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The New Modernization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2019

Extract

In the latter 1940s, a growing number of American intellectuals, including scholars in various academic disciplines, were attracted to the study of Africa by two powerful incentives. First, African nationalism created a new horizon for the advancement of democracy, the twentieth century's preeminent political ideal. Second, many intellectuals were anxious to reconstruct the prevailing theories of society so that they would fairly represent the aspirations and problems of people everywhere on earth. From this perspective, due regard for the contributions of Africa was deemed to be a scientific, as well as a moral, imperative. These goals, democracy and universalism, were embraced and combined by the theorists of modernization.

Type
African Studies; Past, Present and Future
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1995

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References

Notes

1 Whitaker, C.S., “A Coda on Afrocentricity,” in Sklar, Richard L. and Whitaker, C.S., African Politics and Problems in Development, Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner, 1991, pp. 357-91.Google Scholar

2 Sklar, Richard L., “Social Class and Political Action in Africa: the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat,” in Apter, David E. and Rosberg, Carl G., eds., Political Development and the New Realism in Sub-Saharan Africa, Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1994, pp. 117-41.Google Scholar

3 Young, Crawford, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976 Google Scholar; Young, Crawford, “Evolving Modes of Consciousness and Ethnicity,” in Apter, David E. and Rosberg, Carl G., eds., Political Development and the New Realism in Sub-Saharan Africa, Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1994, pp. 6186.Google Scholar