Research Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities in Sudan, Ethiopia, South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland (A Report to the Research Liaison Committee of the African Studies Association)

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Lystad
1968 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Vernon McKay

The formulation of valid generalizations about the climate for research in the social sciences and humanities in eastern Africa is a perplexing task. When one thinks one has reached a useful generalization, one is likely to be confronted with conflicting evidence. Moreover, changes are occurring with increasing frequency. In Zambia, for example, certain kinds of research especially important for political scientists were banned in July, 1967. Two main conclusions may nonetheless be drawn from my 175 interviews in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and the United Kingdom on behalf of the Research Liaison Committee of the African Studies Association. It was encouraging to find many informants, both African and expatriate and in both government and academic circles, who emphasized the need for more research, especially for studies geared at least in part to help African governments in their economic, social, and educational development planning. Foreign scholars who comply with the established research procedures and behave with tact and common sense are still welcome throughout the area. However, this optimistic judgment must be qualified by a less favorable conclusion. The evidence indicates that the research climate is deteriorating in certain respects. In particular, the new clearance procedures, which often cause months of uneconomic delay, will probably not only become somewhat more restrictive in countries that already have them, but will probably be adopted in other countries as well.


1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (02) ◽  
pp. 111-130
Author(s):  
Robert A. Lystad

With rare and only partial exceptions, research and teaching institutions and individual scholars in these countries welcome the prospect of an increase in the frequency, range, and quality of research by American students of Africa and of greater coordination between them and scholars in Africa. Each government in principle also welcomes researchers who are intellectually, personally, and politically respected and whose projects are thought to be broadly relevant, or at least not antithetical to, the needs of the society. Despite the resemblance among countries in these general respects, each presents a unique cluster of opportunities, research settings, and problems which will be discussed in this report. The information for this study was collected over a period of six weeks during the summer of 1968. Periods of one week were spent in Khartoum and Addis Ababa and of four weeks in South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland. Twenty-three interviews were conducted in Khartoum, twenty-two in Addis Ababa, and fifty-five in southern Africa, including thirteen in Lesotho and Swaziland. Eight of the eleven universities and three of the five university colleges in South Africa were visited. 150 people participated in the interviews. Of these eighty percent were in academic occupation such as university teachers/researchers or administrators, and twenty percent were in government posts (including a few officers in American embassies or consulates), international organizations, or private organizations engaged in or concerned with research.


1993 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 343-362
Author(s):  
Gilbert M. Khadiagala

This article provides two samples of interdisciplinary courses in African studies drawing primarily from available African sources. Its main premise is that students and teachers of African studies could benefit from integrating materials from both the social sciences and humanities. Comparative and thematic, these courses are aimed at facilitating the enhancement of the course offerings in liberal arts curriculum.


2018 ◽  
Vol 114 (7/8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Neo Molotja ◽  
Gerard Ralphs

Expenditure on research and experimental development in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in South Africa has almost doubled over the past decade. However, fine-grained analysis of patterns of Research and Development expenditure in SSH research fields over the period 2005/2006–2014/2015 reveals a number of critical issues for both institutional planning and national policymaking. We demonstrate that most SSH Research and Development expenditure in the 10-year reference period was targeted predominantly within just a few research fields: finance, economics, education, accounting and political science and public policy. By contrast, investment in SSH research fields such as architecture and habitat, media and communication studies, psychology, and transportation studies was strikingly low in the same period, with some research fields, such as dance or tourism, appearing to be at risk of decline. Using these Research and Development data as a proxy, we argue, principally, that institutional Research and Development planners and national policymakers need to find a greater balance between current priorities and future needs, if SSH Research and Development is to be ‘leveraged’ for larger socio-economic impacts, as is being envisaged in a new draft White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation. Significance: • Research and Development expenditure in the social sciences and humanities between 2005 and 2014 was concentrated in just a few research fields, such as finance, economics and education. By contrast, Research and Development expenditure was comparatively low in research fields such as media and communication studies, technology management, architecture and habitat, and dance. • In an era of rapid global technological change, but also deepening local societal challenges, South Africa’s national and institutional policymakers face strategic Research and Development choices. This article contributes to national debate about the status and perceived role(s) of the social sciences and humanities in this context.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan-Hoang Vuong

Valian rightly made a case for better recognition of women in science during the Nobel week in October 2018 (Valian, 2018). However, it seems most published views about gender inequality in Nature focused on the West. This correspondence shifts the focus to women in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in a low- and middle-income country (LMIC).


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Mohamed Amine Brahimi ◽  
Houssem Ben Lazreg

The advent of the 1990s marked, among other things, the restructuring of the Muslim world in its relation to Islam. This new context has proved to be extremely favorable to the emergence of scholars who define themselves as reformists or modernists. They have dedicated themselves to reform in Islam based on the values of peace, human rights, and secular governance. One can find an example of this approach in the works of renowned intellectuals such as Farid Esack, Mohamed Talbi, or Mohamed Arkoun, to name a few. However, the question of Islamic reform has been debated during the 19th and 20th centuries. This article aims to comprehend the historical evolution of contemporary reformist thinkers in the scientific field. The literature surrounding these intellectuals is based primarily on content analysis. These approaches share a type of reading that focuses on the interaction and codetermination of religious interpretations rather than on the relationships and social dynamics that constitute them. Despite these contributions, it seems vital to question this contemporary thinking differently: what influence does the context of post-Islamism have on the emergence of this intellectual trend? What connections does it have with the social sciences and humanities? How did it evolve historically? In this context, the researchers will analyze co-citations in representative samples to illustrate the theoretical framework in which these intellectuals are located, and its evolution. Using selected cases, this process will help us to both underline the empowerment of contemporary Islamic thought and the formation of a real corpus of works seeking to reform Islam.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Beatriz Marín-Aguilera

Archaeologists, like many other scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities, are particularly concerned with the study of past and present subalterns. Yet the very concept of ‘the subaltern’ is elusive and rarely theorized in archaeological literature, or it is only mentioned in passing. This article engages with the work of Gramsci and Patricia Hill Collins to map a more comprehensive definition of subalternity, and to develop a methodology to chart the different ways in which subalternity is manifested and reproduced.


Hypatia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 580-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Bargetz

Currently, affect and emotions are a widely discussed political topic. At least since the early 1990s, different disciplines—from the social sciences and humanities to science and technoscience—have increasingly engaged in studying and conceptualizing affect, emotion, feeling, and sensation, evoking yet another turn that is frequently framed as the “affective turn.” Within queer feminist affect theory, two positions have emerged: following Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's well‐known critique, there are either more “paranoid” or more “reparative” approaches toward affect. Whereas the latter emphasize the potentialities of affect, the former argue that one should question the mere idea of affect as liberation and promise. Here, I suggest moving beyond a critique or celebration of affect by embracing the political ambivalence of affect. For this queer feminist theorizing of affective politics, I adapt Jacques Rancière's theory of the political and particularly his understanding of emancipation. Rancière takes emancipation into account without, however, uncritically endorsing or celebrating a politics of liberation. I draw on his famous idea of the “distribution of the sensible” and reframe it as the “distribution of emotions,” by which I develop a multilayered approach toward a nonidentitarian, nondichotomous, and emancipatory queer feminist theory of affective politics.


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