The Object of African History: A Materialist Perspective

The establishment of a journal specifically concerned with method in African history is to be welcomed. However, the early issues of History in Africa have demonstrated that the content of the term ‘method’ is itself at stake. The great majority of contributions to date have seized on a narrow and limiting conception of method as the development of techniques of collecting and evaluating data . The necessity of such techniques is not in question, but they are subordinate to, and indeed partially determined by, a broader and more fundamental conception of method as the principles of investigation and explanation in scientific practice . There are historians who do not regard the production of historical knowledge as a scientific enterprise, hence subject to certain theoretical demands, and they would not want to. Accordingly, they need not read on, but we are confident that there are others who are interested in method in the second sense and who may also have noticed its virtual absence in the pages of this journal. On the other hand, it would be disingenuous to imply that a common interest in method in the broader and more fundamental sense is sufficient ground for agreement. Our argument in what follows derives from an understanding of historical materialism that has nothing in common with the stereotyped views held by it bourgeois critics. Our central concern is with method as the principles of constructing scientific explanations. But what is to be explained? We attempt to show that method necessarily starts with the correct posing of questions, as well as bearing on their investigation.