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Knowledge production and intellectual formation in Africa from Codesria's perspective, 20 February 2015 |
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Speaker: Carlos Cardoso
Date: Friday 20 February 2015
Time: 12:30-14:00
Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, 6th Floor, MTB Tower, Howard College
Topic:
The debate over how African public intellectuals produce knowledge and simultaneously address social problems has intensified over forty years during which the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria) has operated. Codesria has raised concerns over the rapidly commodifying nature of knowledge production at African universities and the rise of middle-class Africans in part through new class formation in the professions, including consultancies that further weaken the African state's capacity. The socially-minded African scholar has fewer outlets and funding opportunities for her research, disciplinary boundaries dating to the 19th century continue to stifle social scientific exploration, and the dominance of Washington's economic agenda remains stultifying in many quarters. Formerly powerful nodes of African intellectual independence have been squeezed. In resistance, Codesria's network of several thousand African scholars retains its traditional interest in building progressive public intellectual capacity, including at the World Social Science Forum to be held in Durban, in mid-September 2015.
Speaker:
Carlos Cardoso is a senior official at Codesria specialising in Lusophone social research, based in Dakar. His doctorate is in Philosophy (1992) and he holds a postgraduate degree in Anthropology. He was previously Director of the National Institute of Studies and Research in Guinea-Bissau and also taught political sociology at the Lusophone University, Lisbon.
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