Nurturing Deaf Flourishing Sustainably 217
Gillette, 2007, p. 3). This capacity includes citizens’ freedom to shape their lives as
they wish (Williams, cited in Duxbury & Gillette, 2007; Nussbaum, 2006).
In The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: Culture’s Essential Role in Public Planning
(2001), John Hawkes focuses on how the “pillar” of cultural vitality necessarily
complements those of environmental responsibility, economic viability, and social
equity. He argues that the debate over how to attain sustainable societies (i.e.,
ones that ensure the quality of life of future generations) is inherently value
bound and, as such, cultural. Therefore, cultural action is needed to realize a
“culture of sustainability”:
Community well-being is built on a shared sense of purpose; values inform
action; a healthy society depends, first and foremost, on open, lively and in-
fluential activity amongst the communities within it; sustainability can only be
achieved when it becomes an enthusiastically embraced part of our culture.
(Hawkes, 2001, p. 25)
Sustainability comes to the forefront as a phenomenon with multiple and varied
faces, which can be explored through interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and
transdisciplinary approaches (for further discussion, see De Clerck & paul,
2016). In this chapter I aim to contribute to the understanding of sustainability
practices through documenting processes of knowledge exchange and produc-
tion in Sub-Saharan Africa. These processes are related to linguistic diversity,
which has been central in deaf studies with its increasing attention to indigenous
(endangered) languages and vitalization initiatives supporting capacity build-
ing (for a general discussion see King et al., 2008; Kleifgen & Bond, 2009; for a
discussion on Extreme North Cameroon Sign Language [ExNorthCamSL], see
Lutalo-Kiingi & De Clerck, 2015a, c).
The documentation of practices in Chapter 2 calls for “an era of epistemological
equity” and a post-colonial and naturalized epistemological stance; this is partic-
ularly necessary for a critical perspective toward cultural bias in notions of deaf
identity and education, because while these have been potentially empowering,
they have also acted as hegemonic master narratives. A wide range of concepts
has emerged from the documentation of deaf indigenous cultural practices and
forms of knowledge. This has been challenging for deaf studies theorizing and
meta-theorizing, and so far there has hardly been any research on the epistemic
practices involved in deaf communities’ co-production and translation of knowl-
edge in globalized contexts.
These fluid knowledge practices and alternative understandings of deaf flour-
ishing have been explored during transnational workshops in Cameroon and
community gatherings in Uganda. This exploration has engendered an inclusive
and ecological approach (i.e., one appreciative of reciprocal relations, multidi-
mensionality in change, and interaction with the environment; also see De Clerck,
2016c), that invites critical reflection on the empowering potential and limitations
of such understandings. This provides room for hybridity, which challenges dichot-
omies of Western versus non-Western knowledge and notions of one-way knowl-
edge transfer: