Colonial Heritage Memory And Sustainability In Africa

This book serves as a drive and medium for constructive analysis, critical thinking, and informed change in the broad area of cultural heritage studies. In Africa, how to overturn the gory effects and reverse the wholesale obnoxious and unpardonable losses suffered from the excruciating experience of colonialism in a manner that empowers the present and future generations, remains a burning question. Colonial and liberation war heritage have received insignificant attention. The relevance, nature, and politics at play when it comes to the role of memory and colonial heritage in view of nation-building and sustainability on the continent is yet to receive careful practical and theoretical attention and scrutiny from both heritage scholars and governments. Yet, colonial heritage has vast potentials that if harnessed could reverse the gargantuan losses of colonialism and promote sustainable development in Africa. The book critically reflects on the opportunities, constraints, and challenges of colonial heritage across Africa. It draws empirical evidence from its focus on Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, and Mozambique, to advance the thesis that cultural heritage in Africa, and in particular colonial heritage, faces challenges of epic proportions that require urgent attention.

The richness of Africa’s heritage at times stands in stark contrast to the economic, health, political and societal challenges faced. Development is essential but in what forms? For whom? Following whose agendas? At what costs? This book explores how heritage can promote, secure, or undermine sustainable development with special focus on sub-Saharan Africa, and in turn, how this affects conceptions of heritage. The chapters in this volume identify shared challenges, good practices and failures, and use specific case studies to provide detailed insights into varied forms of heritage and heritage defining processes on the continent. By critically analysing the often romanticised discourses of ‘heritage’, ‘community engagement’, and ‘sustainable development’ the volume suggests ways of harnessing aspects of heritage to tackle some of the socio-economic and political pressures facing heritage practices on the continent, including the legacies of colonialism.

Struggles over the meaning of the past are common in postcolonial states. State cultural heritage programs build monuments to reinforce in nation building efforts—often supported by international organizations and tourist dollars. These efforts often ignore the other, often more troubling memories preserved by local communities—markers of colonial oppression, cultural genocide, and ethnic identity. Yet, as the contributors to this volume note, questions of memory, heritage, identity and conservation are interwoven at the local, ethnic, national and global level and cannot be easily disentangled. In a fascinating series of cases from West Africa, anthropologists, archaeologists and art historians show how memory and heritage play out in a variety of postcolonial contexts. Settings range from televised ritual performances in Mali to monument conservation in Djenne and slavery memorials in Ghana.

Decolonizing Colonial Heritage explores how different agents practice the decolonization of European colonial heritage at European and extra-European locations. Assessing the impact of these practices, the book also explores what a new vision of Europe in the postcolonial present could look like. Including contributions from academics, artists and heritage practitioners, the volume explores decolonial heritage practices in politics, contemporary history, diplomacy, museum practice, the visual arts and self-generated memorial expressions in public spaces. The comparative focus of the chapters includes examples of internal colonization in Europe and extends to former European colonies, among them Shanghai, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro. Examining practices in a range of different contexts, the book pays particular attention to sub-national actors whose work is opening up new futures through their engagement with decolonial heritage practices in the present. The volume also considers the challenges posed by applying decolonial thinking to existing understandings of colonial heritage. Decolonizing Colonial Heritage examines the role of colonial heritage in European memory politics and heritage diplomacy. It will be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of heritage and memory studies, colonial and imperial history, European studies, sociology, cultural studies, development studies, museum studies, and contemporary art. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylor francis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Violence in its various proportions, genres and manifestations has had an enduring historical legacy the world over. However, works speaking to approaches aimed at mitigating violence characteristic of Africa are very limited. As some scholars have noted, Africans have experienced cycles of violence since the pre-colonial epoch, such that overt violence has become banalised on the African continent. This has had the effect of generating complex results, legacies and perennial emotional wounds that call for healing, reconciliation, justice and positive peace. Yet, in the absence of systematic and critical approaches to the study of violence on the continent, discourses on violence would hardly challenge the global matrices of violence that threaten peace and development in Africa. This volume is a contribution in the direction of such urgently needed systematic and critical approaches. It interrogates, from different angles and with inspiration from a multidisciplinary perspective, the contentious production and resilience of violence in Africa. It calls for a paradigm shift an alternative approach that forges and merges African customary dispute resolution and Western systems of dispute resolution towards a framework of positive peace, holistic restoration, sustainable development and equity. The book is a welcome contribution to students and practitioners in security studies, African studies, development studies, global studies, policy studies, and political science.

This book investigates the relationship between heritage and development from the global visions articulated by UNESCO and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to local activism, livelihood innovations and political strategies employed in diverse countries of the Global South. In recent years, as culturally informed approaches to international development have become increasingly important, engaging with heritage has been seen as a way to draw on practices and meanings from the past to help build future development. This book gathers researchers and practitioners from across disciplines to address important themes such as health, the environment, sustainability, peace, security, tourism and economic growth. In doing so, the book asks us to consider whose past and whose future is ultimately at stake in efforts to use heritage for development. Key topics explored include histories and legacies of colonialism and calls for decolonisation, and related questions of expertise, ownership and agency. Students, practitioners and researchers from across the broad areas of history, heritage, education, archaeology, geography and development studies will find this book an invaluable guide to dynamic and contested understandings of heritage and development and the relationship between them.

How come Africa is so underdeveloped when it is one of the richest continents on earth? Indeed, Africa is a paradox: it is poor and rich at the same time! Resource-wise, Africa is among the top richest continents in the world, yet development-wise it is the poorest of all continents. This paradox desperately needs comprehensive theoretical unpacking and rethinking if Africa is to achieve breakthroughs to the multifaceted development-related problems that have haunted it since the beginning of its unequal encounters with Europe. Regrettably, current Eurocentric development theories fall short on several fronts. The need for a comprehensive body of knowledge –theories and models – from the perspective of Africans persists in urgency. The present volume is an attempt to theorise Africa’s [under-]development with a view to provide a sustainable enduring framework of operations that will arrest the elusive predicament of the continent while taking it forward from its current position of passivity. It rethinks and re-imagines a number of externally imposed problematic mechanisms used (un-)consciously in Africa, with the intention to raise awareness and foster critical thinking in scholars and scholarship on African development. With its predicament-oriented theorising, the book is a pacesetter on how to think and research Africa’s [under-]development. It is also an invaluable asset for social scientists, policy makers, development practitioners, civil society activists and politicians.

An exploration of how Senegal has decolonised its cultural heritage sites since independence, many of which are remnants of the French empire.