CIPSH-ISSC General Assembly and a Joint Scientific Symposium (Cape Town, South Africa, 2008)

XXIXth General Assembly of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies (CIPSH) 

to be held in conjunction with the

XXVIIth General Assembly of the International Social Science Council (ISSC)

and

A Joint Scientific Symposium on

‘Knowledge and Transformation: Social and Human Sciences in Africa’

Cape Town, South Africa
24 to 28 November 2008

The 29th General Assembly of the CIPSH was held in conjunction with the 27th General Assembly of the ISSC at the Spier Conference Center, outside Stellenbosch in Cape Town, South Africa, from 25 to 26 November 2008.  As an extended event, an one and a half day scientific symposium on “Knowledge and Transformation: Social and Human Sciences in Africa” was followed on November 27 to 28, organized jointly by the CIPSH, the ISSC, and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC, which is the South African National Research agency for both Social Science and the Humanities).

The international symposium on “Knowledge and Transformation: Social and Human Sciences in Africa” represented an important milestone in the ongoing integration between the African scholarly communities and the leading international constituent associations in the field of the social sciences and the humanities. In a first-ever meeting of its kind, over 70 leaders of these significant international bodies gathered in Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, to confer with their African partners on:

• the present status of research in their respective disciplines within Africa,
• the social and cultural impact that these research efforts are currently having, and
• the prospects for them to positively influence the social development of African societies.

This large interdisciplinary meeting provided a comprehensive overview of the social and human sciences, and a better understanding than previously of how these intellectual disciplines can contribute to African societies’ positive integration into an increasingly globalized world.

The participation of various Ministers and decisions-makers from different countries of Africa testified to the importance of the meeting.

Besides the immediate outcome of the meeting, which included a reference volume to be disseminated throughout the symposium partners’ networks (HSRC, Codesria, etc.), a longer-term impact was targeted through the establishment of new scholarly networks involving African scholars alongside international partners and organizations. This is intended to provide higher visibility and enhanced international access for African scholars, highlighting their particular concerns and their original approaches to the human and social issues that they are researching.