Harnessing Cultural Capital for Sustainability

edited by Munyaradzi Mawere and Samuel Awuah-Nyamekye

A Pan Africanist Perspective

This book argues that the basic component of any society’s social security and sustainability is cultural capital and its ability to fully recognise diversity in knowledge production and advancement. However, with regard to African societies, since the dawn of racial slavery and colonialism, cultural capital – indigenous knowledge in particular – has iniquitously and acrimoniously suffered marginalisation and pejorative ragtags. Increasingly since the 1990s, cultural capital informed by African knowledge systems has taken central stage in discussions of sustainability and development. This is not unrelated with the recognition by America and Europe in particular of the central role that cultural capital could and should assume in the logic of development and sustainability at a global level. Unfortunately, action has often failed to match words with regard to the situation in Africa. The current book seeks to make a difference by exploring the role that African cultural capital could and should assume to guarantee development and sustainability on the continent and globally. It argues that lofty pan-African ideals of collective self-reliance, self-sustaining development and economic growth would come to naught unless determined and decisive steps are taken towards full recognition of indigenous cultural capital on the continent.

Munyaradzi Mawere

Munyaradzi Mawere is a Professor in the Simon Muzenda School of Arts, Culture and Heritage Studies at Great Zimbabwe University. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology; a Master’s Degree in Social Anthropology; a second Master’s Degree in Philosophy; a third Master’s Degree in Development Studies; BA (Hons) Degree in Philosophy; Certificate in Tertiary and Higher Learning; Certificate in Information Technology; and a Certificate in Diplomacy, Negotiation and Bargaining. He is an author of more than 50 books and over 200 academic publications straddling the following areas: poverty and development studies, African philosophy, cultural philosophy, democracy, politics of food production, humanitarianism and civil society organisations, urban anthropology, existential anthropology, environmental anthropology, society and politics, religion, decoloniality and African studies.

Samuel Awuah-Nyamekye

Samuel Awuah-Nyamekye is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Religion and Human Values at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. Awuah-Nyamekye holds a PhD from the School of Philosophy, Religion and the History of Science of the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. His current research interests are focussed on religion and the environment, environmental ethics, religion and development, religion and politics, and women and religion.