Abstract:

These six articles present case studies of the complex relationship between culture, religion and nature across a broad arc of sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, Togo, Benin, Cameroon, Kenya, Mozambique, and South Africa. The authors are scholars who are either native to, or long-term residents of these countries, and each presents the results of recent fieldwork on the intersections of belief and conservation. Collectively, they demonstrate that sacredness does not simply equal conservation. They show instead that social, political, and economic arrangements mediate cosmology and ecology, and it is in these institutional arenas that Africans negotiate both spiritual values and pragmatic material goals.

Author: Celia Nyamweru, Michael Sheridan