ABSTRACT
Introduction In 2007, I journeyed from my home in California to Rhodes University in Grahamstown-iRhini, Azania (South Africa), to deliver a paper at the First Congress of the African Sociological Association. My paper was titled “Afrikan Sociology: A View From the Diaspora.” The thesis of my paper was that Afrikan* scholars should cull core sociological principles from traditional Afrikan cultures, and if a sociology was to be applied to Afrikan people, that it reflect their cultures, values, and beliefs. One would have thought I had blasphemed against the gods of these largely Afrikan scholars. In effect, that is what I had done. In arguing that Afrikan cultures and concepts should hold a central place in an Afrikan sociology, I was distancing myself from the intellectual gods of European sociology and centering my understanding of sociology in the order and organization of Afrikan families, clans, and nations. But I was not without my advocates. The strongest of these was a quiet elder, Professor Akinsola Akiwowo, a retired Nigerian professor of sociology. Baba† Akiwowo was the first to tell me that he agreed with me. I could see in his eyes and sense
in his voice that I had spoken a deep truth in presenting my paper. He had left Nigeria in his youth to obtain a doctorate in sociology at a university in the United States. As he later told me, it was only in his later years that he began to rethink the Eurocentric sociological principles that he had been teaching and return to his roots in Yoruba culture. It was there that he rediscovered his center. I had affirmed his journey in my presentation at this congress.
