Mennonites and Post-Colonial African Studies

"Intensely personal at times, and biographical in scope, this collection of essays takes its readers through four general sections: Pioneers, Professors, Practitioners, and Observations from the outside. The Pioneers section highlights three early Africanists from the Mennonite tradition: Donald Jacobs, Melvin Loewen, and David W. Shenk … Ultimately, this volume is a wonderful account of a generation of scholars and practitioners of and in Africa from the Anabaptist tradition that made a profound impact on African Studies. It had the honest and vulnerable feel to Bronislaw Malinowski’s A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (1967), about scholars and researchers from the Global North, often unprepared, conducting fieldwork in the Global South."

Adam Mohr, University of Pennsylvania

"At heart of this book are the stories of twenty-one young American men and women who went to Africa during the 1960s and 1970s as volunteer teachers and development workers under the umbrella of the Mennonite Central Committee (a faith-based, humanitarian, relief and development organization), and who ended up pursuing careers in African Studies either as university professors or as development practitioners … The essays in this book show how historians and anthropologists who had initially focused their research on a single ethnic group became interested in regional and global interconnections, and how the concept of "development" evolved from attempts to make African societies more like those in the West to collaborative projects that reflected local voices. The Mennonite Central Committee itself underwent dramatic changes as it developed new working arrangements with African partners …Most of the contributors to this volume have retired from their university or agency positions, but their reflections capture some of the hopes, contradictions, and failures of the time when a cohort of young, white, and mostly male Americans from a culturally marginal religious tradition set out to change Africa, only to discover that they had been changed instead."

Robert Harms, Yale University

"As a historical and cultural marker, this volume is needed in church, academic, and NGO libraries. As a question for all who hold some part of the future of Africa peoples and places in their hearts, it calls for more than one reading."

Nancy Heisey, Professor of Bible, Religion and Theology, Eastern Mennonite, University, Harrisonburg, Virginia

"Mennonites and Post-Colonial African Studies is a major contribution to Mennonite engagements with the wider world in the late twentieth century. Although to some degree the experiences of its subjects may defy generalizations, this book marks an important effort to bridge Mennonite studies into a broader intellectual and cultural context of transnational relationships after the end of colonialism in Africa. Although one cannot say with much certainty how much the lessons these individuals learned was truly typical for Mennonite volunteers abroad in the mid-twentieth century, this collection is a valuable resource in the ongoing discussion about Mennonite participation in scholarship and development that transcends global divides."

Jeremy Rich, Marywood University, USA

"This earnest book documents the lives of a cohort of men and women who, in the 1960s and 1970s, helped to define the academic study of Africa. All of the 22 people whose stories are told here were Mennonites, formed in a Christian tradition of non-violence … Here there are no grandiose claims. The book's analytical modesty reflects the organising principle of Mennonite religious life: one is responsible for authoring one's life with intention. This revealing book deserves to be read by all those interested in the social history of our shared scholarly enterprise."

Derek R. Peterson, Ali Mazrui Collegiate Professor, History Department and the Department of Afro-American and African Studies, University of Michigan, USA