by Jennifer Dunjwa Blajberg*

In the XXIst Century African Studies constitute a transdisciplinary area.

Initially known as Africanistics, its origins lay in the need of the colonizers to provide a basis for justifications in their domination of the African continent.
Africanistics was at the beginning essentially a unidisciplinary colonial science, directed at classifying and standardising, for use by European colonizers, the languages spoken by the African peoples. The missionaries translated the Bible into the languages they had standardized.

Africanistics also served through imposition of the European languages and standardisation of African languages by Europeans, to delineate the imposition of new cultural values through education. As such it contributed to the dismantling of the political and social structures of kingdoms and chiefdoms in Africa. This process lead to the emergence of Western educated African elites compatible with the new capitalist culture.

European colonialism destroyed most of the traditional structures or social and cultural coherence, with which the societies or nation-states functioned in Africa.
From the XVIth Century to the middle of the XIXth Century, Natural Sciences such as Zoology, Botanic or Mineralogy, concerned with natural resources, also constituted part of such studies in the process of acquiring knowledge about the African peoples by the Europeans, and in the survey of the natural potentialities of the African continent, that was mainly carried in a geographic, linguistic and religious (missionary) direction.

Until that time, Africanistics mainly entailed the exploration of the African continent. Its theoretical and ideological conceptualisation was done around the studies of the origins of mankind and of the role and situation of Africans in such origins, whereby the exoticism of travel and adventure in Africa occupied an outstanding position.

Africanistics referred to Egypt (Egyptology) and to the “unknown”(for Western Civilisation) lands of Africa. Intellectual production consisted of works with a philosophical-theological content, grammars and vocabularies of native languages, translations and travel narratives¹.

From the mid XIXth Century until after World War I, African Studies take shape as Colonial Sciences, focussed on Ethnography and presenting the opportunity for ethnological studies based on evolutionist theory. Comparative Linguistics and Ethnolinguistics play a relevant role in that period².

During the inter-war period and until the end of World War II African Studies relate mainly to Applied Anthropology and to Ethnology, subjects that were in the course of being concretised as inventories of peoples under colonial rule.
By mid XXth Century Africanistics had already become a multidisciplinary area and African Studies became a more common denomination.

In the post-war period, with decolonisation and the massive arrival of Africans as subjects in Contemporary History and Sciences, the scientific exoticism which surrounded African Studies began to loose ground – the Study of Africa as a whole takes into account the slackening of the colonial bonds, introducing a critical look to approaches that were previously prominent. The Study of Africa, formerly focussed on Anthropology has now a sociological focus especially provided by Sociology of (Under)Development.

In the 1960’s, following the experiments and disillusions with the gradual or violent independence of African peoples, and while the relations between the advanced countries of Europe, America and Asia and the former colonies in Africa become characterized as neo-colonial ones, African Studies became pervaded by functionalist or Marxist approaches. The prominent disciplines of the time were Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science, and were ascribed to a broader area of knowledge with interdisciplinary orientation, that also included Arts and Archaeology, Economics, History, Geography, Language and Literature, Comparative Linguistics, Music, Politics, Religion, Philosophy and the Studies of Ideologies.

The independence struggles in Africa mostly concluded during the 1960’s, in view of the colonialist elaborated ideas on the multiple aspects of African life, required indigenous alternatives to such elaborations.

The national liberation movements, the exalting of African Unity, the development of affirmative movements of Black communities in North America, as well as the independence of the Caribbean nations with populations of African origin, pushed for the growing participation of African or African-descendent scientists in these studies. The development of independent states, requiring new institutional structures, led to an emphasis on pedagogical and sociolinguistic studies. On the other hand, the intensification of relations among those states emphasized both afrocentrism and the interdisciplinary study of Africa within the subject of International Relations.

The Cold War had great impact on African Studies – despite a large number of the new African states having joined the Non-Aligned Movement, the US and the USSR sought consolidating spheres of influence in Africa.

In both superpowers, great attention was given to language studies in order to provide background for intelligence services, diplomacy and propaganda (publications, radio broadcasting).

At the ideological level, theories were elaborated in the US about a supposed modernisation, while on the Soviet side, the idea was presented that there was a so called “non-capitalist” road to development, and thereby the superpowers attempted to justify their foreign policies as regards African states.

Subsequent to the end of the Cold War, with the onset of the globalisation process, which intensified as from the 1990’s, the formation of continental or regional political-economic blocks, the paradigms of North-South Cooperation/Conflict or of South-South Cooperation, associated to the increased agility in information flows, as a consequence of the very capital flows having become swifter using the electronic and networked telecommunications, a transdisciplinary approach becomes a desideratum for African Studies.
The two-way South-South information flows are becoming more agile via the Internet and the very agents of North>South information flows are also beginning to accept that the North X South paradigm should also begin to become a true two-way North-South cooperation.

African Studies online are becoming a new reality, no longer confined to academic ivory towers, making possible global interaction in this area of knowledge.
In Brazil one should take into account such change so that African Studies cease to be neglected.

