This essay explores ground common to ecology and politics. It addresses the question to what extent and in what ways are ecological ideas political ideas. The discussion, divided into five man sections, endeavors to steer a course between the pitfalls of environmental determinism on the one hand and economic reductionism on the other.

The first section deals with the link between population processes and land use. Explanations stressing population increase as the driving force behind agricultural change are contrasted with arguments in which demographic fluctuations are treated as responses to economic imperatives. An example of the second kind of approach is Meillassoux's attempt to reconstruct the demographic dynamic of a precapitalist, lineage, mode of production. This is but one of a number of attempts to construct models of “natural economy” as starting points for discussions of the penetration of African agriculture by capitalism. Against the assumptions on which such models are based it is argued here, and in later sections of the paper, that the demographic and ecological processes subsumed under the category “natural economy” (or alternatively, “precapitalist subsistence production”) are more plausibly viewed as products of capitalism and colonialism. An example from southern Nigeria in the early colonial period is used to suggest that the kind of evidence on which Meillassoux's reconstruction is based is a complex ideological by-product of factional politics in an economy dominated by merchant capital.

The second section of the paper focuses on the topic of the ecology of disease in Africa. Special attention is paid to John Ford's (1971) work on the ecology of trypanosomiasis. Critical of colonial scientific orthodoxy, and of colonialism itself (properly treated as a factor in the spread of sleeping sickness in Africa in the twentieth century), Ford's book has received some attention from Africanists in the social sciences and humanities. It is probably fair to say, however, that the originality of the book's ecological argument has yet to have its full impact on such readers. This is the justification for substantial summary of one of Ford's case studies. The significance of this case study is that is illustrates the ecological complexity characteristic of trypanosomiasis, and of a number of other African epidemic diseases, and the importance of local knowledge and initiative in adapting to such diseases.

One of the more charming and usually harmless attributes of humankind is our propensity to impute mystical significance to intrinsically ordinary events. Thus it is that, in regularly recurrent rites, particular numbers in the unending sequence acquire singular symbolic prominence: 10, 25, 50, 100. Why these numbers and not others?

No ready answer comes to mind. Certainly none was sought by the remarkably energetic Program Committee which, working with our Howard University hosts, organized with superb skill the 25th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association. “XXV” connoted a silver anniversary, a rite de passage which commanded observation.

Commemorate, then, but how? On due reflection, the Program Committee struck upon the formula of a review and inventory of Africanist scholarship during the quarter century which has elapseed since the birth of the Association. What had been the major intellectual trends in the various fields of Africanist scholarship? How had the major paradigms which have shaped conceptual discourse evolved over these years?

Early in the life of the Association, a comprehensive survey of Africanist scholarship had been undertaken, under the direction of Robert Lystad (published as The African World, Praeger, 1965). The preliminary inventory, organized by academic discipline, serves as a valuable benchmark in intellectual history. To reread its useful essays today is to be reminded of the magnitude of the changes in problematic and perspective since that time.

This paper attempts to explain the manner in which British colonial officials perceived the bases of authority of their subordinate African officials, whom they called chiefs, during the years of colonial rule in Uganda. Many studies have shown how the British used a hierarchy of appointed Africans to carry out day-to-day administration (early studies include Apter, 1961; Beattie, 1971; Burke, 1964; Denoon, 1968; Fallers, 1965; Low and Pratt, 1970; Richards, 1960). The degree of continuity between this imposed colonial structure and precolonial political systems differed greatly from one part of the Protectorate to another, the disjunction being greatest where people had formerly organized their affairs without rulers. The present study focuses on British attitudes as revealed in two such areas of extreme disjunction. Other scholars have noted in passing that officials tended to assume that the wide powers wielded by these appointed chiefs were based on custom, even in formerly acephalous areas. Pratt (1965: 489) refers to this assumption as “a happy and convenient fiction” while Tosh (1978: 246) speaks of self-deception and “the confusion which bedevilled the official mind.” Research among retired officials who had served in the Protectorate administration revealed a widespread perception of these appointed chiefs as in some sense representative of the Africans they ruled (Gartrell, 1979). Some of those interviewed maintained that representativity derived from continuity with precolonial chiefly roles involving mystical ties between chiefs and people. They believed that precolonial chiefs had ruled even in areas where research has found no such precolonial political roles.

