Interviewing, Intermediaries and Documents: Senegal and Mali

Robinson describes his experience preparing and carrying out interviews in Senegal and Mali in the late 1960s and 1970s, after preparations at Wisconsin Madison and a social work stint in Dakar a few years before. He emphasizes the importance of his assistants or intermediaries for the choice of informants and the conduct of the interviews, as well as the quality of translation of the sessions. He combined the interview material with documents, especially an Arabic ethnohistory written by Cheikh Moussa Kamara in the 1920s, to produce his publications on Futa Toro and al-hajj Umar. He also reflects on the transformation, i.e. Africanization, of the History Department at the University of Dakar.