For far too long, the Western world viewed Africa as unmappable terrain—a repository for outsiders’ wildest imaginings. This problematic notion has had lingering effects not only on popular impressions of the region but also on the development of the academic study of Africa. Critical Terms for the Study of Africa considers the legacies that have shaped our understanding of the continent and its place within the conceptual grammar of contemporary world affairs. Written by a distinguished group of scholars, the essays compiled in this volume take stock of African studies today and look toward a future beyond its fraught intellectual and political past. Each essay discusses one of our most critical terms for talking about Africa, exploring the trajectory of its development while pushing its boundaries. Editors Gaurav Desai and Adeline Masquelier balance the choice of twenty-five terms between the expected and the unexpected, calling for nothing short of a new mapping of the scholarly field. The result is an essential reference that will challenge assumptions, stimulate lively debate, and make the past, present, and future of African Studies accessible to students and teachers alike.

African Studies, contrary to some accounts, is not a separate continent in the world of American higher education. Its intellectual borders touch those of economics, literature, history, philosophy, and art; its history is the story of the world, both ancient and modern. This is the clear conclusion of Africa and the Disciplines, a book that addresses the question: Why should Africa be studied in the American university? This question was put to distinguished scholars in the social sciences and humanities, prominent Africanists who are also leaders in their various disciplines. Their responses make a strong and enlightening case for the importance of research on Africa to the academy. Paul Collier's essay, for example, shows how studies of African economies have clarified our understanding of the small open economies, and contributed to the theory of repressed inflation and to a number of areas in microeconomics as well. Art historian Suzanne Blier uses the terms and concepts that her discipline has applied to Africa to analyze the habits of mind and social practice of her own field. Christopher L. Miller describes the confounding and enriching impact of Africa on European and American literary theory. Political scientist Richard Sklar outlines Africa's contributions to the study of political modernization, pluralism, and rational choice. These essays, together with others from scholars in history, anthropology, philosophy, and comparative literature, attest to the influence of African research throughout the curriculum. For many, knowledge from Africa seems distant and exotic. These powerful essays suggest the contrary: that such knowledge has shaped the way in which scholars in various disciplines understand their worlds. Eloquent testimony to Africa's necessary place in the mainstream of American education, this book should alter the academy's understanding of the significance of African research, its definition of core and periphery in human knowledge. "These essays are at once exceptionally thoughtful and remarkably comprehensive. Not only do they offer an unusually interesting overview of African studies; they are also striking for the depth and freshness of their insights. This is the sort of volume from which both seasoned regional experts and students stand to learn an enormous amount."—John Comaroff, University of Chicago "These essays provide an important perspective on the evolution of African studies and offer insights into what Africa can mean for the different humanistic and social science disciplines. Many show in ingenious and subtle ways the enormous potential that the study of Africa has for confounding the main tenets of established fields. One could only hope that the strictures expressed here would be taken to heart in the scholarly world."—Robert L. Tignor, Princeton University

Even as symbols of Africa permeate Western culture in the 1990s, centers for the academic study of Africa suffer from a steady erosion of institutional support and intellectual legitimacy. Out of One, Many Africas assesses the rising tide of discontent that has destabilized the conceptions, institutions, and communities dedicated to African studies. In vibrant detail, contributors from Africa, Europe, and North America lay out the multiple, contending histories and perspectives that inform African studies. They assess the reaction against the white-dominated consensus that has marked African studies since its inception in the 1950s and note the emergence of alternative approaches, energized in part by feminist and cultural studies. They examine African scholars' struggle against paradigms that have justified and covered up colonialism, militarism, and underdevelopment. They also consider such issues as how to bring black scholars on the continent and in the diaspora closer together on questions of intellectual freedom, accountability, and the democratization of information and knowledge production. By surveying the present predicament and the current grassroots impulse toward reconsidering the meaning of the continent, Out of One, Many Africas gives shape and momentum to a crucial dialogue aimed at transforming the study of Africa

Why is there so little industry in Africa? Over the past forty years, industry has moved from the developed to the developing world, yet Africa’s share of global manufacturing has fallen from about 3 percent in 1970 to less than 2 percent in 2014. Industry is important to low-income countries. It is good for economic growth, job creation, and poverty reduction. Made in Africa: Learning to Compete in Industry outlines a new strategy to help African industry compete in global markets. This book draws on case studies and econometric and qualitative research from Africa and emerging Asia to understand what drives firm-level competitiveness in low-income countries. The results show that while traditional concerns such as infrastructure, skills, and the regulatory environment are important, they alone will not be sufficient for Africa to industrialize. The book also addresses how industrialization strategies will need to adapt to the region’s growing resource abundance.

Based on long-term research in northern Chad, this book provides a unique account of mobility, wealth, and aspirations to political autonomy at the heart of the contemporary Sahara.

Medical research has been central to biomedicine in Africa for over a century, and Africa, along with other tropical areas, has been crucial to the development of medical science. At present, study populations in Africa participate in an increasing number of medical research projects and clinical trials, run by both public institutions and private companies. Global debates about the politics and ethics of this research are growing and local concerns are prompting calls for social studies of the “trial communities” produced by this scientific work. Drawing on rich, ethnographic and historiographic material, this volume represents the emergent field of anthropological inquiry that links Africanist ethnography to recent concerns with science, the state, and the culture of late capitalism in Africa.

Based on rich oral histories, this is an engaging study of citizenship construction and practice in Liberia, Africa's first black republic.

Why has Africa remained persistently poor over its recorded history? Has Africa always been poor? What has been the nature of Africa's poverty and how do we explain its origins? This volume takes a necessary interdisciplinary approach to these questions by bringing together perspectives from archaeology, linguistics, history, anthropology, political science, and economics. Several contributors note that Africa's development was at par with many areas of Europe in the first millennium of the Common Era. Why Africa fell behind is a key theme in this volume, with insights that should inform Africa's developmental strategies.

Telling the neglected history of decolonisation and violence in Burundi, Aidan Russell examines the political language of truth that drove extraordinary change, from democracy to genocide. By focusing on the dangerous border between Burundi and Rwanda, this study uncovers the complexity from which ethnic ideologies, side-lined before independence in 1962, became gradually all-consuming by 1972. Framed by the rhetoric and uncertainty of 'truth', Russell draws on both African and European language source material to demonstrate how values of authority and citizenship were tested and transformed across the first decade of Burundi's independence, and a post-colony created in the interactions between African peasants and politicians across the margins of their states. Culminating with a rare examination of the first postcolonial genocide on the African continent, a so-called 'forgotten genocide' on the world stage, Russell reveals how the postcolonial order of central Africa came into being.