African Studies: A New Tradition?

Abstract

<jats:p>Christopher Waterman quotes a Yoruba popular performer: “Our tradition is a very modern tradition.” The Study of Africa in the U.S. is a very modern tradition in several senses. In the great scale of things, it is very recent. During the presentation of a National Academy of Sciences project on The Population Dynamics of Sub-Saharan Africa last year, it was pointed out that only ten years ago the Academy had postponed work on this topic simply because the data were judged insufficient for a scientific synthesis. And it is a modern tradition in the sense of lively expansion and mutation. Most notably, over those same ten years or so the participants in both academic and non-academic study, and in popular culture, have become far more diverse.</jats:p>