Scientific life. Congresses, conferences, and symposia

October 2003 The Petrovsky Hall of St. Petersburg State University (SPbU), which opens its doors only on the days of big celebrations, has gathered not only Africanists from Russia. Scientists from Paris, Lyon, and Hamburg attended the conference. The meeting was also attended by students and postgraduates from a number of African countries. The meeting was organized by members of the Scientific Council on Economic, Socio - Political and Cultural Development of African Countries at the Department of Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The title of the conference -"Africa: Societies, Cultures, Languages and Literatures" reflects the breadth of interests and the range of scientific research of D. A. Olderogge, one of the founders of Russian African studies.

D. A. Olderogge was a man of high culture, who possessed encyclopedic knowledge. His French colleague Jacques Rethel writes in his memoirs about him: "He was a light of the mind, brought up in the spirit of the old traditions of France" [Retel, 2003, p. 23]. Acad. M. N. Bogolyubov, who knew D. A. well. A. Olderogge, speaking at the plenary session, noted that when reading the reports written by Olderogge, his business qualities were always revealed, which deserve admiration. Thanks to the efforts and scientific authority of D. A. Olderogge, centers of African studies were established, which later played a major role in studying the complex problems of world African studies. Under his leadership, research was conducted in the field of ethnosocial history of African peoples, linguistics, art studies, and museology. His works have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Romanian, Latvian and Chinese. D. A. Olderogge was considered a think tank for studies of African history and culture. One of his students, V. V. Matveev, wrote that "the birth of Russian African studies should be counted from 1929, when Dmitry Alekseevich's first articles appeared not about Ancient Egypt, but about Tropical Africa" [ Ethnologica..., 2002, p. 41].

At the round table "African Studies as a Science", an attempt was made to define African studies as a scientific field.

I. V. Sledzevsky (Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) in his report "African Studies as a field of scientific knowledge" noted the ambiguity of the disciplinary status of African studies: whether it is a special interdisciplinary field united by the unity of research methods, practical and scientific tasks, or part of a broader scientific field-Oriental studies, or a problematic area of regional studies, looking for their own subject, or a conglomerate of private science disciplines-each with its own subject. The accepted definition of African studies as a set of disciplines that study the economy, socio-political relations, cultures, languages, art and other aspects of the life of the peoples of Africa does not clarify this issue. It only states the multiplicity of disciplines that study Africa, without clarifying the degree of interdisciplinary connections and integration of individual interdisciplinary positions.

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According to I. V. Sledzevsky, this issue cannot be solved at the level of general definitions, it requires an analysis of the structure of African studies knowledge, the nature of its foundation and the degree of integration. In the structure of this knowledge, an internal gap has emerged and deepened over the past 30 to 40 years. Its development as an interdisciplinary complex outstripped the development of interdisciplinary relations. Integration of the ever-growing body of private science data - in the form of interdisciplinary theoretical models and research techniques - has been extremely uneven and fragmented all this time. Integration took place mainly through economocentric approaches focused on serving the ideology and strategy of catch-up development, rather than approaches focused on explaining and understanding the actual African context of socio-historical and socio-cultural changes. As a result, what we call African studies remains largely a collection of African studies, Oriental studies, or third-world sections of various social sciences. And this is despite the fact that the world of African studies has its own scientific tradition, its own methodological basis and a specific core of integration-social anthropology. (What distinguishes African studies from classical Oriental studies, which is based on the study of traditional Oriental cultures on a classical philological basis). At the same time, social anthropology cannot be considered as one of the private sociological disciplines. From an applied descriptive science, it has long been transformed into a fundamental science. Nevertheless, social anthropology does not cement African knowledge as firmly as classical philology does in Oriental studies.

Nevertheless, the general foundation of African studies as a holistic interdisciplinary field, according to the author, continues to develop. A number of important processes are underway in this direction. Expanding and "Africanizing" the source base. Overcoming and forming a larger paradigm of transformation of African societies, including elements of cultural studies and ecology. Progress in cross-cultural research that identifies meaningful alternatives to social evolution. We also note the appearance of a number of integral supra-disciplinary ideas in aficanistics. These ideas are formed on the basis of African empirical material, contain integral characteristics of the African society, and create prerequisites for the development of interdisciplinary theories of the middle (regional) level.

