ASCL Seminar: The Blue Values Journey to Research and Resilience in Coastal Africa
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The Africa Agenda 2063 emphasises the importance of culture to human development and sustainability in Africa. However, analysis of national heritage policy and the ocean economy strategy in four coastal African states, reveals enduring commitment to orthodox heritage practice and economistic ocean policy. Conducting anthropological research in South Africa, Namibia, Lamu (Kenya) and Mahe (Seychelles), Prof. Rose Boswell (Nelson Mandela University) and her team seek to advance a more democratic, locally grounded heritage policy and ocean management practice. Achieving this critical goal is however, challenging, as these are sites of struggle for offshore resource exploration and development.
The presentation offered adopts Maldonado Torres' (2019) decoloniality and Vivieros de Castro’s (1998) perspectivism, as well as recent thinking on posthumanism (and ecofeminism) to make the case for a more iterative, dynamic heritage practice and inclusive ocean management in Africa. The presentation includes discussion of a new project conceived by Boswell, entitled the Blue Values Journey. The project seeks to bring academia, the private sector and government into a joint alliance to advance the resilience of coastal communities in a time of climate change and rapid coastal development.
This event will be held physically in Leiden. For registrees who cannot travel to Leiden a link to an online platform will be sent one day before the start of the event.
Photo: beach site at La Digue, Seychelles. Credits: Svein-Magne Tunli (via Wikimedia Commons).
Rose (Rosabelle) Boswell is a DSI-NRF South African Research Chair in Ocean Cultures and Heritage. She leads a multi-country project on coastal cultural heritage in southern and Eastern Africa. She has an MA Anthropology from UCT and a PhD from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Her most recent endeavour is a science-to-business project entitled The Blue Values Journey. Beyond her scholarly work, Rose is also a Country-of-Origin Expert (Mauritius, South Africa) for cultural rights infringements in immigration cases. She is funded by the SA National Research Foundation (NRF), Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) Special Fund for research on coastal resilience in the Indian Ocean Region and by the NRF Community of Practice for research on the cultural valuation of the ocean in the Global Ocean Account Framework.
Date, time and location
04 April 2024
16.00 - 17.30
Pieter de la Courtgebouw / Faculty of Social Sciences, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden
Room 5.A42
Registration
Posted on 13 December 2023, last modified on 23 September 2024