Life begins at fifty: African Studies enters its age of awareness

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Periodical article

Title:	Life begins at fifty: African Studies enters its age of awareness
Author:	Miller, Joseph C.
Year:	2007
Periodical:	African Studies Review
Volume:	50
Issue:	2
Period:	September
Pages:	1-35
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Africa United States
Subject:	African studies
External link:	http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/african_studies_review/v050/50.2miller.pdf
Abstract:	The impending fiftieth anniversary of the (US) African Studies Association offers the occasion for a historian to reflect on the maturation of the field as a historical process. The essay employs metaphors from human development to highlight the inevitably incremental, always partial, steps by which people - including professional Africanists - accomplish significant change. For African Studies these steps have moved from an initial social-science orientation and reliance on the abstractions of the high modernity of the mid-20th century to more experiential ways of understanding that have opened the door to new epistemologically African sensibilities. Africanists based in the United States are already moving beyond the limits of the external and objectifying tendencies inherent in 'studying' anything and instead are listening to and learning from their full partners and collaborators in and from Africa. (A version of this article was delivered as the Presidential Address at the 49th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, San Francisco, November 16, 2006.) Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]