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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:African Studies: A Re-Assessment of Academic Tourism since 1960
Author:Ochwada, HanningtonISNI
Year:1996
Periodical:Africa Development: A Quarterly Journal of CODESRIA (ISSN 0850-3907)
Volume:21
Issue:4
Pages:123-140
Language:English
Geographic term:Africa
Subjects:African studies
Education and Oral Traditions
Bibliography/Research
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/24482772
Abstract:The concept 'academic tourism' to explain trends in African studies was first applied by T. Zeleza (1993). Academic tourism in this paper connotes the historical explanation of African experiences using theoretical and conceptual frameworks borrowed from the social science centres in Europe and America. Its paradigms of analysis oscillate between Western bourgeois liberalism and Marxism. Academic tourism frequently leads to Afro-pessimism. In considering power relations, academic tourism implicitly advances the notion of the superiority of Western societies over African communities, and in scholarship, it perpetuates intellectual dependence. In fact, the struggle for control of production and dissemination of knowledge on Africa dates back to the advent of colonialism. After World War II, the Cold War fashioned scholarship on Africa, both in the West as in Africa itself. Since the late 1980s, two currents exist in contemporary scholarship of Africa. These are postcolonialism and postmodernism. However, African scholars have in recent years challenged the assumptions of Western scholars, and have penetrated Western, notably American, educational institutions. It is imperative that African scholars demystify Western epistemologies and chart out a direction for themselves. Bibliogr., notes, sum. in French.
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