Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge

6. The Postwar Expansion of African Studies

169 chapter six The Postwar Expansion of African Studies War, blessed war, had come to my generation, and nothing ever would be the same.—Alfred Kazin A merica’s involvement in the Second World War and its emergence as a global power during the 1940s and 1950s transformed academic social science. The exigencies of war and the government’s need for foreign area experts convinced many social scientists , including Herskovits, to relinquish their earlier commitment to detached scholarship and serve their country. At the same time, American involvement in the Second World War and the Cold War necessitated the creation of area studies programs—initially financed by the major philanthropic foundations—to provide additional specialists so that the United States could implement policies to serve its worldwide interests. These developments provided Herskovits with the opportunity to promote the creation of African studies programs in the United States. Yet the foundations’ interest in African studies induced Herskovits to curtail his study of African American cultures. Indeed, the anthropologist did no fieldwork in the Americas after World War II. During the postwar era Herskovits succeeded in parlaying the increased attention to Africa into substantial gains for African studies. His expertise and interest in the expansion of African studies made him a key player in the development of foundation-backed African studies programs . By 1948 Herskovits had established the first major interdisciplinary African studies program in America. In 1957 he played a pivotal role in the establishment of the African Studies Association (asa) and became its first president. The Postwar Expansion of African Studies 170 At times Herskovits’s desire to control the direction of African studies impelled him to criticize other institutions that he viewed as competition for scarce resources. By doing so, Herskovits acted to control the production of knowledge as he had done during the Encyclopedia of the Negro project. In this case, during the Second World War Herskovits questioned funding proposals that Fisk University and the University of Pennsylvania submitted to the Rockefeller Foundation to establish their own African studies programs. Herskovits’s cultural relativist philosophy underpinned his view of African studies and international a√airs. He considered cultural relativism as perhaps the most significant contribution that anthropologists had made to society.∞ In his most important postwar book, Man and His Works (1948), he defined cultural relativism as the principle that ‘‘evaluations [of cultures] are relative to the cultural background out of which they arise.’’≤ This was true because ‘‘[j]udgments are based on experience , and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation.’’≥ Therefore cultures cannot be ranked in a hierarchy, since evaluations of cultures by outsiders would be distorted by the evaluator’s ethnocentrism. Through extensive fieldwork, cultural anthropologists had documented the diversity of cultural practices and institutions and ‘‘the essential dignity of all human cultures.’’∂ In 1940 Herskovits cautioned against ranking cultures on the basis of ethnocentrism: ‘‘Now . . . don’t get the idea that we’re superior to primitive people. Oh, we have more gadgets, more tools, more implements of destruction, more people in insane asylums. But every people thinks their ways are best. The only real test is survival. And everyone on earth has survived at least to the present. Primitive peoples have philosophies as complex as ours. But they start with di√erent premises. And their premises are just as good as ours.’’∑ On the basis of those tenets, Herskovits argued that the West must not impose its ideas, its programs, or its will on Africa. Herskovits’s vision for African studies contrasted with that of American policymakers and most foundation o≈cials, who were motivated by Cold War strategy, not what was good for Africa and Africans. Herskovits realized that the postwar era was a pivotal one for Africa, with the continent rapidly moving toward independence. He argued that African self-determination and decolonization were in the interest of both the United States and Africa because they would improve the chances for international peace. Although he benefited from the rise of African stud- The Postwar Expansion of African Studies 171 ies, Herskovits criticized the Cold War assumptions on which these developments were based. Scientific study, divorced from narrow Cold War concerns, could be employed to assist Africa in its transition to political independence. African studies programs could provide Americans with a better understanding of Africans and Africa. American interest in African studies and...