Africanising Indigeneity: Decolonising Identities, Knowledges, and Resilience in the Anthropocene

Under international human rights law, the right to natural resources is a collective right of peoples. This chapter illustrates that backed by international and regional human rights law, African indigenous peoples have resisted and continue to challenge practices that dispossess them of their land and natural resources, which like development are recognised as a human right for which the Declaration on the Right to Development empowers every individual and all peoples to participate fully and freely in vital decisions concerning it. The Rio Declaration stipulates that: ‘human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development’ and that: ‘the right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations’. With regard to engaging African indigenous peoples, Agenda 2030 on the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2063 for development in Africa provide insights into the expected relationships between governments, indigenous peoples and the sustainable management of their natural resources. This chapter advances the argument that ownership of natural resources and development are rights of the African indigenous peoples.

Although the dominant narratives in the world of academia are from the vantage points of primarily white males from the West (Europe and the United States), there is an alternative narrative that is being discussed in many parts of the world that is challenging the colonial perspectives of the West. This non-Westernised narrative is deeply discussed in Decolonizing the Mind: A Guide to Decolonial Theory and Practice by decolonial scholar, economist, historian and activist Sandew Hira. The aim of Hira’s Decolonizing the Mind is to deeply engage decolonial theory and practice as an alternative to the prominent thinking of the West as illuminated in liberalism and Marxism. As such, Hira’s Decolonizing the Mind serves as a major opposition to the massive production of Westernised knowledge. By methodically considering Hira’s alternative narrative to dominant Western thoughts and practices, this review will serve as a critical appraisal of his decolonial theory and practice. Thus, Hira’s Decolonizing the Mind is a scholarly and timely attempt at the production of knowledge and other ways of knowing.

We recognise nationalist and centre‐seeking ethnic civil wars as distinct types of conflict and draw on key ideas from political sociology to make hypotheses about the causes of each. First, we argue that the character of states shapes antistate actors in ways that channel ethnic conflict in different ways, with pluralist states promoting nationalist warfare but integrative states contributing to centre‐seeking civil war. Second, we propose that the relative power of communities affects the type of ethnic civil war, arguing that centre‐seeking civil war is most common in situations of communal multipolarity whereas nationalist civil war is concentrated in regions with asymmetric power relations. And because historical statehood promotes elements of pluralist states and asymmetric communal power relations, we hypothesise that the risk of nationalist civil war is high in places with large and longstanding states. To test these hypotheses, we use ethnic fractionalisation to measure configurations of communal power and the state antiquity index to measure level of historical statehood, create a variable measuring the extent to which colonial states were pluralist, and run panel analyses of the odds of civil war onset. With one possible exception, the findings support our hypotheses.

State-to-National Minority Relationship and Internal Conflicts, Violence, and Secession

In preparation for the 2014 World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous community representatives from across Africa traveled to Nairobi for a conference in December 2012. The participants identified access to justice as a primary concern for Indigenous Peoples in Africa—whether political recognition and participation, criminal justice, or land rights, Indigenous representatives were clear that their communities struggle to access remedies for violations of their rights.3 This paper provides a broad overview of the situation for access to justice on the continent—from national legal frameworks, to judicial decisions, to regional human rights bodies, to transitional justice mechanisms. While African Indigenous Peoples’ access to justice concerns are similar to those of Indigenous Peoples around the globe, some specific issues emerge in the African context, such as how to understand the very existence of Indigenous Peoples on the continent. Ultimately, the paper makes clear that access to justice for Indigenous Peoples is more a political than legal issue, and that State political will to implement positive decisions in favor of Indigenous rights is one of the primary challenges for Indigenous Peoples.

Contemporary debates on decolonising knowledge production, inclusive of research on Africa, are crucial and challenge researchers to reflect on the legacies of colonial power relations that continue to permeate the production of knowledge about the continent, its peoples, and societies. Yet these are not new debates. Sixty years ago, Ghana�s first president and pan-Africanist leader, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, highlighted the importance of Africa-centred knowledge. Similarly, in the 1980s, Claude Ake advocated for endogenous knowledge production on Africa. But progress has been slow at best, indicated by the enduring predominance of non-African writers on African issues within leading scholarly journals. Thus, we examine why decolonisation of knowledge production remains so necessary and what can be done within the context of scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences. These questions are addressed at two levels, one more practical and one more reflective . At both levels, issues of power inequalities and injustice are critical. At the practical level, the asymmetrical power relations between scholars in the Global North and South are highlighted. At a deeper level, the critiques of contemporary African authors are outlined, all contesting the ongoing coloniality and epistemic injustices that affect knowledge production on Africa, and calling for a more fundamental reorientation of ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches in order to decolonise knowledge production.

