This paper analyzes African-derived oral traditions engaged with narrative dilemmas that follow from the expropriation of land and water as private property.
Paper long abstract
This paper analyzes African-derived oral traditions engaged with narrative dilemmas that follow from the expropriation of land and water as private property. Surveying their substance and structure as well as the circumstances of their global diffusion, it argues that these traditions should be understood not merely as ethnographic examples of local knowledge but as collective works in political philosophy keyed to questions of sociability in the natural world.