Africa in American Sociology: Invisibility, Opportunity and Obligation

The study of sub-Saharan African society would seem ostracized from the corridors of American sociology. The hallways of the national association, the American Sociological Association, have subsections for the study of Asia/Asian American and Latino populations, but not for the study of Africa. Scholarship on Africans can presumably fit in the Racial and Ethnic Minorities, Political Economy of the World System, International Migration, Population or other similarly substantive sections, but one would think the same would be true for Asia/Asian American and Latino scholarship. This eerie silence about Africa also echoes in the ongoing discourses in the discipline's flagship journals, the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology, where discussions about the continent are virtually nonexistent. It provokes the perhaps tired question, "What would we know about Africa if all we had read since 1990 were our flagship journals?"

Our count for the past 15 years indicates that our two prestigious journals have combined to publish only three articles – two in ASR and one in AJS – that focus solely on Africa. Two of these papers, by the same co-authors, examine the phenomenon of military coups (Jenkins and Kposowa 1990; Kposowa and Jenkins 1993), while the third investigates how "global cultural production systems" shape and, perhaps, distort our understanding of African communities (Griswold 1992: 709). For a discipline in which inequality, marginalization, globalization and the like remain central tenets, exclusion of Africa – arguably, the most disadvantaged continent, and yet where humankind originated – constitutes an important act of omission, ¹ and one that has consequences for African, American and, ultimately, global society.

In the social sciences, sociology is almost unique in its silence on Africa. Political science, economics and anthropology have a much better developed interest in the continent as evidenced by the Social Science Research Council and Ford Foundation supported volume, Africa and the Disciplines (Bates, Mudimbe and O'Barr 1993). ² In this article we will first try to explain why American sociology has excluded Africa from its vision; second, discuss what sociology as a discipline could gain from turning its gaze to Africa; and third, suggest how sociology can facilitate a conversation about Africa both with the American public and among ourselves. A caveat for readers: we are biased in our discussion in the direction of the literatures we know best, those concerning gender, sexuality and reproduction.

Sociology, however, mirrors American society in its treatment of Africa. As noted by Zald (1991), sociology is a quasi-humanistic discipline in that our research is partially driven by the social issues that come to our attention. But, while some of our colleagues have done excellent work on issues facing Africa, a sociology driven by the concerns of the American public and American media is likely to continue to neglect the continent. General Romeo Dallaire, who led the United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the genocide and pleaded for help in stopping the slaughter, has argued that the lives of Africans are not valued highly by the Western world (Dallaire 2004). Not surprisingly, Africa seems to enter the American consciousness in certain specific, frequently overlapping, realms.

One presentation is of a romanticized site of rich culture, almost frozen in the past and reflected in the scenic and wildlife shows on some television channels and other media outlets. Another regards the problematic Africa, evidenced by economic malaise, political strife and demographic despair seen in the images of profound hunger, rampant crime and widespread disease. A third comprises the sensational reports that frequently make the Western news rounds and are certain, even if not intended, to cause ridicule and perpetuate the infantilization of the continent: of presidents who see ghosts in their palaces; ³ of 30-something-year-old kings taking double-digit wives; ⁴ and of killer cows arrested and jailed by police. ⁵ Missing, then, are the positive accounts, daily occurring on the continent, of social and economic progress, or even the reports of the mundane evolution of "regular" life in its contextual setting. Indeed, Griswold's ASR article speaks to the distortion inherent in the...