Overview

In western scholarship, Africau2019s so-called sacred forests are often treated as the remains of primeval forests, ethnographic curiosities, or cultural relics from a static precolonial past. Their continuing importance in African societies, however, shows that this u201crelic theoryu201d is inadequate for understanding current social and ecological dynamics. African Sacred Groves challenges dominant views of these landscape features by redefining the subject matter beyond the compelling yet uninformative term u201csacred.u201d The term u201cethnoforestsu201d incorporates the environmental, social-political, and symbolic aspects of these forests without giving undue primacy to their religious values. This interdisciplinary book by an international group of scholars and conservation practitioners provides a methodological framework for understanding these forests by examining their ecological characteristics, delineating how they relate to social dynamics and historical contexts, exploring their ideological aspects, and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses as sites for community-based resource management and the conservation of cultural and biological diversity.

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9780821417898

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Author Information

Michael Sheridan is an assistant professor of anthropology at Middlebury College. Celia Nyamweru teaches in the Department of Anthropology and the African Studies Program at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.

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