African Heritage Challenges

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.

Comprises the first collected work to explicitly focus on the relationship between heritage and sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa Offers cutting-edge contributions by eminent and early-career African and Africanist scholars, exploring the relationships between heritage, development initiatives, and communities at various scales across the sub-continent Provides detailed policy recommendations, offering valuable insights to not only students and researchers but also professionals and policy makers involved in heritage management and/or development

Autorentext

Dr. Britt Baillie is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Wits City Institute, University of the Witwatersrand and a founding member of the Centre for Urban Conflict Research, University of Cambridge.

Prof. Marie Louise Stig Sørensen is Professor of European Prehistory and Heritage Studies at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, and the Director of the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre.

Inhalt

1. Heritage challenges: Perspectives on Contestations and Expectations from Sub-Saharan Africa and Neighbouring Regions.- 2. Needle in a Haystack? Cultural Heritage Resources and the Nature-based Environments of Southern Africa.- 3. African Cultural Heritage and Economic Development: Dancing in the Forests of Time.- 4. Heritage and/or Development - Which Way for Africa?.- 5. Mega Developments in Africa: Lessons from the Meroe Dam.- 6. Heritage and Sustainability: Challenging the Archaic Approaches to Heritage Management in the South African Context.- 7. The Antimonies of Heritage: Tradition and the Work of Weaving in a Ghanaian Workshop.- 8. Transformation as Development: Southern Africa Perspectives on Capacity Building and Heritage.- 9. The Culture Bank in West Africa: Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development.- 10. Exhibition Making as Aesthetic Justice: A Case of Memorial Production in Uganda.- 11. Modern Nostalgias for Sovereignty and Security: Preserving Cultural Heritage for Development in Eritrea.- 12. Epilogue-Whose Heritage, Whose Development?.