This study analyzes asymmetrical power relations by observing social practices within digital public services in situations of digital social exclusion. The technological/organizational perspective in digital services studies cannot capture how asymmetrical power relations and digital social exclusion affect digital public services. Therefore, we propose a relational perspective based on Bourdieu's theory of practice, applying his main concepts to analyze these relations: social field, habitus, and capital. The analytical framework is applied to two digital public service implementation cases targeting populations in digital social exclusion: unemployment insurance for artisanal fishers and the general fishing register, implemented in artisanal fishing communities in the Brazilian Amazon region. The cases illustrate the asymmetry of power in digital public services, as reflected in the social practices of state agents who designed the systems without involving citizens. The artisanal fishers struggled to access the digital services as planned, requiring mediation by representative entities. The proposed framework effectively analyzed the cases and can be applied in other studies focusing on asymmetrical power relations in contexts of digital social exclusion related to digital public services.

Summary: Indigenous people across the world experience more health related problems as compared to the population at large. So, this review article is broadly an attempt to highlight the important factors for indigenous peoples' health problems, and to recommend some suggestions to improve their health status. Standard database for instance, Pubmed, Medline, Google scholar, and Google book searches have been used to get the sources. Different key words, for example, indigenous people and health, socio-economic and cultural factors of indigenous health, history of indigenous peoples' health, Australian indigenous peoples' health, Latin American indigenous peoples' health, Canadian indigenous peoples' health, South Asian indigenous peoples' health, African indigenous peoples' health, and so on, have been used to find the articles and books. This review paper shows that along with commonplace factors, indigenous peoples' health is affected by some distinctive factors such as indigeneity, colonial and post-colonial experience, rurality, lack of governments' recognition etc., which non- indigenous people face to a much lesser degree. In addition, indigenous peoples around the world experience various health problems due to their varied socio-economic and cultural contexts. Finally, this paper recommends that the spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, cultural, economic, socio-cultural and environmental factors should be incorporated into the indigenous health agenda to improve their health status.

In this article, the author examines a range of issues related to the study of the phenomenon of colonialism in contemporary historiography. On the one hand, he analyses existing intellectual trends, historiographical schools, and methodological approaches, and, on the other hand, outlines new research fields and identifies promising directions for further research. He also points out that the study of the phenomenon of colonialism in all its systemic integrity and structural heterogeneity remains an essential objective for modern scholarship. The author assesses the impact of Edward Said's ideas on the formation of new approaches to the study of colonialism. He argues that his works led to a shift in the focus of research from socio-economic and political history to the study of cultural and intellectual history, and to an increased appreciation of the relationship between knowledge production and imperial expansion. The author examines contemporary research trends such as New Imperial History, Subaltern Studies, Transnational History (Histoire croisée) and analyses their strengths and weaknesses. Thus, in his view, the representatives of the “New Imperial History” tend to present colonialism primarily as a cultural project oriented towards superiority and domination. The proponents of Subaltern Studies focus on the history of people who were oppressed and exploited. Colonialism, imperialism, and decolonisation are presented in their studies exclusively as a history of violence and domination. In the context of transnational history, the phenomenon of colonialism is presented as an interwoven, interconnected history of a multitude of diverse civilisations and communities, making the world-system from the sixteenth to the twentieth century appear as a living mixture of European and non-European elements. The Histoire croisée rediscovers a seemingly obvious fact, namely the inseparability of mother countries and colonies, imperial practices at the local level and situations within and between European states themselves. The history of civilisations, states, and societies of the Afro-Asian region — the former colonial world — revisited in research in recent decades shows a multitude of trajectories, often branching, of their own paths of long and fruitful adaptation to different environments, of their own ways of developing rational economy and politics, which are particular to them. The author observes that the task of modern historiography is to strive to study the phenomenon of colonialism in all its diversity and to free itself from the perspective of its predecessors, who viewed the world only in the focus of binary relations between the European colonial empires on the one hand and the former colonies on the other. The historical study of the colonial world needs to continue, not as a collection of heterogeneous experiences reflecting the diversity of non-European countries, but as a significant part of the history of a single world where all people, whatever their origin, played equal roles.

A generic qualitative research, using a poststructuralist feminist perspective, was conducted in a Spanish gynaecology unit with the following aims: (a) to analyse how asymmetric power relations in relation to biomedical knowledge and gender shape the medical encounters between gynaecologists and women diagnosed with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and (b) to explore the cognitive, moral, and emotional responses expressed by patients. A total of 21 women diagnosed with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia were recruited through purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were recorded and transcribed, and a thematic analysis was carried out. Two major themes were identified: (a) gendered relations in cervical intraepithelial neoplasia medical encounters are based on hidden, judgmental moral assumptions, making women feel irresponsible and blamed for contracting the human papillomavirus infection; (b) biomedical power is based on the positivist assumption of a single truth (scientific knowledge), creating asymmetric relations rendering women ignorant and infantilised. Women reacted vehemently during the interviews, revealing a nexus of cognitive, moral, and emotional reactions. In medical encounters for management of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, patients feel they are being morally judged and given limited information, generating emotional distress. Healthcare professionals should question whether their practices are based on stereotypical gender assumptions which lead to power asymmetries during encounters.

