The books are outputs of the National Research Fund (NRF) South African Research Chairs Initiatives (SARCHI) Ocean Cultures and Heritage, headed by Professor Rose Boswell.
Dr Jessica Thornton is the sole author of Elemental Feast. Prof Boswell authored Ocean Beings and Coastal Worlds with inputs from Dr Thornton and alumnus Rebecca Hayter. All the books feature the photography of Laetitia Bosch and Francois du Plessis.
A preview of Ocean Beings reflects Africa’s coastal intangible cultural heritage, the ritual practices, beliefs, and symbolism of humans engaged with the ocean – as well as Africa’s coastal tangible cultural heritage (artifacts, monuments, and varied forms of material culture).
The book highlights how the ocean is part of our collective heritage, and how it contributes to our understanding of balanced ecosystems, values, and practices.
“Ocean heritage is very important in the context of Southern Africa and the issues around that need to be further developed when looking at climate change in the context of food security,” said Dr Thornton.
Elemental Feast, by Dr Thornton, is a culmination of two years of her post-doctoral work on food heritage and specifically coastal food heritage.
The book is a sensory exploration of heritage, identity, and the elemental forces that shape our food and culture. Through vivid stories, memories, and recipes, the work invites readers on a journey where fire, air, water, and earth are intertwined into the flavours, textures, and aromas of Southern Africa’s culinary traditions.
Coastal Worlds offers a glimpse into anthropological research on coastal and intangible cultural heritage in four countries, namely South Africa, Namibia, Lamu (Kenya) and Seychelles.
Prof Boswell (left) composed the text and poetry in the book, which shares the voices and images of people encountered between 2022 to 2024.
For her, island, and coastal places, offer a poetics and politics that recognise transmaterial and decolonial relations with the sea. She says that the ethnographer has to be a very keen observer, because cultural heritage finds expression in tattoos, boats, food, and art.
These complex layers of human relations with the sea need to be sensitively articulated. While the published books (including the anthologies) feature human resilience and joy in human-ocean relations, they also tackle the issue of loss, displacement and trauma in coastal Africa.
Prof Boswell said that the work of the SARCHI project is revealing of the complexity of human-ocean relations, however, it can also be challenging for the researchers who must interact with southern Africa’s painful history of colonisation and current inequality.
Ultimately, the books offer another ‘path’ via which to showcase research outputs, and these are transdisciplinary outputs not typical of the usual research paper.
Dr Thornton (left) added that, “When conducting our interviews, we had quite a few stories that we felt needed to be told but these did not seem to have a place in the academic world,”.
By this she meant that sometimes, it is difficult to articulate the range and depth of human experience merely via scholarly text.
Prof Boswell echoed this by explaining how poetry can be a device for ethnography; a key that can unlock memories of the ‘field’, including one’s feelings about being in a particular moment in time, she said. “Poetry can offer evocative language, but it can also be surprisingly clear and accessible to more people”.
Attendees included the Executive Dean of Humanities, Prof Pamela Maseko, Deputy Dean, Jacqueline Luck, Director of the CMR, Dr Denise Schael, staff, as well as guests who are eager to forge potential future projects that are transdisciplinary and will focus on ocean heritage and ocean sciences more broadly.
Prof Maseko commended the approach taken by the authors which moved beyond traditional academic boundaries, combining insights from anthropology, cultural studies, art and marine law.
She also reiterated Prof Boswell’s point of oceans not just being an ecological system, but the space where cultures, livelihoods, and economies intersect.
The launch also featured immersive photographs taken during field trips in the four different countries, mesmerising sculptures by Sarah Walmsley and the Flow e-commerce proposition of the SARCHI project, visualised by graphic designer, Tarryn Rennie.
The books were published through RPCIG Langaa, an African publisher, focused on bringing innovative and substantive scholarship to the world.