLACAN): Discourse reporting in African storytelling; Camille Lefebvre (IMAF): Hausa and Kanuri languages as archive for the history of Sahara and Sahel in 18th and 19th century. 208 Céline Thiriot LAM as an Illustration Bordeaux is the oldest spot for African Studies in France, after Paris. The old CEAN21 was created in 1958 (compared with CEAF, founded by Balandier in 1957). In 2011, the CEAN merged with the CREPAO22 (a small team on East Africa at Pau University), and several colleagues from Bordeaux universities (anthropologists from the University of Bordeaux II; geographers from the University of Bordeaux III; economists and lawyers from the University of Bordeaux IV) joined to build LAM. LAM now consists of 40 permanent researchers, ten administration staff members, and around 90 doctoral students. They represent seven disciplines, all converging towards the same project (see Figure 9). LAM’s project was built on several strong ideas. The first idea was to build interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding of African political dynamics. Whatever their initial discipline might be, all the researchers converge towards African politics under all aspects (politics, policy, polity). The second idea is to consider AfricaS as a plural, in the globalization dynamics: analyzing connected AfricaS (AfricaS in the world, Di- Figure 9: The scientific axes of LAM 21 CEAN – Centre d’étude d’Afrique noire (CNRS and Sciences Po Bordeaux). 22 CREPAO – Centre de recherche et d’études sur les pays d’Afrique Orientale (université of Pau et des pays de l’Adour). Is there a French Touch to African Studies? 209 asporas, shared problematics in post-colonial societies, in post-slavery societies). The third strong line is not to consider study fields focusing on Africa as special or different, but to build a comparative perspective, to show how these fields can contribute to the general academic debates. As Coulon put it: “African societies are fully normal and common societies” (Coulon 1996: 2). This initial perspective gave birth to a scientific project made out of three research axes, each axis not exclusive from the others. LAM can rely on a strong network of academics and research centres in Africa. Some French ones, the UMIFRE (French mixed research units in Africa, of the Foreign Affairs ministry and CNRS) and IRD centres. But some gaps remain, as the map shows (Figure 10). Figure 10: LAM’s academic partners in Africa Joint-research programs have been implemented with partners out of Africa too, in Europe, the United States, and the Caribbean, and more recently with Japan. Not to speak of the Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS) network, of which LAM is a founding member. As a good illustration of the financial trends mentioned above, LAM is now conducting projects with a wide range of non-academic partners. We are privileged in Bordeaux to have the strong commitment of the local public authorities (Aquitaine region, Bordeaux metropolis), and a very rich fabric of cultural associations and NGOs. The Aquitaine re- 210 Céline Thiriot gion’s model has been the Institute of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth.23 For instance, LAM is a founding member of two regional networks, IDAF (Institute of Directors of Associations and Foundations) and SO COOP, with a strong commitment to research in terms of social utility. Together with those non-academic partners, LAM’s researchers have implemented several action-research programs in development studies (Morocco, Madagascar) and administration capacity building (Guinea, Mali). The training programs testify to the same evolution. For a long time, LAM’s ancestor (the CEAN) has been managing a single research track (DEA, Diploma of advanced studies, equivalent to a master program) leading to PhDs in African Studies. In 2002 and 2005, new master programs have been implemented in Sciences Po Bordeaux, with a professional focus which goes beyond mere academic research. LAM’s members are teaching in four master`s degree programs, two of them leading to PhDs in four doctoral schools. As a Conclusion? African Studies have been, and still are, debated and disputed. There is not one paradigm, but a perpetual debate on competing paradigms: universalism vs. culturalism; economic vs. political determination; disorder paradigm vs. the entire world, etc. French African Studies are nowadays strongly supported. This, however, might not last for long. Like the long history of African Studies in France show, it is a cycle of trends. The most recent orientations of French academics in African Studies, even though not named as such, are similar to what Eva Spies and Rüdiger Seeseman depict in German and more widely in European African Studies, as “pluralicity and relationality” (Spies and Seesemann 2016). There are numerous challenges still to address for French academics working on and with Africa. The first one is to normalize the African fields of study in our academic arenas. The situation is very different from geography or anthropology, where Africa is at the heart of the discipline; in political science or law, Africa is still ‘exotic’ and therefore not 23 After a visit to Iwalewahaus by Alain Rousset (president of the Aquitaine region), he strongly supported academic civil society projects focused towards Africa in the Aquitaine region. Is there a French Touch to African Studies? 