From the Editors

Abstract

From the Editors Ralph Faulkingham and Mitzi Goheen We note with considerable sadness that this issue marks the last one where Catharine Newbury and David Newbury edit the book reviews. When they began work on the book review section in June 2006, they aspired to include more book review essays, to publish more book reviews—and to publish them in a more timely fashion—and to widen the circle of those invited to review books. And they succeeded far more than what any of us thought was possible. Beginning with the April 2007 issue, they have prepared reviews for ten issues. In these ten issues they have edited 27 review essays, 361 book reviews, and one review symposium. Most book reviews cover a single book, but several took on two books. The review essays, in our estimation, provide a distinct service to scholars as state-of-the-art articles, where the review essay author uses the foundation of several books to develop comparatively one or more distinct themes. See, for example, in this issue Brooke Schoepf's magisterial book review essay on recent works on HIV/ AIDS in Africa. Cathy and David initiated the review symposium that appeared in the December 2008 issue where they invited five senior scholars (Johannes Fabian, Peter Geschiere, Gerrie ter Haar, Filip De Boeck, and Misty Bastian) to assess the significance, from their own areal and disciplinary perspectives, of Harry G. West's remarkable book Ethnographic Sorcery (Chicago University Press, 2007). In the book review editors' note that begins this symposium, the Newburys note that, By considering elements of his field experience, West helps illuminate the nature of research in Africa and the production of "knowledge" on Africa. By framing his inquiry within the broader development of anthropological literature, he provides a review of the conceptual field relating to "sorcery" in African societies. And from his encounters with the people of the Muedan plateau he develops a commentary on the anthropological enterprise itself. The people of northern Mozambique see ethnographic analysis as a hidden process with potentially enormous power over their lives—as an alternative universe outside of their immediate control; within this vision, West argues, ethnography can be seen as a form of sorcery of its own. (135) [End Page c4] The book and the reviews provide all Africanists, whether Africans or non-Africans, ethnographers and non-ethnographers, with a challenging and unsettling view of the power of scholarship to fix, arrest, and/or to distort emergent social processes. Cathy and David, with their wealth of experience as scholars, authors, teachers, and administrators, brought their abundant talents and commitments to African studies to bear as book review editors, not only in eliciting and editing the book reviews, but also in acting as partners and interlocutors with us in finding ways to expand the reach of the African Studies Review and to conceptualize a new vision for the journal that reflects changes in the disciplines it serves. They are anxious to move on with their own important scholarly projects, and from the bottom of our hearts, we thank them for the extraordinary legacy they have left for the ASR, its readers, and for the African Studies Association. [End Page c5] Copyright © 2010 African Studies Association