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26 - The Social Sciences in Africa

from PART III - THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Owen Sichone
Edited by
Theodore M. Porter  and
Dorothy Ross
Theodore M. Porter
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Dorothy Ross
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Summary

Since European explorers first began studying Africa, the continent has served as a testing ground for theories central to the development of science generally and of social theory in particular. Research conducted by sociocultural anthropologists, economists, and political scientists in Africa has generated concepts and theories of great importance to the disciplines. The impact of the social sciences on Africa has been equally far-reaching. Policy makers and development planners have tried to employ the social sciences as a means of bringing about social transformation since the colonial days. The development of the social science disciplines by Africans – the subject of this chapter – has been crucially shaped by all these efforts.

Writers on the social sciences in Africa can be divided into two polemical camps. The first is made up of Afrocentric scholars who are preoccupied with correcting unequal power relations in knowledge production. They try to show that there are other ways of knowing than those taught by conventional science. They also try to expose the exclusion of African knowledge systems from university curricula and the history of science, as well as the marginalization of African scholarship in the global academic community. The other side downplays the significance of these power relations and advocates a universal system of scientific knowledge production, one that includes an African role. Lacking a common language, the two camps effectively talk at cross purposes and are engaged in polemical nondialogue. Rather than taking a position in this debate, I will discuss features of the social sciences in Africa that both sides must take into account.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 466 - 481
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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