211 seriously assessed. The second one is to keep access to the field open. The map of the French Foreign Ministry colors most of the continent in red and orange, meaning that it is too dangerous for researchers, and access is forbidden, which is a strong limitation to research. The third one is the question of how to raise funding to work with African universities and scholars. European programs (ERC) do have a few African countries on the map. On the Francophone side, the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) is powerless. Euro-African funding opportunities still have to be invented and designed. It is both insane and a non-sense to study AfricaS without Africans. Acknowledgements Figures 1 to 6 come from the Livre Blanc sur les Etudes Africaines en France. The data and quantitative analysis on theses and published articles presented here have been produced by Jocelyne Streiff-Fénart and URMIS Nice, under the supervision of Pierre Boilley, the director of the network at that time. References Alliance ATHENA (2016), Les études aréales en France. Une synthèse, Paris: CNRS, http://etudes-africaines.cnrs.fr/wp-content/ uploads/2017/01/Synthe%CC%80se-des-livres-blancs-en%C3%A9tudes-ar%C3%A9ales-2016.pdf. Accessed 28.05.2019. Bayart, Jean-François (2016), ‘“Dessine-moi un MENA!”, ou l’impossible définition des “aires culturelles”’, Sociétés Politiques Comparées, 38, http://www.fasopo.org/sites/default/ files/varia1_ n38.pdf. Accessed 28.05.2019. Byfield, Judith (2016), ‘African Studies and the Challenge of the Global in the 21st Century’, Africa Today, 63: 2, pp. 55-57. CESSMA (2019), ‘Accueil du Site’, http://cessma.univ-paris-diderot.fr/. Accessed 28.05.2019. Chrétien, Jean-Pierre (2004), Réflexion sur les recherches “africanistes” en France, Propositions, Paris: CNRS. Copans, Jean (1979), ‘D’un africanisme à l’autre’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 13:1/2, pp. 55-68. 212 Céline Thiriot Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine (2002), ‘De l’“africanisme” vu de France. Le point de vue d’une historienne’, Le Débat, 1:118, pp. 3448. Coulon, Christian (1996), ‘Réflexions africanistes autour de la banalisation des aires culturelles’, 5ème congrès de l’AFSP, Aix-enProvence, 23-26 avril 1996. Darbon, Dominique (2003), Réflexions sur l’africanisme en France, Rapport pour le CNRS, Paris: CNRS. Étude Africaines en France (2019), ‘Home Page’, http://etudesafricaines.cnrs.fr/. Accessed 28.05.2019. GIS études africaines (2016), Livre blanc sur les études africaines en France. Un état des lieux, Paris: GIS études africaines, CNRS, http:// etudes-africaines.cnrs.fr/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ Livre-BlancGIS-Etudes-africaines-2016.pdf. Accessed 28.05.2019. Institut des mondes africains (2019), ‘Institut des Mondes Africaines (IMAF)’, http://imaf.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article1&lang=fr. Accessed 28.05.2019. Institut de Recherche pour le Développement France (2019a), ‘L’IRD en Afrique de l’Est, Afrique australe et dans l’Ocean Indien‘, https:// www.ird.fr/l-ird-dans-le-monde/afrique-de-l-est-afrique-australeet-ocean-indien. Accessed 28.05.2019. (2019b), ‘L’IRD en Afrique de l’Ouest et centrale’, https://www.ird. fr/l-ird-dans-le-monde/afrique-de-l-ouest-et-centrale. Accessed 28.05.2019. Jewsiewicki, Bogumil (2002), ‘Études africaines: France, États-Unis’, Le Débat, 1:118, pp. 66-76. LAM (2019), ‘Home Page’, http://www.lam.sciencespobordeaux.fr/. Accessed 07.05.2019. LAVUE (2019), ‘Home Page’, http://www.lavue.cnrs.fr. Accessed 28.05.2019. LLACAN (2019), ‘Accueil’, http://llacan.vjf.cnrs.fr/. Accessed 28.05.2019. MIGRINTER (2019), ‘Accueil’, http://migrinter.labo.univ-poitiers.fr/. Accessed 28.05.2019. Miquelard, Guillaume (2016), ‘L’Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR)’, Un Petit Monde, 16 August, http://blog.educpros.fr/ Is there a French Touch to African Studies? guillaume-miquelard-et-paul-francois/2016/08/16/lagencenationale-de-la-recherche-anr/. Accessed 28.05.2019. Mudimbe, Valentin (1988), The Invention of Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. PALOC (2019), ‘Accueil’, http://paloc.fr/fr. Accessed 28.05.2019. PRODIG (2019), ‘Home Page’, http://www.prodig.cnrs.fr/. Accessed 28.05.2019. Ricard Alain (2004), ‘De l’africanisme aux études africaines. Textes et “humanités”’, Afrique & Histoire, 1:2, pp. 171-192. Sabouret, Jean-François (ed.) (2010), Place de la recherche sur les “aires culturelles” au CNRS: enjeux, bilan et prospectives, Rapport pour le CNRS, Paris: CNRS. SciencesPo Centre de Recherche Internationales (2019), ‘Page d’accueil‘, http://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/fr. Accessed 28.05.2019. Spies, Eva and Seesemann, Rüdiger (2016), ‘Pluralicity and Relationality: New Directions in African Studies’, Africa Today, 63:2, pp. 132-139. Unités Mixtes des Instituts français de Recherche à l’Étranger (2015), ‘Home Page’, http://www.ifre.fr/. Accessed 28.05.2019. URMIS (2019), ‘Home Page’, http://www.urmis.fr/en/. Accessed 28.05.2019. 