Mainstream sustainability frameworks often adopt technocratic and apolitical approaches that overlook the historical, ethical, and epistemological roots of environmental crises. This article argues that sustainability is fundamentally a worldview problem and advances an Afrocentric worldview as a critical paradigm for rethinking sustainability and environmental justice. Grounded in Afrocentric ontology, epistemology, and ethics, Dandridge emphasizes interdependence, relational consciousness, and moral obligation as foundations for sustainable life. This chapter outlines the Afrocentric worldview and critiques Eurocentric knowledge systems that fragment reality and obscure responsibility, while examining how racist ideologies of dehumanization produce epistemic closure within dominant sustainability discourse. Integrating systems theory and culture as sites of praxis, the article demonstrates that Afrocentric approaches prefigure contemporary system theory while embedding ethical accountability within interconnected systems. Dandridge concludes by situating Afrocentric sustainability within a broader constellation of Indigenous worldviews and calling for a justice-centered paradigm shift in sustainability theory and practice that naturally advances environmental justice. The dominant paradigm or fundamental structure of thought and belief systems that drives contemporary reality cannot sustain our planet and people into the future. By embracing an Afrocentric World View on Sustainability (AWVS) that is fundamentally interdependent rather than individualistic, we can move towards greater environmental, social and economic sustainability. Anthony Dandridge demonstrates that an Afrocentric way of looking at the world provides the deeply meaningful and pragmatic historical example, ideological consistency, and scientific validity needed to promote equity and inclusion of all human beings and non-human beings. We can honor African traditions and spirituality for global harmony and species survival as we come to understand how individuals shape and are shaped by culture. Dandridge highlights the continuity and holism within African cultures, emphasizing a worldview rooted in an interdependence that naturally advances environmental justice and sustainability-related concerns. He looks to areas in Africa from 2500 BCE to the present day in terms of expressed views on the environment, society, economics and spirituality. Students tend to respond intuitively to concepts of communal identity according to a we not me framework, and this helps build platforms for social cohesion in the classroom and across campus. Using a Restorative Justice lens and the Principles of Environmental Justice (1991), Dandridge discusses what happens when students consider the Afrocentric perspective that we have obligations to the entirety of both the social and natural worlds.

An Afrocentric World View on Sustainability

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2026年

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Anthony S. Dandridge

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Mainstream sustainability frameworks often adopt technocratic and apolitical approaches that overlook the historical, ethical, and epistemological roots of environmental crises. This article argues that sustainability is fundamentally a worldview problem and advances an Afrocentric worldview as a critical paradigm for rethinking sustainability and environmental justice. Grounded in Afrocentric ontology, epistemology, and ethics, Dandridge emphasizes interdependence, relational consciousness, and moral obligation as foundations for sustainable life. This chapter outlines the Afrocentric worldview and critiques Eurocentric knowledge systems that fragment reality and obscure responsibility, while examining how racist ideologies of dehumanization produce epistemic closure within dominant sustainability discourse. Integrating systems theory and culture as sites of praxis, the article demonstrates that Afrocentric approaches prefigure contemporary system theory while embedding ethical accountability within interconnected systems. Dandridge concludes by situating Afrocentric sustainability within a broader constellation of Indigenous worldviews and calling for a justice-centered paradigm shift in sustainability theory and practice that naturally advances environmental justice. The dominant paradigm or fundamental structure of thought and belief systems that drives contemporary reality cannot sustain our planet and people into the future. By embracing an Afrocentric World View on Sustainability (AWVS) that is fundamentally interdependent rather than individualistic, we can move towards greater environmental, social and economic sustainability. Anthony Dandridge demonstrates that an Afrocentric way of looking at the world provides the deeply meaningful and pragmatic historical example, ideological consistency, and scientific validity needed to promote equity and inclusion of all human beings and non-human beings. We can honor African traditions and spirituality for global harmony and species survival as we come to understand how individuals shape and are shaped by culture. Dandridge highlights the continuity and holism within African cultures, emphasizing a worldview rooted in an interdependence that naturally advances environmental justice and sustainability-related concerns. He looks to areas in Africa from 2500 BCE to the present day in terms of expressed views on the environment, society, economics and spirituality. Students tend to respond intuitively to concepts of communal identity according to a we not me framework, and this helps build platforms for social cohesion in the classroom and across campus. Using a Restorative Justice lens and the Principles of Environmental Justice (1991), Dandridge discusses what happens when students consider the Afrocentric perspective that we have obligations to the entirety of both the social and natural worlds.