Quiz 8 - Chapters 26, 27, and 28 from Handbook of Black Studies

Afrocentric Idea

• The Afrocentric idea critiques the historiography of social knowledge and the sociology of history to free the minds of the oppressed.
• Afrocentricity is committed to anti-oppressive and anti-racist analysis, using tradition and reason as twin towers to establish a subject analysis for culture.

###Eurocentric Model

• The Eurocentric model imposes Europe and European individuals as the norms of human culture, human relations, human interactions, social theory, and social institutions.
• This model is universalizing, implying that Europe is above other cultural spheres, rather than alongside them.

Inclusive vs. Co-Cultural Approach

• The term "inclusive" implies that minorities are to be included in the European cultural sphere, rather than recognizing cultural spheres as equal.
• A co-cultural approach recognizes communication between cultures as an equal affair, rather than superior and inferior cultures.

Theory and Practice

• Theory without a basis in human practice is without historical substance.
• Afrocentricity seeks to identify with all efforts to reassert the centrality of African agency in human phenomena, based on historical substance and practice.

Impact of Enslavement and Segregation

• Over 350 years of enslavement and segregation have resulted in immense psychological, social, cultural, and political dislocations for Africans in the Americas and Caribbean.
• This has led to dislocations, including the idea that they are not oppressed.

Afrocentric Analysis

• Afrocentric analysis links the affirmation of African centrality in our own story to practice, underscoring the determination that a progressive revolution in thought and action can occur only through centered-ness.
• Afrocentricity works because it can interpret technological, economic, and structural developments in society, as well as provide an explanation for the orientations, stresses, choices, and religious locations of the African people.

Challenge to Privilege

• African American Studies as a discipline is inherently an instrument of challenge to any type of essentialist privilege.
• Suppressing anyone's personality, economic or cultural expression, civilization, gender, or religion creates the state of oppression.

Metaresearch and Citation Analysis in Africana Studies

• Weissinger's (2002) citation analysis found that "Dream Team" Africana American Studies faculty members published 4 times more often in discipline-specific than in Africana Studies periodicals.
• In contrast, non-Dream Teamers published twice as much in Africana Studies than in discipline-specific periodicals.
• Weissinger's findings suggest that traditional academia suppresses the activist element of Black Studies research, which is forced "off campus".

Alternative Approaches to Knowledge Generation

• Afrocentricity (Asante, 1988) and the "jazz" model of Africana Studies (Stewart, 2004a) are alternative theories of systematic knowledge production.
• These approaches aim to bridge the dichotomy between academic research and political advocacy.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Africana Studies

• GIS allows researchers to integrate data and methods, enabling new types of analysis and modeling.
• GIS can refine ecological approaches to Black community research (Frazier) and multipanel design (Du Bois).
• GIS methods can also allow for the development of interdisciplinary models and multidimensional outcome predictions.

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Research

• Karenga's subject matter approach to defining Africana Studies' interdisciplinarity (1982, 2002) involves the sequential or simultaneous layering of maps exhibiting different variables for a given geographical space.
• This approach enables individuals from different disciplinary orientations to generate interpretations of observed patterns.

Critique of Traditional Social Science Research

• The conventional wisdom is that scientific research should be uncontaminated by political considerations and that theoretical research is superior to applied research.
• Africana Studies scholars argue that this approach is flawed and that alternative approaches to knowledge generation should be explored.

Historical Precedents and Contemporary Efforts

• The contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois and E. Franklin Frazier to exploring the strengths and weaknesses of social science are examined as precursors to contemporary efforts by Africana Studies researchers.
• Their attempts to adapt and modify social science values, theories, and methods, as well as their experimentation in bridging the social science-artistic/humanistic divide, are seen as precursors to contemporary efforts.

Africana Studies: An Interdisciplinary Discipline

• Africana Studies offers a critique of existing conceptions of the world and provides a multicultural and African-centered paradigm, contributing to alternative ways of viewing and engaging the world.
• The discipline integrates knowledge and methodologies from various disciplines to create a new body of knowledge with a new language and logic.
• To be interdisciplinary, Africana Studies must create a distinctive interrogative and integrative process, searching for erasures, omissions, and distortions in discipline-specific projects.

The Role and Value of Knowledge

• In an African-centered understanding, knowledge is never for knowledge's sake but for human sake, aiming to improve the condition of the world and enhance its prospect.
• This Afrocentric understanding is reaffirmed in ancient Egyptian and Yoruba sacred texts, The Husia and Odu Ifa.

Challenges and Possibilities of Africana Studies

• The mission of Africana Studies is to identify its role, relevance, and goals in engaging with the world.
• The methodology of Africana Studies is based on a philosophical foundation and framework that informs its engagement, distinguishing it from method.
• The Kawaida perspective, a critical cultural perspective, privileges tradition, requires reason, and insists on practice in both knowledge and its ultimate value.

Objectives of Africana Studies

• Provide students with a critical integrated overview of the discipline, its core subject areas, mission, research issues, and schools of thought.
• Enhance critical thinking through engaging oppositional propositions and thinking in the discipline.
• Engage historical and current events to cultivate critical analysis and social ethical concern for the human condition.
• Heighten awareness of the role of race, class, and gender in human community and exchange.
• Use the African initiative and experience to cultivate critical appreciation of diversity.

Defining Africana Studies

• A discipline is defined as a self-conscious organized system of research and communication in a defined area of inquiry and knowledge.
• Africana Studies is challenged to continue defining itself through its ongoing intellectual production of a defining and definitive basic literature.

Chapter 26: Social Discourse without Abandoning African Agency: An Eshuean Response to Intellectual Dilem- ma Chapter 27: Social Science and Systematic Inquiry in Africana Studies: Challenges for the 21st Century Chapter 28: The Field, Function, and Future of Africana Studies: Critical Reflections on its Mission, Meaning, and Methodology