An inventory of Brazilian initiatives in Africanistics represented in the past by Afro-Brazilian Studies, as well as of the institutions, that emerged till the end of the 1970‘s and of the general difficulties they faced, especially eurocentrism, dependence on foreign funding and the interests of foreign foundations, was made in 1984 at INEAFRIC, and it is available here for download³.

In the 1980’s the tradition of Modern African Studies [MAS] that began in the 1950’s starts to be explored in Brazil, while attempts were being made to emphasize the political, social and economic developments of the African peoples and states, as well as their international relations. MAS attracted not only students and academic specialists, but also political and social activitsts concerned with modern Africa, especially with Southern Africa, from both inside and outside the continent, in view of the intensifying of the struggle against Apartheid.

At this juncture, the critical appraisal of African realities began dispensing with both eurocentrism and afrocentrism.

In the Americas, especially in those countries such as the USA and those from the Caribbean, where populations of African descent had a quite wide spread and enduring influence, the relevance of African Studies has been a common place in manifestations of interest for their development by public authorities addressing education, science and culture.

In Brazil, during the 1980’s, foreign foundations funded studies or research activities that could bring to a common denominator the study of Africa and the Sociology of Race Relations in Brazil.

This resulted in a poor methodological exercise that did little to contribute for the development in Brazil, of African Studies as an area of knowledge. Initially they sought to privilege one single institution to further such aim. Later the funds applied in institutional development, scholarships, travel, sponsoring of courses and publications were extended both to other academic institutions and to non-governmental organizations originated from social movements.

Such concerns lead to a larger and more varied output of Afro-Brazilian Studies and Studies on the Sociology of Race Relations in Brazil, which as from 1988, were also to receive incentives from a governmental institution, the Fundação Cultural Palmares the origin of which is in the authorization by Law n° 7.668, of 22 August 1988 sanctioned by then President José Sarney thus meeting demands made by the leadership of Black Movements in their fight against racial discrimination.

Both in 1988, the year of the Centennial of the Abolition of Slavery in Brazil, and in 1995 on occasion of the Tercentennial of the death of Zumbi dos Palmares⁴ the furthering of Afro-Brazilian Studies and of Studies on the Sociology of Race Relations gained greater momentum in Brazil, and that certainly also contributed to Afro-descendants activism in Brazil for compensatory policies.

With the preparations since 1998 for the World Conference against Racism (WCAR) held in 2001 in Durban, South Africa⁵ the production of Studies on the Sociology and Economic Demography of Race Relations in Brazil, as well as the demand for the introduction in school curricula of History of Africa and of Blacks in Brazil, intensified.

Finally, the process of awareness of the need for public policies to fight racism and intolerance, has been intensifying in 2006 the national debate in Brazil, on the legalization of racial quotas for enabling the access of Afro-descendants and other disadvantaged groups to Higher Learning, and on the Bill presently (2006) before the Brazilian Congress⁶ of a Estatuto da Igualdade Racial (Racial Equality Statute).

hus the furthering of those areas at that time resulted within almost two decades in specialized studies, which became diversified, meeting the societal demands for giving the African presence in the formation of Brazilian society its proper relevance. However, it has not resulted in the formation of a critical mass with specialisation in Modern & Contemporary African Studies, emphasising political, social and economic developments of the African peoples and states as well as their international relations.

Within the framework of South-South Cooperation, scientific studies on contemporary Africa will eventually meet the Brazilian national interests. Not only by providing background information and knowledge to government or companies, but also to social movements, to the civil society as a whole and to all levels of learning.

Little advantage has been taken of the potential of Modern & Contemporary African Studies to back up Brazilian Studies as a whole, from the point of view of comparative studies. Furthermore, the potential of Afro-Brazilian Studies to back up Classical African Studies has been explored by academics from the so called developed countries, occasionally by African academics who had sporadic or individual opportunities to enter in an exchange with Brazil, and last, but not least by Brazilian academics.

Initiatives by Brazilians, especially Afro-descendants, despite the tied support of foreign foundations, has undergone the difficulties inherent to the development of research and theory in Human and Social Sciences in Brazil, naturally and especially, the lack of funds, material resources and grants that encourage studies and research in those Sciences, as well as training and development of human resources for social competences.

The desideratum of African Studies for Brazilians has then to take into account the need for bridges between the various subjects – e.g. History of Africa would not be a curriculum component per se to be taught in schools, but rather the History of Africa should be inserted in the study of the History of Brazil and of General (World) History by way of content that enriches the knowledge on the African participation in the formation of Brazil and in human development as a whole.

The understanding of the present world and of the role played by the African continent, by its peoples, the relations of these peoples and countries with other peoples and countries outside the continent, should constitute the transdisciplinary purpose of developing African Studies in Brazil.

By providing continuity to basic research lines and applied research projects⁷ of the former INEAFRIC –Institute of African Studies in Rio de Janeiro. ComAfrica Institute⁸ shall continue to cultivate and bring in a comprehensive manner, the present reach and usefulness of African Studies in the World.

The main trends and institutions will be referred in this site and comAfrica.org is therefore seeking to contribute to the accomplishment of the desideratum of reconstructing African Studies in Brazil in line with South-South Cooperation.