Call for Papers: African Ethnoforests, 01/04
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO AN EDITED VOLUME ON
African Ethnoforests: Sacred Groves, Culture, and
Conservation (working title)
A book of 150 to 200 printed pages (under 100,000 words) to
be edited by Celia Nyamweru, Department of Anthropology, St.
Lawrence University, Canton, NY 13617, USA.
Michael Sheridan, Department of Anthropology, University of
Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA
We seek contributions from a wide range of disciplines,
including, but not limited to: anthropologists, historians,
political scientists, ecologists, foresters and geographers
with case studies or synthetic reviews of African
ethnoforests. By ethnoforests we mean forests with
cultural/religious significance, often popularly known as
'sacred groves'.
In both academic and general discourse 'sacred groves' are
taken to represent the precolonial social order, indigenous
cultural values, and 'indigenous' environmental knowledge -
in brief, 'tradition.'
This book will go beyond such a static vision of
ethnoforests in Africa by demonstrating the modernity and
continuing relevance of these forests. Ethnoforests are not
ancient relics; rather, they are places where Africans
continue to negotiate gender identity, political legitimacy,
metaphysical exchanges, and terms of resource access. The
essays in African Ethnoforests will review regional
variations in the forests' social functions (e.g., West
African secret societies, East African settlement sites and
grave markers, and Southern African rainmaking shrines),
ecological characteristics, and potential for biodiversity
conservation and cultural self-determination. We are also
looking for essays that evaluate how factors such as
colonial rule, tourism, agrarian change, postcolonial land
tenure policies, and religious change have affected the
forests' status.
The rapid destruction of tropical forests has become
recognized as one of the world's major environmental crises.
Many conservation initiatives are founded on a top-down
approach to influencing environmental management, and even
when planners pay lip service to the values of
traditional/indigenous environmental knowledge systems and
the importance of 'listening to the elders' the practical
realities may be different. Alliances between western
conservation groups and local people may be very narrowly
based and indeed fragile, as a result of these different
perceptions, priorities, and practices. We will be happy to
consider essays that critically evaluate conservation
initiatives for such forests.
We hope to put together a volume that, by comparing the
historical trajectories, cultural meanings, and conservation
values of African ethnoforests, will become the major source
for understanding the forests' complexities and potentials
for both scholars and conservation practitioners.
Contributions from North, West, Central, and Southern Africa
will be particularly welcome, since the editors' regional
specializations are in East Africa (Nyamweru - Kenya;
Sheridan - Tanzania). The book will be in English, and we
will be very interested to bring material from francophone
West Africa to an Anglophone readership.
Contributors should submit manuscripts (electronic or hard
copy) of no more than 8000 words (about 32 pages in
double-spaced 12 point Times New Roman font) by January 1st,
2004 to the editors at the following address:
Michael Sheridan
Department of Anthropology
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT 05405, USA.
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar