Interdisciplinarity and the Renewal of Africanist Anthropology
Anthropology has a major advantage among social sciences, which is its qualitative method (long-term fieldwork in natural settings), but it suffers from its past, when it was focused on so called “primitive peoples”, and fascinated by exoticism and traditionality. Africanist anthropology is in many ways typical of that inheritage, not open enough to new topics and new concepts, prisoner of a culturalist ideology, and too much frighten by interdisciplinarity or collaboration with action-oriented research. Studying modernity, syncretism and change calls for innovation and borrowing to other disciplines. Medical anthropology in Northern countries, for instance, has evolved in this direction since the seventies, under the influence of public health topics, while fighting to preserve its independence. But in Africa it’s only recently that medical anthropologists have taken modern health units and health professionals as legitimate topics for research, and have engaged in a dialogue with practitioners in the perspective of reforming the health system. But, on a conceptual level, public health is not actually helpful, and anthropologist should produce grounded theories and fresh concepts, sometimes with the help of other disciplines.