Contemporary scholarship on Africa by Japanese anthropologists is vital, diverse, and expanding. This brief review surveys the development of anthropological research on Africa by Japanese scholars and is followed by a compilation of Japanese publications on Africa in English and French. Although some observations about Japanese anthropological research in Africa will be offered, the goal is primarily to inform American Africanists of this Japanese scholarship and the contexts within which it has developed rather than to attempt a critical appraisal.

It is not commonly known among western scholars that anthropology was formally established in Japan over one hundred years ago. The Anthropological Society of Tokyo (now the Anthropological Society of Japan) was established in 1884 by Shogoro Tsuboi, and two years later its journal Zinruigaku Zassi was first published. In 1893 Tsuboi was appointed the first professor of anthropology at the University of Tokyo. The Linguistic Society of Japan was formed in 1896 (although linguistics had been taught at the University of Tokyo for a decade), the same year that the Archaeology Society of Japan was established. As Takao Sofue notes, because anthropology at the University of Tokyo developed primarily as physical anthropology, ethnology (only termed cultural anthropology after World War II) emerged later and with the influence of Japanese folklorists (1962: 173-75; see also Yamaguchi and Nagashima, 1987). An informal group of scholars began meeting in 1928. Their name, the APE Circle (standing for Anthropology, Prehistory, and Ethnology), represented their desire to pursue a broader study of humans. In 1934 they formally created the Japanese Society of Ethnology and their journal Minzokugaku kenkyu appeared in the following year. The Folklore Society of Japan also was established in 1935.

This paper constitutes a section of my dissertation on “Resource Perception and Its Developmental Determinants in Ashanti, Ghana: A Study in Cultural-Resource Geography.” The purpose of the primary study is to determine the factors of economic progress--in this case, that aspect dealing with the perception of and development of the natural resources as evidenced within the Ashanti region of Ghana. In the pursuit of the basic purpose of the study, the underlying problems of economic or cultural underdevelopment of the Ashanti were to be identified.

I recognize the role of such a variety of factors as ecology, history, culture, science, and technology in understanding the development of natural resources and the problems connected with their development. In this section, I wish to emphasize that a vital element in evaluating the relationship of man to nature is the human element or human culture involved and then to bring out aspects of the cultural resources of the people relevant to the primary study.

By cultural resources of the Ashanti, I am referring to the institutions, cultural traits, and tools of the Ashanti that were evolved or designed to ensure the survival and development of the individual members of the group, the group as a whole, and the resources of the land. In a sense, the cultural elements discussed below bring out those attitudes, beliefs, objectives, and technical knowledge possessed by the Ashanti that help make possible a judgment as to how the group perceived and utilized the raw materials of nature within their region.

In the mid-1970s the Nigerian state embarked on an ambitious program to accelerate the commercialization of peasant food production systems, employing as the main institutional vehicle Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) which are designed, partially funded and managed by the World Bank. The core components of ADPs are their Crop Development Programs which are directed at increasing crop yields and farm incomes through the dissemination of heavily subsidized Green Revolution-type technologies: crop production packages that are comprised of improved seed varieties, fertilizer, pesticides and tractor services. With this objective, a number of infrastructural supports (the most important of which are the expansion and maintenance of rural roads, networks of Farm Service Centers for input delivery, intensified extension services and soil conservation measures) are undertaken by the projects. Commencing with three pilot projects in Bauchi, Kaduna and Sokoto states, the program was extended to the Middle Belts states of Benue, Niger and Plateau in 1977. Declaring ADPs the cornerstone of the national Green Revolution in 1980, the federal government decided to establish projects in all states. The nationwide program was expected to encompass over three million farm families by the mid-1980s (Nigeria 1982).

Inquiries conducted within neo-Marxian political economy frameworks concerning the direction of agrarian transition which the Nigerian state seeks to foster through ADPs have revolved around a well-founded suspicion of their purported smallholder focus. Their design is premised on a division of rural communities into large, progressive and traditional farmers.

