The hearts of many cities in Nigeria are like islands of poverty in seas of relative affluence. It does not require professional skill in environmental perception to note the difference between the residential, environmental, and the overall physical structure of the central parts of Lagos and Ibadan, for example, and their suburbs. Well-designed and relatively well-maintained neighbourhoods in the suburbs and in the newer sections of these cities are inhabited by the affluent, the middle-class, and the privileged. At the other polar end are the majority of urbanites— citizens massing themselves in the unkempt and often squalid hearts of the cities, living under conditions that are at times sub-human and sharing sub-standard houses in areas which, by any standard, are slums. Unfortunately, concern over the slums, on the part of the privileged, the public authorities, and the citizens themselves, is insignificant. There has been much talking, much academic analysis, and much propaganda, but little or no action. Hence there has been little accomplishment and hardly any change in the plight of the low-income people who are directly bearing the brunt of the urban problems.

Many academicians, both nationals and expatriates, have drawn attention to the multi-dimensionality of the urban problems facing Nigeria (see Bascom 1955; Lloyd 1960; Mitchel 1962; Miner 1960; Herskivits 1930, 1962; Mabogunje 1961, 1962ab; United Nations Economic Commission for Africa 1962). Most of their studies, however, have been confined to general description of the ugly urban phenomena, to historical emergence of slums, and to geographical and sociological analyses of the urban problems.

In the scramble for Africa the French and the British often worked at cross purposes. Many times approaching a state of war, both colonial powers were determined to gain more territory and prestige than their rival. During the closing decade of the nineteenth century this imperial conflict became very evident in Madagascar and Zanzibar. These islands off the east coast of Africa became an arena for bitter and dangerous competition, and the clash of the imperial powers over these two islands reflected the entire race for the unclaimed portions of the non-European world. The lines of colonialism were sharply drawn there, and both powers overtly tried to cancel out the gains of the other. The French, smarting from their diplomatic defeat in Egypt over the Suez Canal in 1882, were certain that they could win a foothold in Eastern Africa, close to the Nile. The British, just as resolved to protect the Nile and the Arabian Peninsula, knew that they had to hold as much East African territory as possible. In a land where the white colonialists were in a minority, in regions where native resistance was determined, England and France waged an imperialist-diplomatic war. Madagascar and Zanzibar, then, serve as a classic case study in African colonial friction.

Zanzibar, long a center of the East African slave trade, became in the late 1880's a focal point of British and, to a lesser extent, German expansion. In the last year of the decade the two powers came to an agreement over spheres of influence.

Speculations as to what methodological approaches should be taken in academic endeavors such as African studies are bound to be controversial. Given the wide spectrum of the disciplines involved, ranging from art forms such as the dance and music to the “dismal science” of economics, obviously there are numerous differences of opinion as to the nature of research, not to mention its purposes. Internecine warfare is almost inevitable, and the claims of contending factions, even within a single discipline, are boundless. In some disciplines questions of methodology are paramount, as appears to be the case for political scientists and sociologists, while for others such as economists, the issue of method is less significant than are the policy implications of economic theory for the African scene. This difference may well reflect the greater abundance of economic data, for in some areas of inquiry the development of adequate data is the foremost problem. For some the productivity and pragmatism of results are the test of good research; for others, if research stands the test of criticism, it matters not the method. But for some, method itself provides the only criteria for judging the feasibility or value of research efforts.

In this Symposium on Methodology, the Editors of the Review are pleased to publish the reflections of six social scientists as to the issues of research methodology in African studies, two each in the areas of anthropology, political science, and psychology.

The unit which is the focus for investigation obviously has an important impact on the results of the investigation, and these resuls are further influenced by the concepts and theories which the investigator employs in formulating and carrying out his work. The choice of units for study and other conceptual and theoretical considerations has further implications, and among these are the ones directly pertinent to area studies and their status and value. A brief discussion of this point will make it clear.

