The African Diaspora And The Disciplines

Focusing on the problems and conflicts of doing African diaspora research from various disciplinary perspectives, these essays situate, describe, and reflect on the current practice of diaspora scholarship. Tejumola Olaniyan, James H. Sweet, and the international group of contributors assembled here seek to enlarge understanding of how the diaspora is conceived and explore possibilities for the future of its study. With the aim of initiating interdisciplinary dialogue on the practice of African diaspora studies, they emphasize learning from new perspectives that take advantage of intersections between disciplines. Ultimately, they advocate a fuller sense of what it means to study the African diaspora in a truly global way.

"The African Diaspora" uses essays from a variety of disciplines to introduce students to the African Diaspora and the contributions of African peoples at a time when these are being marginalized on a global scale. The text explores the origins of the Diaspora, and unearths evidence about the development of the Diaspora in the New World. It discusses the transformative role of cultural art forms in people s lives, and details how Twentieth Century Africans navigated time and space in a new environment. The material also emphasizes how ideology provided a framework for constructing new identities, and highlights the formation of the Black Power ideology. The final section makes the journey back to Africa to examine setbacks and challenges affecting the Motherland. Throughout the text, students are encouraged to read critically to understand the various methodologies and perspectives of the writers. Godfrey Vincent earned his Ph.D. from Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Vincent is an assistant professor of history in the Department of History and Political Science at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama. His current research includes labor studies and focuses on the Caribbean, imperialism, colonialism, and decolonization in West Africa and the Caribbean, the African Diaspora, radical political formations in the Americas, neoliberal globalization, and social movements and change. Dr. Vincent is currently working with a group to develop alternative models of development that place subaltern groups at the center rather than the periphery."

Known variously as African studies, black studies, African American studies, Afro-American studies, and Africology, the academic study of the African diaspora as a holistic discipline is a relatively new phenomenon. University programs have been created with reference to a disciplinary matrix, retarding the development of appropriate theory and methods throughout Africana studies. Fifteen leaders in the field of Africana studies provide the conceptual framework for establishing the field as a mature discipline. The focus is on four basic areas: administration and organizational structure; disciplinary matrix; Africana womanism; and cultural aesthetics. The work examines both the theory and the method of scholars in African and African-diaspora studies.

The third edition of Africana Studies: A Survey of Africa and the African Diaspora is an update of the second edition (1998) and incorporates new chapters that include expanded coverage of issues on women, health, terrorism, the African Union, and many others, as well as the most recent theories and methods in Africana studies. To date, Africana Studies remains the most comprehensive and most suitable text for both teachers and students interested in Africa and the Diaspora in the US, the Caribbean, Afro-Latin-America, and elsewhere. The book is divided into five parts: the state of the art of Africana studies; the evolution of the history of black people; analysis of the contributions of the black world; the present and future status of these peoples; and the societies and values of black people. The book also includes a chronology of significant events in the history of peoples of African descent and a number of maps. "[This book] attempts in one volume to present more accurately the experiences and contributions of the African world. It introduces readers to the most comprehensive account of black interdisciplinary subjects to date and summarizes the research of specialists in a variety of fields... The number of contributors, variety, and depth of coverage show that the work was carefully thought out." -- Insights, on an earlier edition

This edited volume presents intersectionality in its various configurations and interconnections across the African continent and around the world as a concept. These chapters identify and discuss intersectionalities of identity and their interplay within precolonial, colonial, and neo-colonial constructs that develop unique and often conflicting interconnections. Scholars in this book address issues in cultural, feminist, Pan African, and postcolonial studies from interdisciplinary and traditional disciplines, including the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. While Intersectionality as a framework for race, gender, and class is often applied in African-American studies, there is a dearth of work in its application to Africa and the Diaspora. This book presents a diverse set of chapters that compare, contrast, and complicate identity constructions within Africa and the Diaspora utilizing the social sciences, the arts in film and fashion, and political economies to analyze and highlight often invisible distinctions of African identity and the resulting lived experiences. These chapters provide a discussion of intersectionality’s role in understanding Africa and the Diaspora and the intricate interconnections across its people, places, history, present, and future.

When one thinks of African diasporas, it is likely that their mind will automatically drift to locations such as Europe and America. But how much is known about the African diaspora in East Asia and, in particular, within China, where race is such a politically sensitive topic? Based on multi-sited ethnographic research in China and Nigeria, Mapping the New African Diaspora in China explores a new wave of African migration to South China in the context of the expansion of Sino/African trade relations and the global circulation of racial knowledge. Indeed, grassroots perspectives of China/Africa trade relations are foregrounded through the examination of daily interactions between Africans and rural-to-urban Chinese migrants in various informal trade spaces in Guangzhou. These Afro-Chinese encounters have the potential to not only help reveal the negotiated process of mutual racial learning, but also to subvert hegemonic discourses such as Sino/African friendship and white supremacy in subtle ways. However, as Lan demonstrates within this enlightening volume, the transformative power of such cross-cultural interactions is severely limited by language barrier, cultural differences, and the Chinese state’s stringent immigration control policies. This book will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of China/Africa relations, race and ethnic studies, globalization and transnational migration, and urban China studies, as well as those from other social science disciplines such as political science, international relations, urban geography, Asian Studies, African studies, sociology, development studies, and cross-cultural communication studies. It may also appeal to policymakers and non-profit organizations involved in providing services and assistance to migrant populations.

Members of diasporic populations often have a unique, dual persona consisting of one’s migrant role as a permanent or transient member of a new country and one’s role as a citizen of one’s home country. Like all diaspora, the African diaspora is further composed of sub-groups of people of a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, such that there is a need for studies that properly encompass and address the African diaspora across a multitude of fields and pedagogies, including architecture, education, and business. Multidisciplinary Issues Surrounding African Diasporas is a pivotal reference source that explores the philosophical and epistemological issues regarding the African diaspora identity and navigates these individuals’ opportunities for professional and academic growth. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics such as higher education, cultural engagement, and xenophobia, this publication is ideally designed for sociologists, anthropologists, humanities scholars, political scientists, cultural studies academicians, university board members, researchers, and students.

There is no recent literature that underscores the transition from Pan-Africanism to Diaspora discourse. This book examines the gradual shift and four major transformations in the study of Pan-Africanism. It offers an "academic post-mortem" that seeks to gauge the extent to which Pan-Africanism overlaps with the study of the African Diaspora and reverse migrations; how Diaspora studies has penetrated various disciplines while Pan-Africanism is located on the periphery of the field. The book argues that the gradual shift from Pan-African discourses has created a new pathway for engaging Pan-African ideology from academic and social perspectives. Also, the book raises questions about the recent political waves that have swept across North Africa and their implications to the study of twenty-first century Pan-African solidarity on the African continent. The ways in which African institutions are attracting and mobilizing returnees and Pan-Africanists with incentives as dual-citizenship for diasporans to support reforms in Africa offers a new alternative approach for exploring Pan-African ideology in the twenty-first century. Returnees are also using these incentives to gain economic and cultural advantage. The book will appeal to policy makers, government institutions, research libraries, undergraduate and graduate students, and scholars from many different disciplines.