Ashton Sinamai – författare

This handbook is a foundational reference point for critical heritage research about Africa and its diaspora.Foregrounding the diversity of knowledge systems needed to examine heritage issues in such a diverse continent, the contributors to this volume:argue for an understanding heritage that is at once both natural and cultural, tangible and intangible, political and dissonant, going beyond the physical and objective to include subjective narratives, performances, rituals, memories and emotionsexamine the pre-coloniality, coloniality, post-coloniality, and decoloniality of current African heritage discourses and their consequencesanalyse how heritage legislation derived from colonial law is compatible or otherwise with how heritage is perceived, identified and remembered in African communitiesdiscuss questions of repatriation, restitution and reparations in relation to the return of artefacts from Western countriesilluminate the importance of ‘difficult heritage’ within Africa and its diasporaconsider the role of heritage for development in AfricaMaking a crucial contribution to our understanding of African conceptions and practices of heritage, this book is an important read for scholars of African Studies, heritage and museum studies, archaeology, anthropology and history.

This book focuses on a forgotten place—the Khami World Heritage site in Zimbabwe. It examines how professionally ascribed values and conservation priorities affect the cultural landscape when there is a disjuncture between local community and national interests, and explores the epistemic violence that often accompanied colonial heritage management and archaeology in southern Africa. The central premise is that the history of the modern Zimbabwe nation, in terms of what is officially remembered and celebrated, inevitably determines how that past is managed. It is about how places are experienced and remembered through narratives and how the loss of this heritage memory may mark the un-inheriting of place. 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.

This handbook is a foundational reference point for critical heritage research about Africa and its diaspora.Foregrounding the diversity of knowledge systems needed to examine heritage issues in such a diverse continent, the contributors to this volume:argue for an understanding heritage that is at once both natural and cultural, tangible and intangible, political and dissonant, going beyond the physical and objective to include subjective narratives, performances, rituals, memories and emotionsexamine the pre-coloniality, coloniality, post-coloniality, and decoloniality of current African heritage discourses and their consequencesanalyse how heritage legislation derived from colonial law is compatible or otherwise with how heritage is perceived, identified and remembered in African communitiesdiscuss questions of repatriation, restitution and reparations in relation to the return of artefacts from Western countriesilluminate the importance of ‘difficult heritage’ within Africa and its diasporaconsider the role of heritage for development in AfricaMaking a crucial contribution to our understanding of African conceptions and practices of heritage, this book is an important read for scholars of African Studies, heritage and museum studies, archaeology, anthropology and history.

This book focuses on a forgotten place—the Khami World Heritage site in Zimbabwe. It examines how professionally ascribed values and conservation priorities affect the cultural landscape when there is a disjuncture between local community and national interests, and explores the epistemic violence that often accompanied colonial heritage management and archaeology in southern Africa. The central premise is that the history of the modern Zimbabwe nation, in terms of what is officially remembered and celebrated, inevitably determines how that past is managed. It is about how places are experienced and remembered through narratives and how the loss of this heritage memory may mark the un-inheriting of place. 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.