In classic structural-functionalist studies the unit for study, or within which the study is to take place, is patent. The anthropologist sets out to study the Ganda, the Yoruba, the Rjonga, or some other tribe. Just what constitutes a tribe may not be, and need not be, meticulously defined (and with such groups as the Ibo, Chagga, or Balante it will not be sharply delimited) ; but it does provide a guide for the smaller-scale unit (a village, a lineage, or whatever) within which the collection of data is actually carried out. Sometimes data taken from specific kinship or territorial units are used to make generalizations about the tribe as a whole, as when there are studies of witchcraft among the Pogoro or economic organization among the Pangwa, and sometimes the studies concern characteristics of the unit's organization, as when investigations are made of Rjonga lineage structure or Chagga settlement patterns. In all cases the boundaries of investigation are taken as given, and what is variable and to be examined is what goes on within those boundaries.

On May 7, 1970 the Fourth Dahomean Republic was inaugurated following a series of developments that snatched political stability from the jaws of civil anarchy, turned back the clock ten years, and gained the small West African state two questionable distinctions: the continent's first collegiate presidency and Africa's first head of state to bounce back to power after being toppled by the military.

As secession and civil war threatened the country following the aborted March 1970 elections, Dahomey had just completed a tortuous tenyear cycle of acute instability, during which every possible combination of political forces had tried and failed to govern the country. The political triumvirate of Dahomey--Ahomadegbe, Maga, and Apity--maintained a tight electoral stranglehold over their respective tribal fiefs in Abomey, the North, and Porto Novo, buttressed by their traditional claims to legitimacy. Intense regionalism and ethnic exclusiveness, dating to the precolonial era and perpetuated by the French administration, mitigated against the emergence of durable interregional political alliances. The period 1958-1965 was characterized by shifting coalitions between the three leaders that collapsed almost as soon as they were created as a result of continuous intrigues, plots, and jockeying for sole power (for a detailed analysis of this period, see Thompson 1963, Decalo 1968).

I had imagined that the central issue of this symposium would be the contrast between nomothetic, or generalizing, research and idiographic, or particularistic, research in Africa. To what extent are the conclusions of research carried out in Africa limited to a geographic or cultural area: to sub-Saharan Africa, to the Bantu, to the Southeastern Bantu? To what extent are the conclusions generalizable to a certain type of society, no matter where it is found? Such a contrast of approaches would have raised the issues of the culturally distinctive qualities of African cultures and of the unique historical influences upon them. This emphasis is clearly evident in the writing of many anthropologists who have worked in Africa, particularly those with humanistic interests. It stands in contrast to another strategy of research which seeks, not the unique qualities of African cultures, but the general principles, exemplified by African societies as well as by all other societies.

The literature on political and administrative behavior in sub-Saharan Africa has proliferated at an unprecedented rate in the past decade. But notwithstanding an impressive output, Africanist political scientists of all persuasions—“institutionalists,” “behavioralists,” and so forth--have tended to ignore or treat lightly various methodological problems confronting the social sciences in general and their own discipline in particular. It is appropriate here to distinguish between methodology and preocedure. Methodology refers to the philosophy of science, to problems associated with the logic of systematic social inquiry; among the problems which are essentially methodological are classification, comparison, concept formation, theory construction, and nomothetic vs. idiographic inquiry. (Various methodological probems are examined by Brodbeck 1968, Hempel 1965, Kaplan 1964, Nagel 1961, and Natanson 1963.) Procedure, in contrast, refers to the application of specific techniques in research. While research techniques inform the day-to-day activity of systematic social inquiry, they are extraneous to the logic of that inquiry (Fleron 1968, p. 316).

The extent to which political scientists are attentive to methodology is often reflected in the quality of their research, Not surprisingly, therefore, the quality of research on political and administrative behavior in sub-Saharan Africa has been negatively affected by the tendency to dismiss or de-emphasize methodological considerations. For example, there appears to be little awareness of a cardinal principle of logical classification: that there must be “a mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive set of classes for the domain under consideration” (Kalleberg 1966, p. 72; Hempel 1952, p. 51).

