Relationality, Reciprocity, and Flourishing in an African Landscape
Relationality, Reciprocity, and Flourishing in an African Landscape
The chapter considers the environmental ethics underlying certain practices and beliefs observed in the course of field research with primarily ||Khao-a Dama people in west Namibia. ||Khao-a Dama perspectives embody a type of “relational environmental ethics” that refracts anthropocentric/ecocentric dichotomies, and is characterized by respect for, and reciprocity with, agency and intentionality as located in entities beyond the human (ancestors, spirits, animals, healing plants and rain). The chapter connects this worldview with contemporary environmental virtue ethics, arguing that it is compatible with a theoretical framework of “ecological eudaimonism” as a fitting response to a complex contemporary world of “wicked” environmental problems.
Keywords: ||Khao-a Dama, Namibia, Aristotle, environmental ethics, virtue ethics, Michael Hannis, Sian Sullivan
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