8/12/2019 Individual Statement
1/1
Individual Research Report Marc Bosch.
I want to start this report by stating that I am very satisfied
with the way we have conducted our
research. As much as I wasn't convinced of its outcomes when we
started, I am quite positive by
now that we have been able to produce a decent research outcome.
Even if it has not been until the
last weeks that we have stated our definitive research question,
I am satisfied with the way we have
used our sources in order to create an argument. I think that
one of the strong points of our
research work is that we have been able to work in a coordinated
manner, making most of each
other's individual progress.
However, the decisionmaking process has seldom been easy! the
members of this group have quite
different academic backgrounds and interests, thus often not
agreeing on what and how should beresearched nor on the questions
we would like to answer. However, and as "ar# and Engels would
have put it, from dialectics comes progress! we have found that
in the process of working towards a
compromise we have found a satisfactory course of research that
incorporates different elements of
our areas of expertise, thus building what I consider to be a
strong and fle#ible research model,
including elements of policy analysis, economic history and
history of ideas. Another minor
problem has been that we have been working with different
rhythms, thus the coordination has not
always been easy.
About my role on this research, I started by bringing in the
original idea, and being very
enthusiastic about it! I managed to convince my colleagues, who
were not too sure of it. I did most
of the $search for secondary literature%, identifying potential
secondary sources according to their
relevance in terms of the quantity and quality of the
information they could bring for the historical
study. &hen it comes to the analysis of these sources, I
studied the documents by &eaver and
ronemer and by (safowaako in depth. &hen it comes to primary
source analysis, I also did
much of the $archival% work, looking for suitable documents and
sources, i.e., that its contents
would be useful for the narrative we have built. )hen, I
analysed the two chronologically older
ones! the booklet $*+amaa! )he basis of African ocialism% -/012
and the $Arusha declaration%
-/032, thus providing the basis for the analysis of more modern
documents.
Although I am not a historian, I believe that historical
research and analysis are a discipline that
can allow social sciences to build deeper, more complete
e#planations! therefore, I e#pect to keep
including it in my political science research. Also, I intend to
keep researching about African
political theory and forms of state organisation, for which, as
I think we have been able to check
with this paper, historical analysis can be a very valuable tool
for doing so.