As the African Studies Association celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary, it is a good time to look back at the circumstances of its founding in 1957, and to acknowledge the key role played by the Carnegie Corporation and, in particular, by its President, Dr. Alan Pifer, in facilitating that event. For the Corporation, this was only one of a long series of constructive activities related to Africa, dating back to 1926. For American scholars concerned with that continent, the concept of an American African Studies Association was at first problematic, but in practice it has created new and fruitful opportunities for interaction with colleagues at home and abroad, stimulating the growth and maturity of African studies.

Discussions by an ad hoc committee on the potentialities of an American scholarly body concerned with the study of Africa took place intermittently in Alan Pifer's office from 1955 on. The group involved in these discussions was composed at various times of William Brown, Gwendolen Carter, Gray Cowan, William Hance, Ruth Sloan, Franklin Frazier, and George Carpenter. Pifer felt strongly that there should be a scholarly association concerned with Africa that would be free of government influences such as inevitably were affecting the African-American Institute because of its almost complete dependence on government agencies for support. The ad hoc committee ultimately agreed that it would be appropriate to call a meeting of scholars concerned with Africa in order to decide whether or not there was substantial support for such an association.

It was in the name of the ad hoc committee that the invitations went out to approximately thirty-six individuals from scholarly and other fields to attend what was called The African Studies Association Conference to be held at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York from March 22–24, 1957. The participants were selected with a view to geographical and disciplinary distribution as well as their reputation as Africanists. Their function was to decide whether or not an organization should be formed to promote the serious study of Africa. The cost of the conference was met by a discretionary grant of $6,500 from the Carnegie Corporation, but the management of the conference was left entirely in the hands of the conferees.

Despite the increasing effort of Africanist scholars, and particularly historians, to decolonize African history by focusing greater attention on the role of Africans than Europeans in the unfolding of African history, historical interest in the influence of Europeans in Africa remains. This is perhaps reflected in the continuing appearance of studies devoted to European activities in Africa. However, there are those who, perhaps justifiably, question the need or value for such studies, given the trend in African studies today to de-emphasize imperial history and to accent “real” African history (Ranger, 1979; Bennett, 1981). Yet there are others who argue, rather persuasively, that studies of European activities in Africa should still be encouraged either because we do not as yet know all that we need to know about Europeans in Africa (Ranger and Weller, 1975), or because we now have ample data with which to reconsider aspects of European presence in Africa (Hopkins, 1976). Indeed, seen from this perspective of revisionist historiography, some of the recent studies of Europeans in Africa not only enhance our knowledge of the dynamics of African and European interaction but also enable us to either reject or modify many of the familiar assumptions and theories about Europeans in Africa (Hopkins, 1976; Ranger, 1979; Igbafe, 1979; Newbury, 1978).

It is indeed against this background of revisionist historiography that this present essay is attempted. It seeks, on the one hand, to reconsider the popular image of European colonial administrators as men who were characteristically genial, kindhearted, and unselfishly dedicated to the welfare of their African wards (Burns, 1949; Heussler, 1963; Bradley, 1966; Gann and Duignan, 1978).

Reading Paul Richards's excellent paper and, most particularly, the set of international commentaries has been something of a salutary experience and, as I have now discovered, has made my task wholly unenviable. There is, of course, something here for everyone as one might anticipate in any state of the art paper of this scope. The respondents' remarks alone cover a huge intellectual terrain from epistemology to animal traction, from bibliographic style to Shakespearean metaphor, and a good deal more. It is difficult to know what to make of all this let alone to weave these heterogeneous threads into a pleasing, coherent tapestry. Yet, beneath this patina of diversity, lie much more deep seated interpretative and theoretical differences that are intriguing in their own right. For example, Richards's plea for the “honest face” of particularism in relation to what he posits as a congenital drift toward arid and sterile global abstractions and grand universal theory was lent wildly different interpretations by his erstwhile critics. For some this was a glorious new mandate to return to Gluckman and some forms of nineteenth century anthropology; for others it was a disastrous slide into the primal cess-poll of crude empiricism, Boasian salmon recipes, and rampant particularism. For others it represented a healthy appraisal of “the great range of specificities that one should be prepared to confront within a (Marxist) framework” (Henry Bernstein). And all this is wrapped in the almost inevitable empirical provincialism of “my village” or “my region” which provide the basis of individual scepticism and conceptual disproof. Because this is the case, my remarks make no pretense to be either a grand synthesis of highly contradictory contributions or a Herculean effort to locate a "common ground" as some of the comments at the panel discussion opined. In my opinion neither are possible.

