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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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?

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.

To a large extent the independence movement in Africa was a movement toward westernization. If political independence had any purpose beyond its own self, African political leaders stated that it was meant to bring the fruits of economic growth and modernization, long stinted under colonial controls. All this seemed appropriate enough. Had not the West made gigantic strides, particularly in science and technology, advances that had brought steadily rising living standards, better health, housing and schools, and greater leisure with which to enjoy the many new material advantages of life? During the colonial era and before, Europeans had unceasingly assured Africans that their own culture was barbaric and dated, that was best to emulate the European as quickly as possible, to get on with the business of joining the modern world. Africans seemed to agree. At independence governments moved forward at full pace to mechanize their agriculture, to establish modern industries, to introduce all the manifestations of high technology. Among the planners and the politicians there seemed to be little hesitation. All eyes were on the future and the model was the West.

Africa is no monolith, however. Africans may have glimpsed a new and better life in the image of a modernized, western-oriented society, but an age-old civilization still survived, still offered its people much that was satisfying and much that worked. There were Africans who recognized this fact, who were concerned that too rapid and unreflective an adoption of foreign ways might lead to complications, unforeseen and dangerous. They did not wish to turn their backs on the West but they did warn that African needs and conditions should always be given first priority.

To run through the chronological repertory of works of African philosophy for the period 1950–1980 (Mudimbe, 1982a; Smet, 1978b), one fact strikes the eye immediately: the large number of books of “philosophy” published in Central Africa, mainly in Zaire. This quantity is due to the influence of Catholic missionaries during the colonial era. In the terms of the 1906 Convention between the Holy See and the Congro Free State they had a quasi monopoly in education. And also, at a very early stage, they had developed an elaborate structure of religious education leading to “major seminaries” in which candidates to the priesthood were introduced to Thomist philosophy before they undertook studies in theology.

In this century the first Africans to publish works claiming to be philosophical have been churchmen: Kagame (1956), Makarakiza (1959), Lufuluabo (1964), and Mulago (1965). They are spiritually disciples of Placide Tempels, refer to and use his Bantu Philosophy (1945). Their status and the special order of their mission have prepared them to receive sympathetically the basic hypotheses of Tempels as well as they way he advocated them. This submission to one perspective has, however, never meant a mere repetition of Tempels' ideas, as shown by Kagame's reservation (1956) and the widening of his investigation (1976).

I wish to center my analysis less on the evolution of the so-called major paradigms dealing with change in Africa then with the evolution of the role of the specialized student of change in Africa. One cannot dissociate the two, and I do not intend to do so. But in discussions on theorizing, there occurs too often a neglect of the theorizers, which in turn may lead to misinterpretations of what is and was going on.

As we all know, before circa 1950 the study of Africa was confined very largely to the domain of anthropology. True, there were some partial exceptions. In the case of South Africa, the large white population and the relative importance of its participation in the world-economy meant that some economists studied it as well. And in the case of North Africa, what might be called “Islamics” also played a role.

Nonetheless, anthropology dominated the scene. The fact that the study of Africa was thus limited of course reflected the division of intellectual labour that had been carved out in the late nineteenth century, among whose features was the division of the world into three geographical zones: modern European and European-settler states, which were studied by economists, historians, political scientists, and sociologists; non-Western areas with a long-standing written culture and preferable a so-called “world religion,” which were studied by so-called Orientalists; and backward peoples, which were studied by anthropologists.

The study of African technological history cannot bt pursued without first considering two fundamental problems. The most fundamental of all is the relationship between technology and the broader social process. It is quite obvious that the two are linked but it is not at all clear, even in a study focused on technology, where to begin the explanation of this relationship. Second, there is the more specific question of African “backwardness”: why are certain kinds of technology which spread throughout Europe and Asia not found south of the Sahara before the colonial era? How can we relate this apparent lag to changes which did take place in African technology? What are the consequences of such a technological differential for the eventual integration of Africa into economic and political systems which include these external societies.

In dealing with the first problem, Africanists can draw upon the practice and debate within the well-established sub-discipline of European and American technological history. Within this work (as well as some of the more general writings on African technological history) three approaches to the relationship between technology and society have been developed: an internalist approach which studies technology in isolation from society; a technological determinist approach which uses certain inventions or innovations to explain major social changes; and a dialectical approach which explains technological and social changes as mutually interacting.

The African Studies Association has presented its Herskovits Award for “an outstanding study on Africa” published during the previous academic year since 1965. Although 1983 does not, therefore, mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of this award or even the twenty-fifth winner (due to several multiple awards, a total of twenty-two have been given), it seems, nevertheless, like an appropriate moment to look back over the previous awards and take stock of their character and significance.

What follows will not provide a major critical evaluation of either the individual books which have received the Herskovits Award nor of the process by which they were chosen. Such an effort would require more serious reading of these books and other works published in the same fields and years than has been undertaken here. Moreover, it would require some investigation of the scholars who served on the various Herskovits Award committees and possibly an inquiry into the substance of their proceedings. If the likely results of such a study were worth the labor demanded, it is not clear that this Review, and particularly an issue celebrating a major date in the history of its parent organization, is the appropriate forum. However, for some future editors of “African Studies Revised” or whatever reincarnation of the late 1960s may eventually strike us, this account of the Herskovits Awards should at least provide a base of useful information.