Quantum Coasts, Oceanic Worlds and Cultural Heritage in Africa

This book investigates the ways in which human reconnection with the ocean and coast is a desire and bid for a reconnection with human sensory experience on Earth. In seeking to examine the sensory, temporal and spiritual human experience of the ocean and coast, as well as the cultural dimensions of those experiences, it seeks to offer deep insight into what it really means to 'rehumanize' ocean and heritage management in Africa, and by extension, the world. The author proposes that rehumanization involves deepening emerging concepts of human-nature interaction; perceiving nature as consisting not only of potentially sentient entities and qualities, but considering that these have their own, not yet fully discernible logics and processes. This book also suggests that the interaction between humans and nature specifically the ocean be considered as a locus for a radical decolonization of identity in Africa, since it involves consideration of African connection with the ocean, not via the violent processes of slavery and colonization but via processes of adaptation and co-resilience with nature.

Embarks on a compelling sensory ethnography of human relations with the sea in Africa Discusses how intangible coastal African cultural heritage will become critical in the age of climate crisis Offers rich ethnographic accounts of ritual, belief and the human experience of the ocean in southern and east Africa

Autorentext

Rosabelle Boswell is an anthropologist, poet and the South African Research Chair of Ocean Cultures and Heritage. She is based at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. She has an MA in anthropology(University of Cape Town) and a PhD in anthropology (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam). She is the author or editor of several books, including Le Malaise Creole: Ethnic Identity in Mauritius (2006, Berghahn Books, Oxford), The Palgrave Handbook of Blue Heritage (2022, Palgrave MacMillan) and Lover Brine (2024, RPCIG, Cameroon).

Inhalt

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Life Tides, Literary Currents and Overflow Methodologies.- Chapter 3. Multitemporality and Entanglements in Namibia.- Chapter 4. Sacred Oceans and Superposition in South Africa.- Chapter 5. Recursive Momentum and Echoes in Zanzibar.- Chapter 6. Balance, Body and Uncertainty in the Waters of Lamu.- Chapter 7. The Ancestral Tides and the Ecology of Remembrance in Seychelles.- Chapter 8. Conclusion: Life-Worlds and Life Lessons.