Competing Methods for Teaching and Researching Africa: Interdisciplinarity and the Field of African Studies

Abstract

African Studies has evolved as an academic initiative dealing with research and scholarship on the cultures and societies of Africa. Many academic programs focusing on African Studies emerged in the 1960s on the heels of the first wave of African independence movements. Over time, African Studies has expanded to include a wide range of approaches to various disciplines, including history, anthropology, political science, sociology, economics, linguistics, religion and law, among others. Much debate has surrounded the questions of whether African Studies is interdisciplinary in nature or whether it should be considered an academic field in itself, and whether to adopt a Pan-African approach to the discipline to include North Africa in addition to Sub-Saharan cases, as North Africa often is studied through the lens of Islam. This article examines the existing competing methods for teaching and researching Africa and the development and challenges facing African Studies today. This article analyzes the motivations and driving factors that have shaped the emergence of African Studies. What reasons are there for a shift from an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Africa? Has opposition to the creation of a regional academic field of study dealing with Africa indicated underlying racial and political tensions within academia? The term area studies, under which African Studies is often categorized, generally refers to the study of a particular group by an outside “other.” Does this imply a notion that the study of Africa by outside scholars is a form of cultural imperialism?