213 215 About the Contributors Akintúndé Akínyémí is Professor of Yoruba Language and Literature in the Africa section of the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and an affiliate faculty in the Center for African Studies where he directs the African Flagship Languages Initiative domestic intensive summer programs funded by the US Department of Defense National Security Education Program (NSEP) through the Institute for International Education in Washington. His research interests include Yoruba language, literature, and culture as well as African literature, popular culture, and the Yoruba Diaspora in the New World. Between 1999 and 2001, he was a postdoctoral research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Institute of African Studies, University of Bayreuth in Germany and the Center for West African Studies, University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. He is the author of Orature and Yoruba Riddles (Palgave Macmillan, 2015), Yoruba Royal Poetry: A Socio-historical Exposition and Annotated Translation (Bayreuth African Studies Series (BASS), 71, 2004); co-author of a French-Yoruba dictionary, Dictionnaire usuel Yoruba-français (Karthala-IFRA, 1997); and coeditor of Encyclopedia of the Yoruba (Indiana University Press, 2016), three volumes of essays, “Emerging Perspectives on Femi Osofisan” (Africa World Press, 2010), “Sango in Africa and the African Diaspora” (Indiana University Press, 2009), and “Emerging Perspectives on Akinwumi Isola” (Africa World Press, 2008). He is a co-editor of the journal Yoruba Studies Review. For the next few years, his research interest will be focused on Yoruba Diaspora in the New World and popular culture, especially Yoruba video-films Carlos Almeida, Historian, PhD in Anthropology from the NOVA University of Lisbon. Researcher at the Centre for History of the University of Lisbon, coordinator of the research group Cultural Encounters and Intersecting Societies. His main field of research deals with early modern West Central African history, combining particularly the fields of cultural and religious history. Main research areas are: cross-cultural encounters; religious missions; travel writing and development of ethnographic discourse on African societies; material culture. Recent publications include: “Christianity in Kongo,” in: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (forthcoming); “‘Inhabitants of this Black Ethiopia, 216 About the Contributors Descendants of Ham’ – Ham’s Curse in the Missionary Literature on the Central-Western Region of the African Continent (16th-17th Centuries),” in: Estudos Ibero-Americanos, Porto Alegre, v. 44, n. 3, p. 409-420, set.dez. 2018, and “‘Fit to the form of Christian living.’ Catholic mission and resistance in African lands,” in: Cadernos de Estudos Africanos, 33, 2017. Currently he is preparing the publication of a revised edition of his thesis entitled “‘A happy unhappiness.’ The image of Africa and Africans in missionary literature on west central Africa (XVI-XVIIIth century).” Aparajita Biswas is Professor and has taught at the Centre for African Studies of Mumbai University for the past 30 years, where she demonstrated continued commitment to promoting African Studies in India. She has also taught as a Visiting professor at various universities in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Her major research interest is on India-Africa Relations, Africa and the Indian Ocean, Africa’s international relations, human rights issues in Africa, and the Indian Diaspora in Africa. She has been invited by numerous institutions and universities across the world to share her views on African issues and, especially, on India-Africa relations. Biswas is the author of many books and articles. Rina Cáceres, has a PhD in History, and she coordinates the Chair of African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Costa Rica in San José. Teacher at the School of History, University of Costa Rica, she is a member of the International Scientific Committee of the Slave Route Project: Resistance, Freedom, Heritage. She is also UNESCO Member of the Afro-Descendant Studies Commission of the Ministry of Public Education in Costa Rica. Yongkyu Chang from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Division of African Studies, Seoul, is Professor and an anthropologist working on African belief systems and cultural change. He got his PhD at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa in 2002 and conducted fieldwork in parts of Africa on related topics. His recent academic interest is focused on the issue of diasporic and migratory movements in and out of Africa and its cultural encounters with host communities. As an academic service, he is acting as the President of the Korean Association of African Studies and tries to bridge with African associations in other countries, especially in Asian countries, for academic collaboration. He has published and translated on African and anthropological studies in