Francis B. Nyamnjoh
(Published in: Mirjam de Bruijn, Rijk van Dijk and Jan-Bart Gewald (eds.), Strength beyond Structure: Social and Historical Trajectories of Agency in Africa, Leiden: Brill, 2007, pp.340-344)
When I agreed to write an epilogue for this impressive collection on the social and historical trajectories of agency in Africa, the intention was not to discuss the various contributions – a job masterfully done by the editors in their introduction – but rather to draw inspiration from them to highlight further research questions for debate and reflection, especially those from a standpoint sensitive to the African predicaments described in this book and beyond.
How does one meaningfully conceptualize and research agency in Africa? What basic assumptions must one make? These essays have led me to pose questions pertaining to the theorizing of agency research in and on Africa. What accumulated personal and collective prejudices must one check against to ensure that the trade of researching agency in Africa is sufficiently conscious of context and the interplay of both local and global forces, and adequately participatory to yield innovative results? How often do we reflect on the relevance of our research for the lives of those whose agency we seek to understand? In other words, are the issues we seek to research of importance to those who ‘innocently’ allow us into their lives, and to what extent have they consciously or unconsciously shaped our theoretical and methodological trajectories? Does it make sense, and, if so why, to ensure that African scholars and indeed the African communities whose agency is of interest are actively involved from the outset in the research design and implementation? And what, in concrete terms, is required of various actors in the knowledge production and dissemination chain to accomplish this? Is it useful or not to have a negotiated and nuanced understanding of agency based on the literature (orthodox and alternative) and, even more importantly, on the life situations and social positions of Africans in and beyond the confines of a place called Africa?
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