African Environmental Crisis by Gufu Oba

Author:Gufu Oba [Oba, Gufu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Developing & Emerging Countries
ISBN: 9781000055894
Google: oX_WDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-03-13T03:50:23+00:00

History of social science research in East Africa

The history of social science research in East Africa can be traced back to 1919 when practical applications of social science were first mentioned. In 1928, the International African Institute developed a five-year plan to coordinate scientific research activities with practical applications of the findings. The Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in what was Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia) proposed the coordination of social science research activities across southern and eastern Africa.7 The driving force behind this initiative was to respond to discontent among African people over land that had been transferred to European settlers (e.g., in Kenya), land tenure changes, and the introduction of new policies—including settling mobile herders into grazing schemes.8 The complex webs of African subsistence economies—and colonial ideas about economic progress and environmental conservation—influenced African people’s social behavior and their attitude towards development. These factors received attention from the 1930s through the war years and the post-war periods. At the time in the 1930s, social anthropologists conducted in-depth studies of individual communities to interpret how African societies in general responded to colonial development interventions.9

The goal of social science research in that context was to facilitate the identification of individual or collective social behaviors towards new projects, and thus facilitate decision making. From 1944 to 1962 the British Colonial Social Science Research Council (CSSRC) provided budgetary allocations of £500,000 per annum to develop research that had direct applications in support of processes of social change across the East African colonies.10 However, the application of social science research faced two contrasting viewpoints about promoting development.

The first viewpoint was to expect social science researchers to develop universal theories and methods that would investigate social problems objectively. The second viewpoint associated social science research with project implementation (see Chapter 7). By training colonial administrators in social sciences it was perceived that they would be better facilitators of government programs to meet the social and development needs of the colonized people.11 The proponents of the latter view proposed that the training of social scientists should be tailor-made to the needs of the colonial governments. The opponents of this viewpoint (i.e., the first viewpoint) expressed their displeasure that government demands would force social scientists to focus more on practical problems and less on building theories and new scientific methods. They claimed that this would run the risk of lowering standards in social science research.12 Conversely, the proponents of the second viewpoint added that social anthropologists working with colonial officials would benefit from transitioning from theoretical to practical actions prompted by lessons learned from development projects.13 For social anthropologists the priority was in ethnographic encounters with African societies.14

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