I am often asked to explain what possessed me, a white American political scientist, to undertake African studies. Usually, I reflect upon my state of mind in the mid-1950s and mention the allure of a new horizon for democracy, limned by the doctrine of self-determination for subject peoples. Even then, however, realists warned that democracy in Africa, as in Asia, would bleed and die on the altars of national consolidation and social reconstruction. But democracy dies hard. Its vital force is the accountability of rulers to their subjects. Democracy stirs and wakens from the deepest slumber whenever the principle of accountability is asserted by members of a community or conceded by those who rule. Democracy cannot be destroyed by a coup d'etat; it will survive every legal assault upon political liberty. The true executioner of democracy has neither sword nor scepter, but a baneful idea. Ironically, the deadly agent is an idea about freedom.

In Africa today, freedom from want is a universal goal. Millions of lives are blighted by the effects of poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, untended illness, and inadequate education. In all countries, political leaders dedicate themselves to the cause of economic and social development. Most leaders also claim to respect the principle of accountability to the people. However, the imperatives of development are far more demanding than the claims of democracy. Appalled by the human condition and waste of resources in Africa and other nonindustrial regions, many intellectuals proclaim the validity of an antidemocratic idea, to which the term “developmental dictatorship” is aptly applied.

In 1967, with the adoption of the Arusha Declaration, the government of Tanzania formally committed itself to a development path based on socialism and self-reliance. Major changes were made in national development objectives and the development strategy. At the outset the new policies “revolved around the inhibition of widening income differentials, the discouragement of the growth of a self-serving elite, and the seizure of control of major sectors of the economy” (Bienefeld, 1975: 249). In part, increased concern over the growth of income inequality between urban wage employees and the rural masses as well as among high-salary and low-wage urban employees themselves precipitated the Arusha Declaration. In light of this, a major objective of post-Arusha income policy was to ensure relatively equal personal consumption capacity between households and regions as well as between urban and rural areas.

The focus of this paper is the wage sector, where the government has directed its efforts toward reducing income inequality between the various groups of wage-and salary-earners. The period of analysis is 1968-80. The paper examines the major instruments of income policy used to reduce income inequality in the wage sector, the effect income policy variables have on real earnings of various income groups, and the resulting trends of real disposable earnings. In order to overcome data limitations and to facilitate the analysis, four representative income groups are selected. The use of these representative income groups permits an analysis of the effects that an accelerated rate of inflation, wage adjustments, and the increased progressivity in personal income tax rates have had on real disposable earnings of various groups in the income stratum.

The popular view of military activities in Africa is one of a continent gripped by political chaos, uncontrolled conflict, and in the vise of an arms race. The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency recently reported that military expenditures among African countries rose 154 percent in the decade 1969-1978. To the inexperienced observer it appears that the African peoples have descended into a Hobbesian abyss, and that misguided governments are squandering their national resources on armaments rather than on programs for human development.

This article suggests otherwise: there are heartening signs amid disheartening news. Empirical evidence indicates that most African countries are engaged neither in conflict with neighboring states, nor in an arms race; indeed, there emerges, for whatever reasons, a pattern of military restraint. This is not to deny the presence of conflict in Africa. Fifty-three sovereign and semi-sovereign newly emerging states are not likely to coexist without contention, and this compounded by extraordinary border problems, the legacy of a century of conflict and compromise among the colonial powers. Rather, it is suggested here that while some African states may be squandering some national resources on armaments, many are not.

There must be reasons why many African states, newly emerging into an imperfect, often hostile world, renounce large security systems. It appears that some form of arms limitation is functioning among many African states and that rapid growth of armaments is confined to a few countries.

Probably no two of the scholarly works punctuating the past quarter century better exemplify the intellectual voyage that Africanist political scientists have taken than do Thomas Hodgkin's pioneering classic, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (1956), and Crawford Young's recent admirable comparative study of political economy in Ideology and Development in Africa (1982). These two broadly comparative works reflect the major shift from the study of the processes of African self-assertion and decolonization–the quest for and acquisition of state power–which characterized the concerns of the first decade of that period, to the study of how that power is maintained and in whose interest and with what effectiveness it is exercised, foci which have increasingly become the preoccupations of the last decade.

