This article is a combined effort of an author from Brazil and an author in South Africa to identify and comprehend the trajectories African wooden sculptures go through in their material cultural biographies. Wooden sculpting has always been part of African traditions. Africa’s many artisans and markets provided and still provide a great number of wooden sculptures, which are now in several parts of the world, especially among former colonizers and in the diaspora. During their “lives,” such wooden sculptures acquired different statuses, such as commodities like souvenirs or valued art works, but also as priceless historical documents, objets d’art, and religiously consecrated entities. The value and meaning of wooden sculptures are always set in resonance with historical periods and local cultural moralities. Therefore, the study of such cultural biographies reveals aspects not only about the pieces themselves but also about their environment.

This article critically examines the competitive, adversarial nature of the Western neoliberal style of democracy. Specifically, this article focuses on Amartya Sen’s notion of a “universal democracy” as a means of addressing socio-economic inequalities through Sen’s capability approach. Sen’s capability theory has become an acclaimed and widely used theory to evaluate and understand development and inequalities. However, we employ a distinctive critique by engaging Amartya Sen through Herbert Marcuse’s analysis of one dimensionality and the adversarial nature of Western democracy. We further highlight how contemporary neoliberal society employ a particular, adversarial form of public participation. Through this, we underline the various neoliberal problemata, such as Western idealism, political passivity, and a “flattening of choice,” within contemporary democracies and locate how their competitive, winner-take-all nature has become essential to contemporary, Western democratic models. Consequently, we argue that democracy, as a functional concept and form of public engagement, should be fundamentally re-examined in order to address inequalities.