ABSTRACT
Current events and the relevance of current theories in Third World studies
In the social sciences theories seem always to lag behind current events. In the African continent, for instance, each new development seems to illustrate the inadequacy of the generally accepted insights of anthropologists, political scientists, economists or historians. Of course, it has become a commonplace to direct criticism of this nature to Parsonian modernization sociology, which prevailed in the field of African studies in the 1950s and 1960s. In contrast with the ambitious blueprints advanced by this type of sociology, the African states in their practical developments did not all tend to conform to modern — i.e. western — ideal types. In almost all the countries of Africa, within a few years after independence, democratic systems modelled on western examples made way for one-party systems or military dictatorships. And the relevance of a concept like nation-building to the understanding of, for instance, the complicated struggle between factions in the national politics of these countries has become increasingly questionable.