The hunting songs of the majority-Muslim, Odienné region of Northwestern Côte d’Ivoire accomplish more than meets the ear. They conjoin and distinguish Muslim goals and ostensibly non-Muslim hunting practices. The musical repertoire of my host, Dramane Coulibaly, is illustrative. This study examines the role that Dramane’s songs played in motivating initiated dozo hunters to kill game during dozo funerals, a primary concern for dozos at these events. Next, it analyzes the structure and content of Dramane’s songs in relation to the embodied, emplaced, and material dimensions of dozo funerals, where Dramane’s performances served to calm the spirits of the dead so that they would leave the living in peace. Finally, it examines the musical aspects of Dramane’s songs in relation to Islam, with the aim of broadening the study of Islam in West Africa and beyond to encompass the texts and performance practices of dozo funerals.

However proud Africans must be to have a person of African descent in the White House, they should have no illusions as to how much President Barack Hussein Obama can do for Africa. Africans must put their own house in order for purposes of dealing successfully with the major challenges facing the continent, the most important of which is that of democratic and developmental governance. Obama's priorities are not necessarily those of Africans. They have to do with the role of the United States as a superpower in a global system in which the American military and business corporations play a hegemonic role. In this context, Africa is relevant to American and Obama's global priorities when its resources are needed to strengthen this role, on the one hand, or its humanitarian crises are likely to affect them in an adverse manner, on the other.

What are these global priorities, and how are they likely to affect Africa during Obama's tenure? Following is a brief examination of four major priorities. The first is limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. Operating on the premise that nuclear weapons should be limited to the few countries now possessing them (U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan), the U.S. government has led an international campaign against the acquisition of nuclear weapons technology by other countries, particularly those deemed hostile to Western interests, such as Iran and North Korea. Since South Africa destroyed the nuclear arsenal of the former apartheid state and Libya gave up its nuclear ambitions, the only relevant issue with respect to Africa's role in the spread of nuclear weapons is the question of who has access to Africa's abundant supply of uranium. Denying access to African uranium to “rogue states” and terrorist organizations is an important foreign policy objective of any American government, including the Obama administration.

Traditional social theory holds that modernization leads to an improvement in the status of women. Until recently, specialists on Africa did not challenge this view (Southall, 1961: 653; Cotran, 1969: 22). This was so because the status of women was not considered a significantly important topic for research. As part of the growing interest in women, the position of women in African society has become a focus of serious study (Paulme, 1963; Little, 1973; Iglitzin and Ross, 1976; Hafkin and Bay, 1976; Canadian Journal of African Studies, 1972). The results of this research, mostly carried out by women, challenge the conventional wisdom that the status of women improves with modernization (Van Allen, 1976; Callaway, 1976; Mbilinyi, 1972; Boserup, 1970). These investigators also indicate that with modernization the position of women has declined both absolutely and relatively in comparison with the improved position of men.

Divorce law and practice is an important barometer of the social status of women in a society. The research upon which this paper is based focused on divorce law and practice in Bobodioulasso, Upper Volta. Its conclusions support the findings of others, such as those noted above, about the negative effect of modernization on women.

Bobodioulasso is the second largest city in Upper Volta. A recent estimate put its population at 118,000 (Rapport Politique, 1975: 9). Like many other African cities, the population is growing rapidly, primarily because of rural-urban migration (Gregory, 1971; Boserup, 1972: 207). This migration in part accounts for the tremendous ethnic diversity of Bobodioulasso, one of the reasons it was selected as the site for this study. The latest available statistics show no fewer than twenty-four different groups represented in the urban area, eleven of these having more than 1,500 members (Rapport Politique, 1975: 9). Although Bobodioulasso is within the predominantly Muslim part of the Sahel, it is not primarily a Muslim area and not, therefore, totally dominated by Muslim attitudes to women. However, Muslims, as well as Christians, are well represented in the city. The area around Bobodioulasso has also retained pre-Muslim and pre-Christian religions and those practising animism still account for the largest percentage of the city's population. They ensure its religious diversity.

