With regard to the Curtin article, there has been a fairly lengthy exchange
about it on the listserv Nuafrica in recent weeks. I repost below my own
argument of March 9th from that exchange, with a few references to
other specific posts from that other debate altered a bit:
I think Curtin is on to something, but he sees only one part of a larger
problem. As some might note, Curtin's complaint needs to be situated
against the larger context of debate over affirmative action. I think it's
incredibly important for a department--or college/university--to work
aggressively to promote diversity among its faculty. I'd strongly support a
department consensus that said, "In our next three job hires, we really
need to recruit a minority candidate." What I find more troubling is
something that Curtin rightfully criticizes: that many departments will say
instead: "We have three job hires coming up in the next four years. One of
them is African history. Make sure we get a minority candidate for that
one."
I think, however, that Curtin mis-identifies the reason that this happens.
He suggests in the piece that the primary pressure on departments to follow
this latter logic is coming from "African-American students".
The fault, dear Africanists, lies not in our students but in ourselves. The
reason that so many departments are ABLE to tag a position in African
Studies as a minority-only hire to be rolled over year after year after
year until the appropriate candidate can be acquired is that they don't
view Africa as an important or central subject.
Thus, the "ghettoization" that Curtin decries is not a consequence of
minorities being hired (a troubling and potentially ugly assertion); it's
already happened before the decision to make the position a minority hire
ever takes place, it's due to the idea that Africa is an "optional extra"
in a history curriculum.
What causes this ghettoization? Well, among other things, as has already
been suggested in this discussion, I think we can lay a lot of blame at the
doorstep of "area studies". By promoting a sort of "Africanist discourse"
that took Africa as its exclusive--and peculiar--domain, area studies has
systematically isolated Africa as a subject of specialized expertise. No
one else has to pay any attention to what that expertise generates as a
result.
Thus, combatting ghettoization is more a matter of kicking curricular butt
and taking collegial names, of crashing everybody else's parties, of
insisting on the centrality of African experience to "modernity", to global
history, and the like. This doesn't mean exclusive minority set-asides are
not an issue, but they are a symptom, not the cause, of the ills Curtin
examines.
There are two other dimensions to the problem that Curtin also leaves out,
both of which may in fact be far MORE important in determining why many
junior scholars are struggling to get positions. In virtually any "Third
World" specialty--Africa, Latin America, Asia, Oceania--there is an
extraordinary and strikingly conservative historiographical and
methodological pressure exerted by non-specialists on hiring decisions. In
departments where an opening in European or American history would
privilege a candidate pursuing new or innovative topics or using
cutting-edge methodologies, an opposite demand is often exerted on
candidates specializing in Third World subjects to conform to standard
nation-building or vanilla empiricist topics and interests.
This has something to do with the theoretical timidity of Africanist
scholarship itself but probably a lot more to do with the failure of
Euro-American specialists to pay much attention to current scholarship in
Third World fields--which in turn goes back to the isolation promoted by
"area studies".
There's another problem here as well, and that's the pernicious way that
colleges and universities sort themselves into competitive hierarchies and
seek to hire only candidates who conform to the proper place on this social
ladder, so that a graduate student coming out of a top program will only
spark interest among other highly competitive institutions. That's probably
an issue for another day.
The upshot is, however, that some stunningly well-qualified and highly
competent Africanist scholars are without jobs, even in years when there
are at least some jobs available. Whatever the reason, this makes a mockery
of the already-tattered meritocratic fantasy of academic achievement. We
ought to cease representing this profession as one where any kind of
marginally consistent rationality holds sway over employment opportunities.
Those of you who train graduate students ought to let the word out: neither
publication, innovation, skill and experience in teaching, nor enthusiasm
will likely make much difference when the time comes.