| Abstrakt: |
In Andean Afro-Pacific traditions, intercultural thinking is intimately related to decolonial resistance and the revalorization of culture linked to traditional environment and land use, such as ancestral knowledge about the preservation of mangroves. However, following decades of exploitation and appropriation, Afro-Pacific practices have been violently suppressed, displaced and invisibilized also by the Ecuadorian Buen Vivir-State, though »intercultural« according to its own definition and largely critical to Western development discourses, in reply to the devastating coastal earthquake of 2016. Against this backdrop, and drawing from extended ethnographic field research after 2016, this article traces the history of critical thought and interculturality across Latin American thinking and practice from the vantage point of largely overlooked Afro-Ecuadorian and Afro-Colombian traditions, suggesting a critical reading of the state as the prime actor of transformation toward sustainability in the region. Instead, ostensibly »local« Afro-Pacific forms of knowledge and practice are highlighted, given their, in fact, global relevance when taking, e. g., the vital role of mangrove habitats for the global climate into account. In summary, it is argued that from the shared perspectives of ecological sustainability, decolonial interculturality and critical development studies a focus on political spaces of margin beyond the state and toward overlooked »local« traditions is urgently required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
