I think that people were better off believing that the forests, the rivers, the lakes, and so forth were inhabited by divinities, ancestral spirits, and other spiritual beings. Once these beliefs were supplanted the forest became lumber, the river and the lakes became dumps, and generally, nature was reduced to commodity.
Tag: environment
Science and oppression
I have noticed a number of African thinkers who present themselves as African-centered, as advocates of re-Africanization, who emphasize the imperative of us reclaiming our culture and restoring our sovereignty, while also positing Western science as the path to our redemption. I am puzzled as to how an appreciation of the former does not generate a more critical view of the latter position. Dr. Jacob H. Carruthers’s essay, Science and Oppression offers a very concise, yet incisive critique of this. Given that state of the world–the loss of species, global warming, ecological degradation, and the like–clearly the “master’s tools”, the products of Western culture, are they themselves reflective of a broader cultural ethos of alienation. Hence, the need to move beyond the tepid ground of “decolonization” to the imperative of Africanization and the revitalization of African “sciences” as tools of knowledge construction, cultural reorientation, and ecological restoration.