6 On the Politics of Generative Justice: African Traditions and Maker Communities

Our understanding of political economy has been strongly influenced by two models: the free market economy of private ownership and the socialist vision of government ownership. The socialist vision is one that calls for distributive justice—the top-down redistribution of wealth. Its application in the USSR was a humanitarian and ecological disaster, so it is no surprise that African socialism did not fare any better. Similarly, the free market approach has resulted in the alarming acceleration of wealth inequality unsustainable extraction of natural resources, and environmental disasters on a global scale. Rather than import these failed models from European roots, it is our contention that a better framework for egalitarian and ecologically sustainable societies lies in African indigenous traditions—a framework we refer to as generative justice. However, this is not to imply that Africa needs some sort of cultural purity; generative justice can be seen in many forms throughout the world. One of the primary exemplars for contemporary generative justice has been the maker movement, and for that reason we focus on African maker communities in this chapter.