Introduction

Institut Francais d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) was probably the first all-embracing institute of African studies, dealing with both social and natural sciences as applying to the African milieu. It employed both professionals and amateurs, African as well as European, obtaining results out of proportion with its shoestring budget. One of its main functions was to ensure coordination of research and mutual information for research workers, both residents and visitors. It was to become, after 1945, the nucleus of the University of Dakar which eventually took over a large part of its former functions. Marcel Griaule was the real pioneer in African anthropology and many of his students and disciples are still active in the discipline. Griaule's anthropology is not too easy to define in Anglo-Saxon terms. His approach, influenced as it was by the Durkheimian tradition, was nevertheless probably closer to American cultural anthropology than to British social anthropology.