L. V. Geveling (ISAA at Moscow State University) approached this problem in the following way. Probably, he noted, all scientifically proven and proven knowledge about Africa (fundamental and applied), as well as methods of obtaining and applying them, can be considered as a source material for the formation of the science of African studies. In the broadest sense of the word, it is legitimate to consider African studies as a relatively new special science, a peculiar form of public consciousness that embodies a complex combination of social, humanitarian and natural sciences (taking into account the special nature of the object of research). However, the most interesting question is what is African studies in the narrow sense of the word. It is unlikely that the role of this science can be played only by a complex of research branches and disciplines that are more or less related to the analysis of African development. Rather, the emerging information matrix (or its essential elements) about the countries and peoples of Africa can claim to be called African studies.

Then G. M. Sidorova (Institute of Africa) spoke about the centers of African studies in Belgium. She noted that Russian scientists have great opportunities for research there, in particular, in the archives and libraries of the Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren (a suburb of Brussels, formerly the Belgian Congo Museum) - the main Belgian repository of documents and materials on Africa., where she was kindly given the opportunity to work by a French citizen I. A. Lopatinsky, who now heads the French branch of the organization of Resistance veterans "Combatant Volunteer". Valuable documents in originals and copies related to the stay of Russian emigrants of the "first wave" in France and its African colonies [Echo of the Planet, 2003, pp. 26-29], are now being studied by African historians.

Leading specialists of IMLI RAS and the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg State University, MAE RAS, as well as graduate students of these research centers spoke at the section "Cultures, Languages and Literatures of Africa". Thus, graduate student N. S. Frolova (IMLI) commented on new trends in Kenyan poetry in the Swahili language. She noted that Swahili literature is overshadowed by the vast English-language literature. Although against this background, a group of authors appeared who expressed a desire to break out of the traditional forms. As an example, she cited a prominent figure in Kenyan poetry, Kitaki wa Mbe-

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ria. MS Bulakh (RSUH) spoke about a project to create a catalog of semantic changes in the world's languages, which is being developed by a group of Moscow linguists. The goal of the project, according to M. S. Bulakh, is to create a database that includes regularly reproduced semantic transitions, i.e. development that occurs in various lexemes of languages. The catalog of semantic transitions, as the author explained, is necessary, first of all, for etymological and lexicographic works, as well as for theoretical works on semantics.

The passion of young authors for the research topic, their enthusiasm and faith in science give every reason to hope for the" survival " of African studies as one of the scientific directions. According to D. M. Bondarenko (Institute of Africa), despite the difficult material and theoretical state of Russian science (and not only African studies), at least some young people are recovering their ideas about the prestige of intellectual work, science, and the fundamental and eternal nature of the spiritual and social values that they embody.

As it follows from the reports of the speakers, Russian scientists have recently achieved some success in the study of African languages. Kaplun (ISAA) described how he and his colleagues conduct experiments on the acoustic characteristics of a group of Chadian languages in the Laboratory of Experimental Phonetics. He said that the data on the tonal problems of house presented in the literature are often not supported by a sufficiently rigorous experiment - instrumental and psycholinguistic. In addition, in most of the works, special attention was paid to general problems of tones: how many of them are in the Hausa language, what they are, in what language units they are implemented, etc.

A. I. Koval (Institute of Linguistics), summing up the results of the linguistics section, noted that the topics of presentations, according to the established tradition of African linguistics, were distinguished by subject and methodological diversity, covering, on the one hand, descriptions of specific language formations, and, on the other, developments of an interlanguage (comparative) and generalizing typological nature. At the same time, the reports and presentations reflect both the importance of factual data accumulated by African linguistics and the level of general language theoretical and typological knowledge adopted by African linguists. At the same time, the subject of discussion was little - known languages, in particular, the languages of southern Mande, which were examined in expeditions organized by St. Petersburg Africanists under the leadership of V. F. Vydrin.

The material of individual languages was considered in several reports that touched upon important and yet unresolved structural aspects, such as the problem of prosody in songhai (F. I. Rozhansky, Institute of Linguistics) and hausa (report of a group of researchers presented by M. I. Kaplun). A prominent place belongs to reports that address the problem of accounting for data from a group of (related) languages. The comparative techniques used in such works contain an element of typology, which is evident in reports based on Bantu languages (in particular, in the report of I. N. Toporova, Institute of Linguistics), in the languages of the Niger-Congo family (A. Y. Yellow, St. Petersburg State University), in Efiosemitic and other languages. Typological approaches were proposed both among various languages of Africa (T. I. Reznikova, MSU) and between individual representatives of the languages of Africa and Europe (A. I. Koval).

Special mention should be made of the report of D. Kressels (France) on general typological problems that he solves by introducing African language data into a broad linguopanorama. Discussions that arose in connection with the descriptive or typological topics of the reports contributed to a meaningful discussion of different approaches. Reports of linguoculturological nature (N. A. Dobronravii, St. Petersburg State University, N. S. Naidenov, RUDN University, etc.) supplemented the traditional research paradigm of African linguistics.