The intention here is to examine some of the features of this intellectual trek–from first generation conventional studies of nationalism, elections, and constitutions to the current preoccupation with the state, class, and political economy–not by a travelogue of the journey, but by focusing upon an enduring issue, namely, the antinomy of universalism vs. relativism. The antinomy exists at two levels. The first is that of the individual scholarly endeavor and product; namely, does the product reflect (a) a generalizing and scientific mode of inquiry in which the scholar's intent and perspective is to identify uniformities and regularities–as well as differences–through systematic comparison? In short, is it nomothetic? Or is it (b), a mode that is idiographic, i.e., that aims to describe and to understand a phenomenon in all its configurative, situational, and cultural-historical particularity and uniqueness? The antinomy at the second and obviously related level concerns the conceptualization of the discipline by a particular set of practitioners as either (a) a social scientific endeavor aimed at generalization and universality, or (b) an intellectual vocation which is essentially descriptive and interpretive of political phenomena that are inherently historically and culturally relative to a particular human group or situation (cf. Fallers, 1968: 576; Pye, 1975: 6).

Nigerian educational administrators find themselves engulfed by a tidal wave of swiftly swelling pupil enrollment. The rapid rate of growth poses the challenging question of how much time is left for solutions. Niger State is one example. In April 1976, 244 primary schools offered instruction to 15,796 pupils. Four months later, the state needed 931 primary schools for an additional 63,384 pupils: a growth rate of almost 400 percent. In 1978 there were 1,091 primary schools to serve 179,861 children. This amounted to a real growth of over 1000 percent in two years. This experience was repeated across a number of states. The comparison of enrollment in the first year of primary school between 1975/76 and 1976/77 school years, for example, shows a percentage increase of 557 percent in Niger, 491 percent in Kano, 442 percent in Kaduna, 263 percent in Benue. The smallest increase was 11 percent in Gongola State. Parallel to the pupil enrollment was the percentage increase of the number of primary schools between 1975/76 and 1976/77, 301.3 percent in Niger, 227.1 percent in Kano, 196.4 percent in Kaduno, 142.9 percent in Benue. The smallest increase reported was in Imo State, 1.5 percent.

This recent explosion in Nigerian primary school enrollment was the direct result of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) scheme launched in September 1976. It marked the dawn of an educational revolution with pervasive social and economic implications (Bray, 1981). The political expectations were that universal free primary education would enable the nation to overcome the hurdles caused by unbalanced educational and economic development which resulted in southern dominance and educational imbalances of urban opportunities over the rural, and the preponderance of male over female enrollment in schools.

The African Studies Association (ASA) was born in a blaze of anthropological glory with Melville Herskovits, the celebrated anthropologist and “universally recognized dean of American Africanists in the United States” (Greenberg, 1963: 3) as its Founder President in 1957. In all, six ASA presidents have been anthropologists, a number exceeded only by political science. Of the forty-eight founding Fellows, ten were anthropologists, eight were political scientists, and four were geographers, while history, economics, and sociology had three each. This numerical predominance of anthropological membership continued until 1963 when political science equalized and then drew ahead. Other possible indicators, such as membership of the Executive Board, winners of the Herskovits prize, recipients of travel awards, and numbers of Ph.D. dissertations, are in conformity with this general picture of early anthropological prominence and later eclipse. When the ASA commissioned a comprehensive survey of African research (The African World, published in 1965), the editor (Lystad) was an anthropologist and over one-third of the chapters were by anthropologists. It was the most ambitious single publication ever produced by the ASA.

Such quantitative indicators are crude, and we must ask what lies behind them. There are some problems in the fact that the disciplines are not clear cut. This paper includes public administration with political science and archaeology with anthropology. Some linguists and ethnomusicologists, especially in the early period, definitely identified themselves as anthropologists, whereas at the present time most would not. Some anthropologists have acquired the identity of sociologists for circumstantial reasons. Generally speaking, social anthropologists who have taught in African universities from the 1950s until now have had to do so in departments of sociology and frequently as heads of such departments.

In November 1978 a witch-purge crusade led by Edem Edet Akpan (alias Akpan Ekwong) took place among the Ibibio people of the Cross River State in Nigeria. Edem claimed that all the evils which afflicted the Ibibio were attributable to the malevolent forces of witches and that he possessed supernatural powers to detect witches. Assisted by a few lieutenants, Edem began his crusade to eradicate witches and witchcraft. He would send messengers to a village to inform its residents that on a certain day of the week all were to assemble at the public square. Members of the village were forbidden to leave, and letters were sent out to those who were already out to return.

On the appointed day Edem or one of his lieutenants would arrive and go around picking out those he believed were witches. The suspects had their hands tied together and red pepper (which the villagers referred to as powder) sprayed all over their bodies and into their eyes, ears, and noses. In addition, large quantities of black ants were poured on the suspected witches. Under agonizing pain, they were asked to confess all those they had killed, those whose money or other property they had bewitched, their rank in the witch society, and so on. They were untied after they confessed. There were others, not selected by the crusaders, who voluntarily went to the village council to confess that they were witches and paid the fine stipulated for them. In this way they were able to avoid the ordeal meted out to those accused of witchcraft by the crusaders.

