Memory and Cultural Landscape at the Khami World Heritage Site, Zimbabwe is informed by the author’s experience of living near and working at Great Zimbabwe and Khami as an archaeologist, and uses archives and traditional narratives to build a biography for this lost cultural landscape. Whereas Great Zimbabwe is a resource for the state’s contentious narrative of unity, and a tool for cultural activism among communities whose cultural rights are denied through the nationalisation and globalisation heritage, at Khami, which has lost its historical gravity, there is only silence.
Researchers and students of cultural heritage will find this book a much-needed case study on heritage, identity, community and landscape from an African perspective.
The book can be found at:
https://www.routledge.com/Memory-and-Cultural-Landscape-at-the-Khami-World-Heritage-Site-Zimbabwe/Sinamai/p/book/9781138496385
Posted on 14 Sep 2018
Managing Heritage in Africa: Who Cares? Edited by Webber Ndoro, Shadreck Chirikure and Janette Deacon (Routledge 2017)
Managing Heritage in Africa provides a wide-ranging, up-to-date synthesis of heritage management practice in Africa, covering a broad spectrum of heritage issues such as archaeology, living traditions, sacred sites, heritage of pain (slavery), international conventions cultural landscapes, heritage in conflict areas and heritage versus development. Dealing with both intangible and tangible heritage, Managing Heritage in Africa gives an informative insight into some of the major issues and approaches to contemporary heritage management in Africa and situates the challenges facing heritage practitioners.
https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Managing_Heritage_in_Africa.html?id=SlsyDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y
Posted on 26 Oct 2017
For a long time, resource conservationists have viewed environmental conservation as synonymous with wilderness and wildlife resources only, oblivious to the contributions made by cultural and heritage resources. However, cultural heritage resources in many parts of the developing world are gradually becoming key in social (e.g. communities’ identities and museums), economic (heritage tourism and eco-tourism), educational (curriculum development), civic (intergenerational awareness), and international resources management (e.g. UNESCO). In universities, African cultural heritage resources are facing a challenge of being brought into various academic discourses and syllabi in a rather reactive and/or haphazard approach, resulting in failure to fully address and research these resources’ conservation needs to ensure that their use in multiple platforms and by various stakeholders is sustainable. This book seeks to place African cultural heritage studies and conservation practices within an international and modern world discourse of conservation by presenting its varied themes and topics that are important for the development of the wider field of cultural heritage studies and management.
http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319320151#aboutBook
Posted on 02 Jun 2017
Dissatisfaction has matured in Africa and elsewhere around the fact that often, the dominant frameworks for interpreting the continent's past are not rooted on the continent's value system and philosophy. This creates knowledge that does not make sense especially to local communities. The big question therefore is can Africans develop theories that can contribute towards the interpretation of the African past, using their own experiences? Framed within a concept revision substrate, the collection of papers in this thought provoking volume argues for concept revision as a step towards decolonizing knowledge in the post-colony. The various papers powerfully expose that 'cleansed' knowledge is not only locally relevant: it is also locally accessible and globally understandable.
http://www.langaa-rpcig.net/Archives-Objects-Places-and.html
Posted on 02 Jun 2017