The doctor-patient interaction (DPI) plays an important role in the way patients view physicians. Thus, response to the question of ''Who is a great physician?'' is related to DPI experiences of patients. The aim of this qualitative study was to explore patients' views regarding this subject. Based on critical ethnography in one educational hospital in Shiraz, Iran, the study was performed based on 156 clinical consultations, 920 hours of participant observations, and 6 focus groups with patients and their relatives. The results revealed that asymmetrical power relationships exist in this context. Based on the general views of participants and their recent DPI experiences, a great physician should be kind, empathetic, friendly, and a good listener. Considering the presence of an asymmetrical power relationships in this context, results showed that doctors do not participate in an active interaction. Based on sociological theories, it can be concluded that the concept of a great physician is not only limited to obligations as in the Parsonian view, but is also related to active communication between both sides which is presented in the critical view. Through active communication‎, asymmetrical power relationships can be reduced. Thus, if a physician wants to become a great physician, he/she must strengthen his/her humanistic dimensions and communicative skills alongside his/her medical skills.

In the wider context of growing digitalisation in South Asia, this article examines the impacts of a public–private–people partnership (4Ps) information and communication technology (ICT) initiative of the Bangladesh government, administered through local governmental offices, the Union Information Service Centre (UISC). Scrutinising the operation of six UISCs in rural communities across Bangladesh, the study researches the potential of ICTs to influence existing asymmetrical power relations and empower local people. Asking to what extent ICTs enable more people to actively participate in their communities and what the implications for empowerment are, it is found that top-down ICT intervention by itself cannot bring substantial change for people at the bottom of the social pyramid. Asymmetrical power relations continue to deprive marginalised groups from receiving the claimed benefits of ICT facilities. The study suggests the need for a more critical, practice-focused understanding of relationships between ICTs and rural empowerment, while also highlighting the changing modalities of connecting states and their citizens in postmodern South Asia.

The ‘Bandung spirit of decolonization’ pre-dates and post-dates the physicality of the Bandung Conference of 1955. The concept of the ‘spirit’ encapsulates a melange of resistance and struggles against colonial encounters, colonialism, and coloniality—going as far back as the time of the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). This article posits that to gain a deeper appreciation of the significance of the ‘Bandung spirit of decolonization’ it is vital to begin with an analysis of technologies of the invention of the Global South within global coloniality. The ‘Bandung spirit of decolonization’ gains a broader canvas as a name for the long standing anti-colonial resistances and decolonial struggles not only against global imperial designs and breaking from Cold War coloniality but also as a terrain of self-invention in opposition to the Northern domination. Thus, this article performs the following tasks: conceptually, it frames the ‘Bandung spirit of decolonization’ with decolonial theory; historically, it traces the politics and technologies of the invention of the global South together with its entrapment in global coloniality and empirically, it lays out the long-standing struggles for liberation beginning with the Haitian Revolution right up to the post-1945 decolonization and pan-African initiatives in Africa. Africa is the author’s locus of enunciation of the ‘Bandung spirit of decolonization’ without delinking it from the rest of the Global South.

This paper proposes the concept of the “Bandung child” as a socio-cultural identity shaped by the intersections of colonial legacies, decolonial struggle, and local Indonesian values. The term “Bandung” was selected because the first anti-colonial conference was held at Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. The conference is a symbol of decolonial history for Asian and African countries. Hence, in this context, the name “Bandung” refers to the paradigms that are adopted rather than a particular location. Drawing on post-colonial and decolonial theories, this paper re-examines the narratives and representations of childhood not only in Bandung but also in Indonesia and Global South countries. This paper critiques universalist and Western-centric approaches to childhood studies, highlighting the importance of localised, culturally relevant frameworks. Hence, the paper contributes to childhood and decolonial studies by drawing on the spirit of Bandung to reimagine different ways of understanding children and childhood by reclaiming local values while navigating global influences, thereby representing a fluid, post-colonial subjectivity.

Global production network (GPN) scholars increasingly focus on examining exclusionary processes in strategic coupling. However, attention has been given to structural coupling, where uneven outcomes often evolve through lead firms exploiting power asymmetries to foster their interests over regions. Functional and indigenous coupling, although acknowledged to have exclusions, are considered to be less likely for such outcomes due to assumed symmetrical power. This assumption has led to a lack of studies exploring not only how uneven outcomes evolve in indigenous coupling but also what territorial mechanisms are involved. This article addresses this gap by conceptualizing the notion of a statist transnational community (STC) as a crucial mechanism in indigenous coupling, and with potential to explain how asymmetrical relations can emerge and foster exclusionary processes. Based on qualitative methods, this article analyzes Brazil's integration into the aerospace GPN through indigenous coupling. First, it examines how the Brazilian developmental state, under a national developmental ideology, fostered coupling in São José dos Campos (SJC) by establishing institutions, regional assets, Embraer, and an aerospace industrial cluster. Second, it elucidates how the Brazilian state facilitated the formation of an STC crucial in establishing firms and creating and harnessing regional assets. Additionally, it reveals how and why the SJC STC is marked by relative symmetrical and cooperative relations, and encourages collaboration. Lastly, this article investigates a training partnership between Embraer and the Aeronautics Institute of Technology in SJC, disclosing how asymmetrical power relations can also be present in indigenous coupling, fostering social downgrading, especially in relation to labor.