Scholars in African studies often seem to believe that they are lonely, marginal, and misunderstood. They complain frequently about the ignorance and indifference of the public, the media, and the politicians. Whether their complaints are justified or not, their sense of isolation may make them unusually sensitive to questions of professional identity and purpose–a sensitivity sharpened by the facts of Africa's past and present and the emotions both arouse.

These problems are not unique to scholars in African studies. Others in area studies experience them, as do all the millions whose positions in the eyes of the public are unpopular, suspect, or simply insignificant. The symptoms of those in love-starved professions are well known: high suicide rates, chronic introspection, incessant organizational busy-work, and an obsession with titles and qualifications. Yet sociologists (perhaps for fear of infection) have not given much attention to the professional pathology of academia. The applied social sciences, however, are another matter. An especially intriguing case for our present purpose is that of the American planning profession as described by Martin Rein (1972: 426ff). The planners, Rein noted, underwent an extended legitimacy crisis in the course of which they cast about for a formula which would establish their identity, justify their existence, and secure them a clientele. Eventually four such formulas (summarized as expertise, bureaucratic position, consumer preference, and professional values) were defined. Each formula contained answers to such questions as: Whom or what do I serve? What service do I provide? Why is that service useful (and better than that offered by rivals)? And, how should the service be performed and evaluated?

The past three decades have witnessed far-reaching changes and a revolution of sorts both in the Third World countries and in the theoretical frameworks employed in the study of development and underdevelopment. The methodological achievements which have accompanied these theoretical innovations have in many respects approximated the kind of scientific transformations in the natural sciences that Kuhn (1970) describes as the structure of scientific revolutions. Discussing the history of scientific discovery Kuhn (1970: 52-65) draws attention to the distinction between normal science and scientific revolutions. He specifically emphasizes the critical importance of the discovery of anomalous data and how the “awareness of [such an] anomaly, the gradual and simultaneous emergence of both observational and conceptual recognition” of the inadequacies of the currently dominant paradigm in dealing with the existing problems, prepare the ground for its overthrow or suppression.

Until the late 1960s problems of development in the Third World were characteristically examined from the perspective of the dominant paradigm: the modernization theory. Classical modernization theory placed central consideration on the internal conditions of the state: institutional structures, culture, attitudes, and value systems. In the early 1970s, the crises and contradictions which surrounded modernization theory reached an alarming proportion and created the “necessary precondition for the emergence of novel theories” (Kuhn, 1970: 77). Aside from the increasing frustration and general dissatisfaction of underdeveloped countries with “growth without development” (Clower et al., 1966), it was clear that the existing international economic system had failed to spread the benefits of world economic prosperity between the developed and underdeveloped countries.

Studies on African sculpture serve as point of reference in this paper. Since a full analysis of African sculpture cannot easily be separated from its sociological, technological, and ideational contexts, and since sculpture itself presents only one aspect of wide-ranging but ill-defined artistic activities and aesthetic concepts, however, these other features obviously also need mention.

There is no attempt to review the recent work of individual scholars or to characterize particular models of approach or schools of thought; this would require a badly needed but much longer and circumstantial study. Rather the paper is limited to some general observations about the kinds of works students of African art have produced and some of the needs that seem to emerge from this inventory.

In the last twenty-five years a large quantity of studies on African art, written in English and several other European languages, have been published by ever-increasing numbers of anthropologists, art historians, critics, artists, musicologists, connoisseurs, collectors, and dealers. There are many reasons to be satisfied with the achievements. Students of African art now have specialized associations and exclusive journals besides the many journals that have always been receptive to articles on African art. There is now a book series specifically on African art (Indiana University Press, Traditional Arts of Africa) in addition to many other serials and museum publications that regularly include relevant inventories, surveys, and stylistic and cultural analyses. Specialists on African art have achieved tenured positions not only in museums but also in anthropology, art, and history of art departments. There is an endless succession of exhibitions, and major art museums have deigned to organize some of them. In brief, there is an international boom of African art studies. After decades of relative obscurity and neglect, the new importance of the field has now led to a kind of euphoria and complacency among many specialists. This is evidenced, for example, in book reviews, which are either excessively eulogistic or severe and overcritical, and also in the proliferation of generalizations and in the widespread acceptance of assumptions and working hypotheses as proven facts.