Korea, including: South Korea’s Engagement with Africa: A History of the About the Contributors 217 Relationship in Multiple Aspects (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); “Asia-Africa Relations – the way Korean and African encounter”, in: T. Iwata (ed.), New Asian Approaches to Africa (Vernon Press, 2020, pp. 111-134). Marta E. Cordiés Jackson, is Professor at Universidad de Oriente, a historian, doctor in pedagogical sciences, and the director of the Centro Cultural Africano “Fernando Ortiz” in Cuba. She is also President of the Technical Advisory Council of Provincial Culture, since 2011 and a former Vice President of UNEAC in Santiago de Cuba until 2016. Member of the Aponte UNEAC Commission, Santiago de Cuba Province. She has extensively taught courses, on Afro-Caribbean Studies, Creole linguistics, and Literature. Ute Fendler is Professor of Romance Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Bayreuth since 2006. Her research interests cover literatures and film cultures of the Caribbean, West Africa, the Indian Ocean, and South America and often leans on comparative approaches. More recent research deals with questions of inter- and transmediality, popular cultures, iconographies, with a regional focus on the Indian Ocean and East Asia as well as on transoceanic approaches. Some recent publications: “Lusophone filmmaking in the realm of transnational African cinemas: from ‘global ethnic’ to ‘global aesthetics’.” In: Livia Apa/ Paulo de Sousa Aguiar de Medeiros: Contemporary Lusophone African Film: Transnational Communities And Alternative Modernities. Routledge, 2020, 33-51; “SM Entertainment: From Stage Art to Neo Culture Technology (NCT).” In: Culture and Empathy 2(3) 2019, 206-219. DOI: 10.32860/26356619/2019/2.3.0005; with Katharina Fink/Nadine Siegert/Ulf Vierke: Revolution 3.0: Iconographies of social utopia in Africa and its diasporas. München: AVM, 2019. John H. Hanson is Professor in the African Studies Program and the Department of History at Indiana University. His scholarship concerns the religious imagination and social initiatives of West African Muslims. His most recent book, The Ahmadiyya in the Gold Coast: Muslim Cosmopolitans in the British Empire, explores African contributions to the arrival and expansion of a South Asian Muslim reform movement in colonial Ghana. His most recent English translations of West African Arabic texts appear in the Africa Online Digital Library (http://aodl.org). Hanson served for years as an editor of two journals, Africa Today and History in Africa, as well as the director of the African Studies Program. 218 About the Contributors He received the John W. Ryan award for distinguished contributions to International Studies at Indiana University in 2011. Hanson currently is executive associate dean of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University. Doris Löhr holds a PhD in African linguistics from Goethe-University Frankfurt, where she worked within the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 268 ’History of Culture and Language in the Natural Environment of the West African Savannah,’ funded by the DFG from 1994-2002. She published a grammar of the Malgwa language (Chadic language family) spoken in North-Eastern Nigeria. She then held a position as a postdoctoral lecturer at the Institute of African Studies at Leipzig University before she joined a DFG-funded joint project at University of Hamburg (with the SOAS, London) as research fellow. Within the topic, “A study of Old Kanembu in Early West African Qur’anic manuscripts and Islamic recitations (Tarjumo) in the light of Kanuri-Kanembu dialects spoken around Lake Chad,” she worked on a dialectological description of Kanembu. Löhr has extensive teaching experience. Later she became the academic coordinator/managing director of the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies (funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research) at the University of Bayreuth, a position she held for six years. Since 2019, she works as academic coordinator at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth. Lungisile Ntsebeza is Professor and the holder of the AC Jordan Chair in African Studies at the University of Cape Town. He is also the holder of the National Research Foundation (NRF) Research Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa. He has conducted extensive published research on the land question in South Africa around themes such as land rights, democratization, rural local government, traditional authorities and land, and agrarian movements. His book, “Democracy Compromised: Chiefs and the Politics of Land in South Africa” was published by Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden in 2005 and the HSRC Press in 2006. Ntsebeza has also co-edited two books: The Land Question in South Africa: the Challenge of Transformation and Redistribution (HSRC Press, 2007), with Ruth Hall and Rural Resistance in South Africa: The Mpondo Revolts after Fifty Years with Thembela Kepe (Brill Academic Publishers, 2011 and UCT Press, 2012). His current research interests, apart from land and agrarian questions, include