This volume investigates alternative epistemological pathways by which knowledge production in Africa can proceed. The contributors, using different intellectual dynamics, explore the existing epistemological dominance of the West—from architecture to gender discourse, from environmental management to democratic governance—and offer distinct and unique arguments that challenge the denigration of the different and differing modes of knowing that the West considered “barbaric” and “primitive.” This volume therefore constitutes a minimal gesture that further contributes to the ongoing discourse on alternative modes of knowing in Africa.

This volume investigates alternative epistemological pathways by which knowledge production in Africa can proceed. The contributors, using different intellectual dynamics, explore the existing epistemological dominance of the West—from architecture to gender discourse, from environmental management to democratic governance—and offer distinct and unique arguments that challenge the denigration of the different and differing modes of knowing that the West considered “barbaric” and “primitive.” This volume therefore constitutes a minimal gesture that further contributes to the ongoing discourse on alternative modes of knowing in Africa.

This volume investigates alternative epistemological pathways by which knowledge production in Africa can proceed. The contributors, using different intellectual dynamics, explore the existing epistemological dominance of the West-from architecture to gender discourse, from environmental management to democratic governance-and offer distinct and unique arguments that challenge the denigration of the different and differing modes of knowing that the West considered "barbaric" and "primitive." This volume therefore constitutes a minimal gesture that further contributes to the ongoing discourse on alternative modes of knowing in Africa. .

This book pulls literature together to examine the quality of climate governance based in the experience of Global South regions—Africa, Latin America, and Caribbean. While these regions are resilient, the IPCC 2022 Report indicates that the effects of climate change are crippling their thinly structured governance systems and limited capacities. For example, in addition to environmental devastation, loss of life, and livelihoods, these regions have endured most of the “loss and damage” due to climate change impacts. How are they responding? What are the outcomes? And where do they go from here? Given this background, the book’s goal is to question assumptions about climate governance patterns, systems, institutions, and processes in these regions, using comparative analytical techniques while distilling information about policy outcomes that other approaches do not provide. It argues that these regions and individual countries within them have a lot to learn from and about each other rather than look to the Global North and wealthy countries for economic, political, and administrative models that hardly match their lived experience and ontological outlooks. In doing so, it aspires to promote a fruitful South-South policy-related dialogue via scholarly exchanges and also contribute to advance the study and practice of international and comparative public administration. From this perspective, scholars, researchers, educators, public managers, and practitioners will find the book relevant to and useful for their respective endeavors.

This volume interrogates global health and especially the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role that science has played in mitigating the human experiences of pandemics and health over the centuries. Science, and the scientific method, has always been at the forefront of the human attempt at undermining the virulent consequences of sicknesses and diseases. However, the scientific image of humans in the world is founded on the presumption of possessing the complete understanding about humans and their physiological and psychological frameworks. This volume challenges this scientific assumption. Global health denotes the complex and cumulative health profile of humanity that involves not only the framework of scientific researches and practices that investigates and seeks to improve the health of all people on the globe, but also the range of humanistic issues - economic, cultural, social, ideological - that constitute the sources of inequities and threat to the achievement of a positive global health profile. This volume balances the argument that diseases and pandemics are human problems that demand both scientific and humanistic interventions.

This book explores the concept of 'cognitive injustice': the failure to recognise the different ways of knowing by which people across the globe run their lives and provide meaning to their existence. Boaventura de Sousa Santos shows why global social justice is not possible without global cognitive justice. Santos argues that Western domination has profoundly marginalised knowledge and wisdom that had been in existence in the global South. She contends that today it is imperative to recover and valorize the epistemological diversity of the world. Epistemologies of the South outlines a new kind of bottom-up cosmopolitanism, in which conviviality, solidarity and life triumph against the logic of market-ridden greed and individualism.

In Biomedical Hegemony and Democracy in South Africa Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta and Tabi Chama-James Tabenyang unpack the contentious South African government’s post-apartheid policy framework of the ‘‘return to tradition policy’’. The conjuncture between deep sociopolitical crises, witchcraft, the ravaging HIV/AIDS pandemic and the government’s initial reluctance to adopt antiretroviral therapy turned away desperate HIV/AIDS patients to traditional healers. Drawing on historical sources, policy documents and ethnographic interviews, Pemunta and Tabenyang convincingly demonstrate that despite biomedical hegemony, patients and members of their therapy-seeking group often shuttle between modern and traditional medicine, thereby making both systems of healthcare complementary rather than alternatives. They draw the attention of policy-makers to the need to be aware of ‘‘subaltern health narratives’’ in designing health policy.