Chthonic science: Georges Niangoran-Bouah and the anthropology of belonging in Côte d'Ivoire

2009

Georges Niangoran-Bouah worked assiduously toward Africanizing national education, academia, and public culture in Cote d'Ivoire. As part of this venture, his research projects, including his study of "drummology," can be regarded as a quest for "chthonic" science, that is, an anthropology that uncovers and implements the deep tenets of African-Ivorian culture. Properly situated in its academic, ideological, and political umwelt, we demonstrate, Niangoran-Bouah's anthropology of belonging is not merely an instance of "closure" but must be seen as a multiform attempt to recover a "local" position as a way to participate in universal-global science.