African Heritage Challenges: Communities and Sustainable Development

✍ Scribed by Britt Baillie, Marie Louise Stig Sørensen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 374
• Series: Globalization, Urbanization and Development in Africa
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
Heritage Challenges in Africa: Contestations and Expectations
Heritage and Global Trends
Heritage Challenges in Africa
The Socioeconomic and Political Pressures
Legacies of Colonialism
Relating to Heritage
Heritage and (Sustainable) Development
Heritage and Communities
Structure of the Volume
References
Managing Africa’s Anthropocene Environment
Needle in a Haystack? Cultural Heritage Resources in Designated Nature Environments of Southern Africa
The Dissected Environments of Southern Africa’s Protected Areas
What Constitutes the Haystack?
Disciplinary Haystack
Policy Haystack
Political Haystack
The Economic Haystack
Biophysical (Natural) Environment Haystack
Finding the Needle, Maneuvering the Haystack
Case Study Findings: Mapping Cultural Values in the Okavango Delta Wetland
Conclusion: Finding the Cultural Needle in Nature’s Haystack
Policy Suggestions
References
African Cultural Heritage and Economic Development: Dancing in the Forests of Time
Introduction: Framing Heritage Challenges
Heritage Time
Indigenizing African Archaeology
Sustaining Heritage
Heritage Natures
Urbanizing Heritage
Hybrid Heritages
Conclusion—Broadening Heritage Constituencies
Policy Suggestions
References
Heritage and/or Development—Which Way for Africa?
Introduction to African Heritages
Africa and the Development Agenda
Energy Projects
Heritage and Development
Sustainable Development and Heritage Issues
Resource Exploitation in Africa
World Heritage and Resource Exploitation
Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape
Heritage and Planning Development
Policy Suggestions
References
Communities and the Quotidian
Mega Developments in Africa: Lessons from the Meroe Dam
Heritage and Mega Development
Meroe Dam: An Overview
Dam Building in a Dictatorship
Funding the Dam: Economic Motivations
Cultural Impact and the Rescue Campaign
Impact of the Dam on Indigenous Groups
Clashes Between Archaeologists and Indigenous Groups
Discussion: Embracing the Cultural Landscape in Sustainable Development
Policy Suggestions
References
Heritage and Sustainability: Challenging the Archaic Approaches to Heritage Management in the South African Context
Communities and the Fortress Conservation Paradigm
eMakhosini Valley in KwaZulu-Natal
Implementing the Project Plan: Community Protests
Sustainability and Heritage Management: Comfortable Neighbors?
The IFP, the ANC, and the ‘Heritage Pawn’
Conclusion: Resolving the Conundrum
Policy Suggestions
References
The Antimonies of Heritage: Tradition and the Work of Weaving in a Ghanaian Workshop
Weaving and the Complex Entanglements of Craft, Heritage, and Livelihoods
Heritage, Development, and the Elite in a Ghanaian Festival
History, Policy, and the Creation of Local Heritage in Agotime
Community and the Social Grounding of Weaving Heritage
Craft Learning and Intangible Heritage
Conclusion: Imperiled Livelihoods and the Role of Heritage
Policy Suggestions
References
Transformation as Development: Southern Africa Perspectives on Capacity Building and Heritage
#HeritageMustFall
Changing Spaces
Of Experts and Empowerment
Heritage Works
Transforming Topographies of Power
Policy Suggestions
References
African States and the Transnational Development Agenda
The Culture Bank in West Africa: Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development
A Socio-History of Culture Banks in West Africa
Examining the Culture Bank Model
The Impact of the ‘Heritageisation’ Process on the Dynamics of Local and Sustainable Development
The Togolese and Beninese Culture Banks, Two Divergent Examples of the ‘Heritageization’ Process
The Impact of the ‘Heritageisation’ Process on the Development Model
The Necessity of the Appropriation of Both the Heritage and Economic Perspectives through the Concept of Guarantee
The Guarantee, the Equivalence Between the Values of Cultural Artifacts and Loans
A Non-lucrative Micro-credit Bank
Cultural Heritage and Development: Oscillating Between Universalism and Particularism
Universalization of Cultural Heritage and Particularization of Development
Cultural Heritage and Development in Culture Banks: The Fragmentation of States and International Agendas
Conclusion: Lessons Learned from the Culture Bank Model in West Africa
References
Exhibition Making as Aesthetic Justice: The Case of Memorial Production in Uganda
Between Peace, Development, and Heritage
Memory in the Liberal Peacebuilding Paradigm
The Exhibition Process
Travelling Testimonies in Kasese
Tracing and Making the Archive
Artistic Palimpsests
Conclusion: Temporary Transitions
Policy Suggestions
References
Modern Nostalgias for Sovereignty and Security: Preserving Cultural Heritage for Development in Eritrea
The Modern Architectural Heritage of Asmara
Politics of Sovereignty and Security
A Global Heritage Assemblage Around the Modern Architecture of Asmara
Asserting Sovereignty and Security
Restorative Nostalgia/Reflective Nostalgia
Preserving Cultural Heritage for Development: The Need for Reflexivity
Policy Suggestions
References
Epilogue: Whose Heritage, Whose Development?
References
Index