an investigation of Afri- About the Contributors 219 can Studies at the University of Cape Town and a related project on the political and intellectual history of the late Archie Mafeje. Livio Sansone received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1992. Sansone has been living in Brazil since 1992, where he is Professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). He is the head of the Factory of Ideas Program – an advanced international course in ethnic and African Studies – and coordinates the Digital Museum of African and Afro-Brazilian Heritage – www.museuafrodigital.ufba.br. He has published extensively on youth culture, ethnicity, inequalities, international transit of ideas of race and antiracism, anthropology and colonialism, and globalization, with research based in the UK, Holland, Suriname, Brazil, Italy and, recently, Cape Verde, Senegal, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. His best-known book in English is Blackness Without Ethnicity. Creating Race in Brazil (Palgrave, 2003). Other more recent articles in English are available in the online journal Vibrant.org.br. José da Silva Horta is Associate Professor of History of Africa at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon (FLUL), director of the FLUL BA in African Studies, and he coordinates the History of Africa branch of the postgraduate program in History. He is also a researcher and deputy director of the Centre for History of the University of Lisbon. He was Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. His work has been devoted to the early history of Greater Senegambia/ Upper Guinea Coast, 15th to 17th centuries. His publications include The Forgotten Diaspora: Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 2011, 2013) with Peter Mark; A ‘Guiné do Cabo Verde’: Produção Textual e Representações (1578-1684) (Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and FCT, 2011); A Representação do Africano na Literatura de Viagens do Senegal á Serra Leoa (1453-1508) (Mare Liberum, 1991). A recent paper: “A ‘Racial’ Approach to the History of Early Afro-Portuguese Relationships? The Case of Senegambia and Cabo Verde in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” The Sephardic Atlantic: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) (co-author: P. Mark). Petr (Peter) Skalník, political anthropologist and Africanist, specialising in state and chiefdom studies. Educated in Prague, Leningrad, and Cape Town. Taught African Studies, social anthropology, and political 220 About the Contributors science at universities in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland, Poland, Lithuania, France, invited as a lecturer to five continents. Fieldwork in the Caucasus, Slovakia, Ghana, southern Africa, Papua New Guinea, the Azores, Czech Republic, Poland. Edited and co-edited dozens of books, among them The Early State (1978), The Study of the State (1981), Outwitting the State (1989), The Early Writings of Bronislaw Malinowski (1993), A Post-communist Millennium: The Struggles for Sociocultural Anthropology in Central and Eastern Europe (2002), Anthropology of Europe: Teaching and Research (2005), Postsocialist Europe: Anthropological Perspectives from Home (2009), Africanists on Africa: Current Issues (2010), Africa: Power and Powerlessness (2011), Actors in Contemporary African Politics (2013), Anthropology as Social Critique. Its Public Role in the Globalized World (2018), Mutual Impact: Conflict, Tensions and Cooperation in Opole Silesia (2018). 1992-1997 Ambassador of Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic to Lebanon. 2003-2013 Vice-President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. 2006 Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Céline Thiriot, Associate Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po Bordeaux, is a specialist in political transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has particularly worked on issues of democratization and demilitarization of power, comparing the process in five countries: Burkina Faso, Congo (Brazzaville), Ghana, Mali, and Togo. Her research focuses on the processes of consolidation (democratic or authoritarian) of posttransition regimes in sub-Saharan Africa, and more particularly on the institutionalization of new regimes: role and place of the armed forces in the new regimes, nature and the role of civil society, electoral processes, institutional or unconventional innovations in the management of social, political, and electoral conflicts. She has participated in several research projects on democratic transitions, Islam in the Sahel, elites, armed forces and conflicts, elections, and comparative politics. Thiriot was in charge of the Risk Management in Southern Countries course of the Master’s degree at Sciences Po Bordeaux between 2001 and 2011, and participates in the supervision of the Country Risk/Project Risk studies of the M2. In this perspective, her research focuses on the issue of political risk and political insecurity in Africa. Thiriot is also Director of LAM (UMR 5115 CNRS/Sciences Po Bordeaux) and Deputy Director of GIS Africa.