Reinforcing The Afrocentric Paradigm: a theoretical project

Abstract

Thomas Kuhn's 1962 groundbreaking work, The Scientific Revolution, established the process for creating, and the components of, a disciplinary paradigm. This "scientific revolution" has evolved to become the standard for determining a field's claim to disciplinary status. In 2001 and 2003, Ama Mazama, used Kuhn's model to establish the disciplinary status of Africology, through the categorical structuring of the Afrocentric Paradigm. Though her work conclusively made the claim that Africology is a legitimate academic discipline, still more work remained in effort to meet other criterion set forth by Kuhn. Through the use of content analysis, this work extends Mazama's work by addressing four additional areas of paradigm development that was established by Kuhn: (1) the scientific revolutionary moment for the discipline; (2) the nature of consensus among the scholars of the discipline; (3) the intellectual identity of the discipline's scholars; and (4) the distinct intellectual behavior of the discipline's scholars as seen through their evolved epistemic and methodological tradition. This work also reconfirms Africology's fidelity to the roots of the original Black Studies Movement, identifies independent intellectual tools for Black Studies scholars, identifies Afrocentric excellence and rigor, and provides an instructive tool for burgeoning Afrocentric Scholars.