Work: Currently a Design Manager at Meta.
Education: Currently a Ph.D. student in Design at Carnegie Mellon University. I earned a Master's in Strategic Design & Management from Parsons School of Design. I also earned a BS in Entrepreneurship and a BA in International Studies from the University of Utah.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.
My little sister challenged me weeks ago, asking why I needed a Ph.D., or even school, to achieve my dreams of bringing change in the natural resource space across the African landscape. I thought for a second, my mind linking to the ideology behind the movie Black Panther to better explain what success could look like in terms that my younger sister understands. I told her that I realized I am not a foot soldier; I am a thinker who needs to learn to think better. I told her that I am going to school to learn how to create Wakanda in real life. She laughed and told me Wakanda isn’t real.
Azra Aksamija’s lecture on Future Heritage spoke to this idea of creating new culture, not unlike the Afrofuturist dream of Wakanda. In the lecture, she frames the refugee crisis as the destruction of culture. She questions how culture can be in the melting pot of refugee camps.
I know the placelessness and disorientation felt by refugees well. I was uprooted early in my life when my family fled Sierra Leone for the comparative safety of Guinea at a young age. We had to adapt to fit into this alien culture throughout the year that we were there. It is impossible to know how much of our culture we lost in Guinea, and I will always wonder how much continuity there has been in my heritage.
The current populist conception, held by many in nations that receive swathes of refugees, is that if refugees must come, they should shed their culture to become assimilated as rapidly as possible. It is an extreme anti-multiculturalism that denies the possibility that exposure to new cultures can make us more empathetic to people on the other side of the world.
This drive to dismantle refugee culture is not only led by the populist minority but also by the framing of refugee acceptance. Global powers present it as a form of aid, whereby there is a giver and a receiver. Much like how financial assistance given to nations in the developing world comes with expectations of how they should spend the money, refugees suffer from expectations of how they should behave culturally. But many refugees have been displaced into the West because of actions by the West. Whether it be from wars with heavy Western involvement or the West’s constant drive to exploit the global south’s natural resource ecologies, people have been driven from their land by the West. Only when these nations take responsibility for their actions will the taking of refugees cease to be seen as aid and start being regarded as the fulfillment of a duty. Only then will refugees be able to hold onto their culture.
Reinvigorating refugees with the desire to regain their culture is only the first part of the effort. Practically, what is the process of building refugee culture back? Azra Aksamija’s answer is in her “Four Pillars of Future Heritage”: Imagination Across Time-Scales, Performative Preservation, Culturally Sensitive Design, and Abundance against Scarcity. In short, Aksamija has produced criteria for heritage preservation. The solution must be a conscious performance of a culture, which can bridge the barrier of time, all while being sensitive to the culture in question, and working regardless of the cultural artifacts available.
With the criteria for a successful solution for the preservation and rebuilding set by Aksamija, it is time to consider what kind of solutions will work. The first question is whether the refugee culture must be preserved through isolation, or can a transcultural dimension help to involve the community taking in the refugees? Perhaps, if a hybrid culture can work as a midpoint between the refugee and local cultures, the transition will be smoother.
But how do we travel down this path without dismantling either culture? Can there ever be a shared heritage, or is doing so an attempt to appropriate something not ours? Or is outsider participation a means to preserve? Transcultural dimensions are complex and in need of further study.
Then there is the matter of which cultural materials will best serve the purpose, and whether technology has a role to play? If refugees can harness technology, they can disseminate cultural artifacts between each other with ease.