Omenala: Toward an African-Centered Ecophilosophy and Political Ecology

Densu, Kwasi

doi:10.1177/0021934717729503

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Chabal 1983; McCulloch 1983; Tomás 2021). Cabral's contributions could be recognised as, among other things, an early kind of engaged analysis subsequently termed “Black political ecology” (Hawthorne 2019:7) and “African‐centered political ecology” (Densu 2018).…”

Section: Conclusion: Dialectics Of Culture National Liberation and Be...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Socionatures, Space, and Decolonisation: Amílcar Cabral's Praxis of Dialectics

deGrassi

2023

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The agronomic writings of influential theorist and independence leader Amílcar Cabral contain a hitherto underappreciated dialectical approach that is environmental, nonreductive, spatialised, nonteleological, and anticolonial, with significance for geographies that are simultaneously critical, physical, Southern, Black, African, and decolonial. Cabral's interests in socionatures—and especially colonialism and the state—emerged from childhood in colonial Cabo Verde. His undergraduate thesis examines dialectics of soil erosion and agrarian structures in Portugal, amidst his politicisation and anti‐colonial networking. He developed his dialectical approach spatially as he conducted Guinea‐Bissau's agricultural census and advanced beyond methodological nationalism and evolutionary stagism by emphasising colonial connections (colonial state mechanisation and export crops in African agrarian systems). These insights and concerns shaped and were shaped by his work on warehouses, Angolan plantations, and broader post‐1960 liberation struggles to suggest that a rural guerrilla strategy was possible and necessary in Guinea through dialectical engagements with diverse peasantries and international support.

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Section: Conclusion: Dialectics Of Culture National Liberation and Be...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Foreshadowing contemporary work in new materialisms and dialectical biology, Cabral's writings illustrate how “dialectical thinking can be interpreted in a relational way that sees the production of nature as a more‐than‐human process” (César 2018; Royle 2017:1442; cf. Densu 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socionatures, Space, and Decolonisation: Amílcar Cabral's Praxis of Dialectics

deGrassi

2023

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“…16 As part of his 'bioeconomic' program, the Romanian-American statistician and economist, Georgescu-Roegen, wrote that "all instruments of war […] should be prohibited completely" and he advocated the immediate sharing of global wealth as well 14 For related discussion regarding degrowth and ontology, see Buch-Hansen and Nesterova (2021) and Nirmal and Rocheleau (2019). For counters to anthropocentrism, see deep ecology (Naess 1973), ecocentrism (Eckersley 1992), and the less common term 'life-centered' applied to African contexts (Behrens 2014;Densu 2018) as well as Lewis Mumford's neo-luddism (Jiménez and Ramírez 2019: 575), Quaker approaches to economy (Lodenkamper et al 2019), and the ecoactivist group Deep Green Resistance who state in their principles: "Civilization, especially industrial civilization, is fundamentally destructive to life on earth. Our task is to create a life-centered resistance movement that will dismantle industrial civilization by any means necessary" (DGR 2020).…”

Section: Proto-degrowthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Enck-Wanzer applied "epistemological liberation" to work by the Young Lords Organization (young Puerto Rican activists in New York who started in the late 1960s) while Andrews and Okpanachi discussed "epistemic oppression" more generally in their critique of academic Eurocentric and hegemonic frameworks. Also, see Densu (2018) for an outline of African-centered ecophilosophy. For decolonizing political ecology, see Schulz (2017) and for perspectives on performing decolonial research, see Zanotti et al (2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forgotten pioneers in degrowth: John Africa and the MOVE Organization

Fiscella

2022

Journal of Political Ecology

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Decades before the term 'degrowth' had gained currency as a rallying cry against the ideology of economic expansionism, John Africa founded The MOVE Organization in Philadelphia based on sanctity of life and dismantling institutions of state and capital (including economic growth). Members eschewed many forms of technology, lived collectively, harbored stray animals, and strove toward an entirely raw food diet in a communal lifestyle that many today would label 'simple living' or 'primivitist.' They rejected fashion and cosmetics, demonstrated for animal liberation as well as against police brutality, militarism, prisons, and pollution of land, water, and air. Notably, John Africa and MOVE emphasized the need to maintain sobriety and break with personal addictions in order to achieve personal and societal balance. Yet, rather than a set of 'single issues' strung together, John Africa formulated an all-encompassing paradigm. This article presents John Africa's paradigm as well as his grassroots decolonial semiotics that critically deconstructed, qualified, repurposed, and reframed conventional English language terms toward emancipatory and radically egalitarian ends. This paradigm, based on 'Mother Nature' and oneness, aligned with (without overtly borrowing from) many Indigenous and Aboriginal paradigms that similarly locate human life as interwoven with habitats and nonhuman animals. Whether or not one agrees with his ideas or approach, John Africa and the organization he co-founded seem to clearly qualify as early pioneers of degrowth. This article brings their hitherto unrecognized contributions into conversation with degrowth literature both to fill out the historical record and provide potentially useful insights for degrowth researchers and organizers alike.

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“… 8 For instance, Kwasi Densu’s 2018 work in the Journal of Black Studies pushes us towards an idea of African and African Studies that foregoes western conceptions of land as a tool of economic development, in favor of a more holistic eco-philosophical and Black Ecological standpoint: Kwasi Densu, “Omenala: Toward an African-Centered Ecophilosophy and Political Ecology,” Journal of Black Studies 49 (2018), 29–52. That work builds upon longer term notions of racial ecologies and indigenous ecological knowledge that explore the multiple ways of knowing and imagining the human-natural world in opposition to dominant structures of white supremacy and exploitation.…”

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confidence: 99%

Ecologies of Development: Ecophilosophies and Indigenous Action on the Tana River

Parker

2022

Hist. Afr.

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This article argues for a reorientation of African environmental history that incorporates localized ecophilosophies, racial ecologies, and environmental justice, and posits that doing so allows us to challenge the sociocultural and ecological implications of colonial and postcolonial environmental development more rigorously in East Africa. Focusing on Kenya, I argue that environmental justice-oriented histories of economic development elevate the subjectivities, cosmologies, and experiences of rural Kenyan populations rather than reducing the environment and its resources to their instrumental qualities On the Tana River, pastoral and riverine groups such as the Pokomo and Orma suffered and challenged the exigencies of water extraction in specific ways tied to their existing relationships with the local environment. By looking at the ways rural communities in arid regions framed their environmental relationships, we can begin to appreciate the specific modalities and cosmologies through which they resisted the imposition of cash crop agriculture and water development. The article demonstrates an interdisciplinary approach utilizing Black ecologies and environmental justice frameworks that restores vitality to the rural experience of imperialism and offers more rigorous critiques of global development dogmas under racial capitalism, particularly surrounding the omnipresent threat of ecocide driven by dispossession, resource extraction, toxicity, and climate change.

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Omenala: Toward an African-Centered Ecophilosophy and Political Ecology

Cited by 8 publications

References 26 publications

Socionatures, Space, and Decolonisation: Amílcar Cabral's Praxis of Dialectics

Socionatures, Space, and Decolonisation: Amílcar Cabral's Praxis of Dialectics

Forgotten pioneers in degrowth: John Africa and the MOVE Organization

Ecologies of Development: Ecophilosophies and Indigenous Action on the Tana River

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