Hidden Voices of the Land: Spirituality and the Environment in Africa

This volume explores sacred sites in Africa and the ways that African knowledge has been and can be applied to mounting environmental issues. Together, the essays yield not a singular paradigm but rather an ethics of engagement common to the continent: a respect for the claims and rightful presence of nonhumans, a patience for unpredictability, and a sense of humility in decentering both humanity and Western knowledge. The contributions in this volume thus collectively move toward a record of African perspectives and experiences of the environment and the many roles played by nonhuman entities in a variety of African communities. As the contributors demonstrate, successfully accessing vernacular environmentalism in Africa requires acknowledging the complex interplay of agents, including spirits. Hidden Voices of the Land challenges scholars to take Indigenous African epistemologies, cosmologies, and spiritualities seriously in the context of ongoing ecological crises and the looming threat of global climate change.