Contested Terrains and Constructed Categories brings together intellectuals from a variety of fields, backgrounds, generations, and continents to deepen and reinvigorate the theoretical and intellectual integrity of African studies. Building on recent debate within African studies that has revolved about the role of Africanists in the United States as "gatekeepers" of knowledge about Africa and Africans, this volume of interdisciplinary essays focuses on the contested character of the production of knowledge itself. In every chapter, case studies and ethnographic materials, drawn from West, Central, East and Southern Africa, demonstrate the application of theory to concrete situations.