There is an increasing need of the government to know more about Africa. Trying to look ahead, many of us can see, for example, continued instability on the continent, with weak, fragile states grappling with the problems of achieving national cohesion. As we confront the problems arising from this instability, the gaps in our knowledge and understanding are vast and our need to know will probably continue to be much greater than our capacity to find the answers.

The African Studies Association's forthcoming book The African World: A Survey of Social Research has symbolic as well as substantive value for FAR insofar as it demonstrates how a group with widely diversified disciplines, interests, and missions can devise effective channels of communication to share a clearer understanding of each participant's special problems and objectives. The ASA asked the specialists in each of the 18 disciplines represented in this book to discuss, in relatively simple language and for the benefit of those in other disciplines, the problems they study in Africa, their methods, successes, and major failures.