A separate round table was devoted to the problems of Southern Africa. All presentations and related discussions were grouped under the following topics: the history of South Africa since the 17th century and contemporary issues linked together. In his report "Problems of employment and poverty in South Africa", L. N. Rytoe (Institute of Africa) gave a pessimistic assessment of the ability of South Africa, as the most developed country in Africa, to become a locomotive that will take neighboring states out of backwardness. The conference also expressed the view that the achievement of higher economic growth in Southern Africa is not possible only through domestic savings, and significant external investment inflows are very problematic due to the social instability in the region. R. Mugabe's agricultural policy in Zimbabwe, as well as the new mining legislation in South Africa, played a negative role in terms of the investment climate.-

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the development of modern South Africa and its neighboring countries in the context of global political and economic processes, in particular integration trends that manifest themselves in Africa both regionally and on a continental scale.

The report of V. V. Gribanova (Institute of Africa) "On the main trends in the development of South African education in 1910-1930" showed that the consequences of racist policies in this area still affect today, and the school and university reforms that have been taking place since the late 1990s are aimed at improving access to education for young people from previously oppressed racial groups, primarily Africans. Some of the reports were based on previously unknown materials found by researchers in the archives. V. T. Shubin (Institute of Africa) presented the report "Tactics of the Boers and the British in the partisan war in the reports of Russian military agents from the theater of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902." The research of graduate student A. S. Zdanevich (St. Petersburg State University) "Political transformations in the Cape Colony in 1814-1826" revealed a number of contradictions the conflict between the Afrikaner and English-speaking populations that led to the Boer War and the psychological alienation between the two white minorities in South Africa that still exists today.

The report of M. L. Vishnevsky (Institute of Africa) "On US policy towards South Africa"was devoted to modern foreign policy relations of South Africa. He showed the changes in relations between the two countries over the past decades and noted their peculiarities at the present time.

The discussion that took place at the round table "Problems of field research in modern conditions" aroused the interest of the majority of those present. V. R. Arsenyev (MAE), noted that times have changed, and the lack of certainty in connection with the" primary", directly observable material has become much more acute, while overcoming it is more urgent. He noted that today it is necessary to understand the principles of interaction of researchers with the so-called field environment, i.e. the principles of collecting factual material, as well as the procedural and everyday behavior of researchers in a particular environment.

The topic raised in Arsenyev's report was continued by the members of a recent scientific expedition to Tanzania. E. S. Lvova (ISAA) shared with the audience her impressions of the trip to the country of "eternal spring". The expedition to Tanzania was attended by employees of the Institute of Africa, Moscow State University, as well as the Universities of Athens and Dar es Salaam. The main goal of the expedition, noted E. S. Lvova, was defined as the study of the relationship between the Christian and Islamic components of Tanzanian society. About 1000 questionnaires were collected. The answers to the questionnaire also revealed some other aspects of Tanzanian life. One of them is the state of Swahili ethnic identity. The Swahili language and culture developed in the Middle Ages on Zanzibar and the Indian Ocean coast. However, whether a separate ethnic group "Swahili" was formed during this time or whether it is "Vasuahili", i.e. just Swahili-speaking people from different ethnic groups, remains an open question.

In conclusion, it is necessary to mention the publication of two works prepared for the 100th anniversary of D. A. Olderogge. These are " Ethnologica Africana "(M., 2002) by a team of authors from the Institute of Africa of the Russian Academy of Sciences and MAE RAS and "Dmitry Alekseevich Olderogge in Letters and Memoirs" (St. Petersburg, 2003). They are based on the memoirs of an African scholar written by his students. The first collection also includes unique materials from the scientist's home archive and articles by researchers from different countries.

I would like to hope that the works of D. A. Olderogge himself will also be published. I. A. Osnitskaya said that she is preparing for publication numerous lectures of her husband, which, as well as his books, notes, articles, are undoubtedly of great interest to future generations of scientists and not only Africanists. True, she noted, this is not an easy task, since Dmitry Alekseevich liked to make notes in the margins, make clarifications, sometimes there was not even enough space and he had to make inserts. As a result, the texts became difficult to read.

In conclusion, the participants of the conference noted that more attention was paid to the discussion of issues than to the reading of reports, which had a positive impact on the conference, since it is the discussions that are valuable and worth meeting for.

list of literature

These are planets. N 49(816). December 5-11, 2003.

Ethnologica Africana. M., 2002.

Retel J. Mes souvenirs II Dmitry A. Olderogge in letters and memoirs. St. Petersburg, 2003.

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