1st Edition
Political Science in South Africa The Last Forty Years
In 2013 and in 2014 respectively, the South African Association of Political Studies (SAAPS) and Politikon (the South African Journal of Political Studies) celebrate their 40th anniversary. Also, in April 2014 South Africa celebrates twenty years since the advent of the post-Apartheid democracy, and the birth of the ‘rainbow nation’. This book provides a timely account of the birth and evolution of South African politics over the past four decades, but also of the study of Political Science and International Relations in this country. Fourteen political scientists contribute chapters to this volume, situating the study of politics within its global context and recounting the development of politics as a field of study at South African universities. The fourteen contributions evaluate the state of the discipline(s) and suggest conclusions that are surprising and in many instances unsettling, not only with regards to what and how politics is taught, but also how its study has variously gained and lost pertinence for South Africans’ understanding of their own polity as well as its place in the world. The implications are uncomfortable, and pose interesting challenges for South African scholarship, pedagogy and national self-reflection.
This book was published as a special issue of Politikon.
Dedication 1. A Word from a Founder, to Those Who Follow 2. The Study of Politics in South Africa: A Prolegomenon 3. The Subject as Object: 40 Years of Scholarship 4. Celebrating 40 Years: The State of Political Science in South Africa in 2014 5. Working in a South African Politics Department During the 1980s: Recollections 6. Teaching Politics in Exile: A Memoir from Swaziland 1973–1985 7. The Idea of Africa in South African Political Science 8. Systematic, Quantitative Political Science in South Africa: The Road Less Travelled 9. The State of Comparative Politics in South Africa 10. The Promise of Political Theory in South Africa 11. International Relations in South Africa: A Case of ‘Add Africa and Stir’? 12. Twenty Years on, It’s All Academic: Progressive South African Scholars and Moral Foreign Policy After Apartheid 13. The State of Public Administration as an Academic Field in South Africa 14. The Personal Is the International: For Black Girls Who’ve Considered Politics When Being Strong Isn’t Enough
Biography
Peter Vale is Professor of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, and Nelson Mandela Professor of Politics Emeritus, Rhodes University.
Pieter Fourie is the Editor of Politikon, the South African Journal of Political Studies, and Associate Professor of Political Science, Stellenbosch University.