The bulk of research on African political institutions has been conducted by political scientists trained in the precepts of Western culture, and thus an appreciation for the uniqueness of the contributions of African society is lost. Many Western scholars even go so far as to insist that Africa offers no new theoretical problems since human beings are the same and political problems similar the world over. This is false for two reasons. First, man is a direct product of his environment and his problems are defined meaningfully in terms of that environment. Second, environmental and procedural conditions in Africa differ significantly from those in Europe and, by extension, the United States. In Africa social processes do not represent, as they do in Europe, static, readily identifiable forces and interests. They tend rather to defy neat and convenient type-casting and classification.

Let me cite three examples. The average Western scholar looks for institutions in discussing governments. He normally asks, what type of government is this? Unitary, federal, or confederal? Yet the African government is personal, not institutional. To the African, what matters is not the formal function assigned to an institution by its name, but the phases of the flow of policy to which the institution and its personnel contribute. If we look first for institutions and then ask what functions they perform, we may see a less comprehensive picture of the African world than we would by first identifying the political process and then asking which sub-systems contribute to its various branches.

The past three decades have witnessed far-reaching changes and a revolution of sorts both in the Third World countries and in the theoretical frameworks employed in the study of development and underdevelopment. The methodological achievements which have accompanied these theoretical innovations have in many respects approximated the kind of scientific transformations in the natural sciences that Kuhn (1970) describes as the structure of scientific revolutions. Discussing the history of scientific discovery Kuhn (1970: 52-65) draws attention to the distinction between normal science and scientific revolutions. He specifically emphasizes the critical importance of the discovery of anomalous data and how the “awareness of [such an] anomaly, the gradual and simultaneous emergence of both observational and conceptual recognition” of the inadequacies of the currently dominant paradigm in dealing with the existing problems, prepare the ground for its overthrow or suppression.

Until the late 1960s problems of development in the Third World were characteristically examined from the perspective of the dominant paradigm: the modernization theory. Classical modernization theory placed central consideration on the internal conditions of the state: institutional structures, culture, attitudes, and value systems. In the early 1970s, the crises and contradictions which surrounded modernization theory reached an alarming proportion and created the “necessary precondition for the emergence of novel theories” (Kuhn, 1970: 77). Aside from the increasing frustration and general dissatisfaction of underdeveloped countries with “growth without development” (Clower et al., 1966), it was clear that the existing international economic system had failed to spread the benefits of world economic prosperity between the developed and underdeveloped countries.

The following information was received from the Department of Defense (DOD). Since no narrative information was provided, the material is reproduced exactly as received. Both dollars figures and personnel classification codes appear under the heading “Annual Costs” below. A key to DOD’s personnel classification code was requested but not received.

This article is an examination and extension of concepts that Achille Mbembe presented in his 2016 African Studies Association Abiola Lecture. In particular, “cognitive assemblages” are elaborated upon to consider how a shifting understanding of media has become part of a neoliberal digital media platform promoted by the Ghanaian state in association with Malaysia. Mbembe’s invocation of the “injunction to decolonize” is also discussed through information capture and data mining to consider the extent to which the promise of a digital future is a form of neo-colonialism or an opportunity for an expanded digital commons.

In the development discourse, there has been a tendency to frame the Global South, especially Africa, as a perpetual recipient of ideas from the Global North. This has led to the implementing of “development” initiatives based on the unsuccessful modernization paradigm and the associated Washington Consensus. Despite the emergence of counter theories such as dependency and underdevelopment theories, they share similar assumptions with the modernization paradigm. These assumptions include the belief that historical change brings development or progress, the sidelining of noneconomic factors like ethnicity, race, and gender, and the sole emphasis on economic growth as a measure of development. Both models assume that the state should primarily drive advancement. To address the weaknesses of these development models, alternative perspectives such as women and development, women in development, and gender and development were introduced. However, these perspectives would be integrated into the mainstream development discourse, diluting their impact.