The edited book seeks to document the politics, struggles, and conflicts that are (re)defining the political ecologies of forests across the West African region. It will offer a critical account…
The edited book seeks to document the politics, struggles, and conflicts that are (re)defining the political ecologies of forests across the West African region. It will offer a critical account of the ongoing transformation of West African forest socio-ecologies partly as a continuation of the long history of precolonial, colonial and postcolonial struggles over the region’s forests, and partly as a response to powerful new political, economic, cultural and environmental dynamics. These dynamics raise important questions about the workings of power and the imperatives of social justice. Organized around these questions, this collection will be a new authoritative text on the changing political ecologies of forests across the West African region.
The proposed book will bring together review articles and empirical research papers, including new case studies to illuminate the regional commonalities, tensions and differences, and the various cross-scaler dynamics that are (re)defining the ways forests are understood, managed, used, conserved and contested across the region.
We invite contributions from early career and established scholars across the social sciences and activists who take a critical approach to analyzing forest socio-ecologies in the West African region. Contributions can focus on any country or part of the loosely defined region of West Africa. We particularly encourage submissions from contributors based in Africa, and we would like to see submissions from Anglophone and Francophone West Africa. All contributions will be peer-reviewed before successful chapters are finally accepted for publication. We seek contributions that grapple with questions of power and/or social justice along the following indicative themes but are not necessarily limited to them:
○ Forest governance at, and across, various scales
○ Subjectivities, identity, resistance and social movements
○ Forest ontologies and epistemologies from African perspectives
○ Knowledge, expertise, scientific forestry, Indigenous knowledge
○ Control, rights, access and livelihoods
○ Multi-species and more-than-human perspectives on forests
○ Histories, memory, colonialism, postcolonialism, race and (de)coloniality
○ Conflict ecologies, law enforcement, and militarization of forests
To indicate interest, please submit i) an extended abstract in the form of a chapter proposal of 500-1,000 words, inclusive of references ii) biography for each author (100-200 words), iii) primary affiliation of each author and contact details. Please send the proposal and or questions and enquiries to Adeniyi Asiyanbi (a.asiyanbi@ubc.ca), Melis Ece (me329@sussex.ac.uk) or James Fairhead (j.r.fairhead@sussex.ac.uk) by August 31, 2024.
Tentative timelines:
The deadline for submission of abstracts is Saturday, August 31, 2024. Authors whose abstracts are accepted will be informed by mid-September. Full draft chapters of 7,000 words are due by December 2024. Resubmission of finalized chapters after peer review by June, 2025. We expect publication to be by fall of 2025.
The book will be edited by Adeniyi Asiyanbi (University of British Columbia Okanagan), Melis Ece (University of Sussex) and James Fairhead (University of Sussex).