Even a casual survey of the literature on African politics reveals that it has only occasionally been influenced by contemporary social science methodology and technology. Alvin Magid is certainly correct in asserting that “Africanist political scientists…have tended to ignore or treat lightly various methodological problems which confront the social sciences in general and their own discipline in particular” (1969, p. 1). This is not, of course, a new charge. In 1955, for instance, Roy Macridis asserted that the vast majority of so-called comparative studies were noncomparative, descriptive, parochial, and static. He argued, “The general dissatisfaction experienced by students of comparative politics with the nature of their discipline and more particularly with its methodological orientation, indicates the need for a more thorough conceptualization for the purpose of comparative analysis and the development of theories at the various levels of generalization for the purpose of organizing and studying empirical data” (1955, p. 23). Indeed, similar changes have been made at one time or another in almost every discipline from anthropology to zoology. So what I have to say should give all of us a sense of dejavu.

It would be a mistake to assume that only at the level of methodology are students of African politics failing to take advantage of contemporary developments in the social sciences. Indeed, our literature becomes a bad joke juxtaposed with a statement such as the one Bernard Gelbaum and James March have recently made: “Within the past two decades, mathematics has become indispensable to the student of human behavior.

In the last five years as Americans have continued to discover Africa and have increased their efforts to include African perspectives in school curricula, the publication of children's literature about Africa has increased in quantity and to some degree in quality as compared with the years before 1965. Publishers now seem as anxious to publish anything pertaining to Africa for children, which they think will sell, as they are to publish such books for adults. The writer of children's books need no longer search for small publishers such as Fideler, Meredith, Beckley-Cardy, or Hale, but can apparently have books accepted by most of the major publishers.

There are now special series about Africa, or Afro-America to which authors can contribute, for example, the Zenith history series and the Watts first book series. The former includes paperbacks for older children, and the latter, hardcover books for children in the lower elementary grades. In the Zenith series, history is presented in outline form in Basil Davidson's A Guide to African History (1966), as culture history in AGlorious Age in Africa (1965) by Daniel Chu and Elliott Skinner, and through biography in Great Rulers of the African Past (1966) by Lavinia Dobler and William A. Brown. These history books are factually accurate, illustrated, and, in the case of the latter two, interesting to read. All the books in the Zenith series are more substantive than those in the Watts series, which are simplified for younger readers and shorter, even though they often try to cover more material than do the Zenith books.

Psychological explanations of social behavior are currently unfashionable in the “institutional” social sciences of economics, history, sociology and social anthropology--though political science is something of an exception--and it is these disciplines that dominate African and other area studies. Received opinion has it that psycho-social studies of the “culture and personality” or “national character” type were discredited during the 1940's and early 1950's when a number of undisciplined studies claiming to account for the cultural and political patterns of modern nations and nonliterate peoples alike on the basis of child-rearing determinants were published and revealed the fallacious nature of their theory and methods.

On close examination this view may be seen to have several flaws. First, a logically sound theoretical position is not discredited by inadequate empirical studies carried out in its name; insofar as the studies are badly done they do not provide evidence for or against the position. In the case of culture and personality, the pioneering theoretical formulations of W.I. Thomas, Sapir, Linton, and Hallowell have never been refuted on logical or empirical grounds, and in fact their ideas have been extensively used by recent social theorists of the structural-functional school (Parsons and Shils 1951, Parsons 1964, Inkeles and Levinson 1954, Inkeles 1963, Spiro 1961), indicating at least an enduring plausibility in some quarters. Furthermore, it is quite common in intellectual history for the early adherents of a position to make excessive claims for it and to exaggerate the evidence in its favor, but this hardly justifies rejection of the position itself.