The Making of Modern Africa
180.jpg "Ashgate Book Series Listings")
Series Editors: Abebe Zegeye, University of South Africa,
Republic of South Africa and John Higginson, University of
Massachusetts, USA
A number of scholars in African Studies have recently begun to
produce interdisciplinary works which go beyond the constraints of
'traditional' anthropology, narrative, political history and
political science. This new generation of scholars has sidestepped
the ideological debates which characterized much of the work in
African Studies in the 1970s and early 1980s. They have chosen to
focus instead on the meaning of democracy, law, civil society,
human rights, ethnicity, class and gender relations in given
African societies. Many of these scholars are Africans who have
studied in the West, but who have carried out field and archival
research in their countries of origin. Consequently, in a number of
instances, their studies represent the first analysis of their
societies by indigenous scholars who have benefited from exposure
to external perspectives. The books are written in a manner to
appeal to a more general readership as well as to specialists.