dynamic, continuous, and complex phenomenon stretching across time,
geography, class, and gender.

The concept of the African diaspora as a mode of study gained
momentum from 1965 when the International Congress of African
Historians convened in Tanzania and included in its program a session
entitled, "The African Abroad or the African Diaspora." Since that time
the diaspora has become a recurring theme in UNESCO's multivolume
General History of Africa, with discrete chapters appearing in several of
its volumes. The publication of this series in the major languages of the
United Nations and in several African languages virtually assures that
the historical relationship between Africans and their descendants abroad
will remain a subject not only in history and historiography but in other
disciplines as well.

In response to inquiries from Africanists and African Americanists
alike, this volume draws a number of essays from Global Dimensions of
the African Diaspora and includes several new essays on subjects vital to
the understanding of the African presence abroad. Thus, these essays
provide greater historical and sociopolitical analysis and geographical
scope.

This volume reaffirms the black diaspora as an extension of the
African heritage. It begins with a section on concept and methodology
to provide coherence for teaching and research as well as general
understanding of the subject. In analyzing the contradictions in the
diaspora, Elliott P. Skinner's chapter draws on the concepts of W. E. B.
Du Bois's double consciousness, Everett Stonequist's and E. Franklin
Fraziers's marginal man, and the concept of stranger developed by
George Simmel, William Shack, and Skinner. George Shepperson fol-
lows with a chapter that draws parallels between the African and Jewish
diasporas and distinguishes between the relevance of exile and dias-
pora. The chapter by Joseph E. Harris presents data on the African
presence in Asia and provides a framework for a comparative analysis
of return movements in West and East Africa. Albert J. Raboteau
presents a theoretical framework for comprehending African religious
influences in the diaspora and identifies areas for future study. These
essays provide a foundation for understanding the origin and develop-
ment of the diaspora abroad and identify themes pursued in the essays
that follow.

The essays in this section concentrate on identity and transformation
in the diaspora. That Africans left the continent with an ethnic identity
should provoke no debate. However, the critical process of transforma-

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