Africa Today articles from July 1997

Africa Today archives from July 1997

Does theory travel? Area Studies and Cultural Studies.
July 1, 1997... The crisis in Area Studies is the subject of much recent debate.(1) But what this crisis is, how to define its causes, and where to situate solutions are more often assumed than considered. I want to suggest that the crisis has at least three...

Unexamined consequences of academic globalism in African Studies.
July 1, 1997... A new academic globalism is eroding the Area Studies framework. As reflected in the last issue of Africa Today, this poses challenges for humanistic and social science research--including African Studies--in the United States. Debates among...

A future with a past: resurrecting the study of Africa in the post-Africanist era.
July 1, 1997... Our thesis may be simply stated: African Studies as it has been practiced in the United States for almost half a century is now grievously wounded.(1) Africanists' life support is being removed as the production of knowledge changes to suit a...

A research proposal funded by the Social Science Research Council: creating parenthood and childhood in Botswana in the time of AIDS.
July 1, 1997... Problem HIV/AIDS transforms generational relationships by placing heavy material and emotional burdens both on the sick and on those who act as caregivers. My project focuses on child fosterage in Gaborone, Botswana, at a time when the...

Malangali and the Cyberians: reflects on the Internet Living Swahili Dictionary.
July 1, 1997... Malangali, Tanzania, with no electricity, no telephones, not even a laptop computer, is not the sort of retreat where you would expect to write an article about the Internet. As I watch maize drying in the fields across the valley and listen to...

Kampala Women Getting By: Wellbeing in the Time of AIDS.
July 1, 1997... Sandra Wallman, (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996), x+246 pages, paper $17.95, cloth $39.95. This book provides a detailed analysis of women's struggles to maintain their own and their children's health in one low-income and densely...

Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic.
July 1, 1997... Melissa Leach and James Fairhead, (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), xviii + 354 pages, cloth $55.00, paper $19.95. The history of Africa, particularly as it relates to contemporary patterns of resource use, both calls for...

Politics and Corruption in Africa: A Case Study of Sierra Leone.
July 1, 1997... Sahr John Kpundeh, (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1995), xii + 248 pages, cloth $57.50, paper $32.50. Sahr John Kpundeh's Politics and Corruption in Africa and William Reno's Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone...

Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone.
July 1, 1997... William Reno, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xii + 229 pages. Sahr John Kpundeh's Politics and Corruption in Africa and William Reno's Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone approach the subject of political...