Items Vol. 25 No. 3 (1971)

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SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

VOLUME 25 . NUMBER 3 . SEPTEMBER 1971 230 PARK AVENUE· NEW YORK, N.Y. 10017

URBANIZATION IN AFRICA: SOME SPATIAL AND FUNCTIONAL ASPECTS by Walter W. Deshler •

THE Joint Committee on African Studies held a second research conference on urbanization in Africa on November 12-14. 1970. at the Greyston Conference Center. Riverdale. New York. This subject has been a major concern of the committee for nearly a decade. Its first conference, held in April 1965. dealt with methods and objectives of research on African cities from a social and political view. (The conference papers were edited by Horace Miner and published as The City in Modern Africa. I )

The purpose of the November conference was to examine the spatial and functional aspects of African market centers and settlements, both large and small. Relatively few scholars are using this approach in study of African urbanization; of these, most are geographers and a few are historians. This paucity of attention is surprising in view of the importance of these aspects of urbanization for national development in Africa. For appraisal of methods and results of comparable research on other parts of the world. the committee invited participation by persons with experience in Latin America, China, and the United States-John • The author, Professor of Geography at the University of Maryland. is a member of the Joint Committee on African Studies, which is cosponsored by the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. He was chairman of the group invited by the committee to plan the conference reported on here; the other members of the group were T. J. Denis Fair of Witwatersrand University, and Edward Soja of Northwestern University. The members of the joint committee, in addition to the author, are Elizabeth Colson, University of California. Berkeley (chairman); L. Gray Cowan. State University of New York at Albany; Philip D. Curtin, University of Wisconsin; William O. Jones. Stanford University; Igor Kopytoff, University of Pennsylvania; Roy Sieber. Indiana University; and Robert F. Thompson, Yale University; staff, Rowland L. Mitchell. Jr. 1 New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967.

Friedmann of the University of California. Los Angeles. G. William Skinner of Stanford University. and Brian J. L. Berry of the University of Chicago. respectively. The remaining participants. who prepared papers and served as discussants. had field experience in Africa in research relating to central places but not with spatial aspects as a focus. 2 The conference papers dealt with the central place aspects of periodic markets. past centralities (Sierra Leone). small central places (Coast Province of Kenya). urban hierarchies (southern Africa). migration and diffusion in urban systems. and the overall structure of a space economy (South Africa). Theoretical and practical implications of research on these topics were examined in a final session. The papers treated both methods and substantive results of research. The results were preliminary and tentative in studies of tropical Africa and more conclusive in studies of southern Africa. This reflects the relative state of development of the countries under study and the availability of appropriate data. It also indicates that tropical Africa is the area of highest priority for continued research. PERIODIC MARKETS

In recent years there has been controversy concerning the relationship of periodic marketing to the proposi2 Included, in addition to members of the committee and staff. were Gerald Breese, Princeton University; R . J. Davies. University of Natal; Allen M. Howard, Livingston College. Rutgers University; Peter F. M. McLoughlin, and Richard Stren, University of Toronto; Marvin Miracle, University of Wisconsin; J . Barry Riddell. and Robert H. T. Smith, Queen's University; D. R. F. Taylor. Carleton University; and Thomas Boswell, Columbia University. and Martha Vill, University of Maryland (rapporteurs).

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