Colonial Entanglements Research Articles

Engaging Colonial Entanglements: “Treatment as a State” Policy for Indigenous Water Co-Governance

In the United States, treatment as a state (TAS) provisions enable eligible Native American tribes to assume the same responsibilities as state governments in setting and implementing water quality standards (WQSs). Following the introduction of TAS through 1987 amendments to the US Clean Water Act (CWA), forty-four US tribes have enacted TAS tribal standards, which may be more stringent than those of neighboring states; can incorporate cultural and/or ceremonial uses; and can be used to influence pollution levels coming from upstream, off-reservation users. To evaluate TAS as a model for Indigenous water co-governance, we examine how Native American tribes are advancing tribal sovereignty and environmental sustainability through TAS, and we engage with conflicting views on whether and how Indigenous self-determination can be advanced through existing bureaucratic and colonial governance systems. We specifically analyze environmental pollutant listings in tribal water quality standards for the forty-four TAS tribes. Findings suggest that TAS tribes are creating more culturally relevant WQSs, which are typically as comprehensive as, and often more stringent than, analogous state regulations. Tribal standards are diverse, and TAS tribes can set standards independently from neighboring states and one another. Further analysis reveals the complexities of TAS policy, whereby colonial entanglements both enable and constrain enhanced Indigenous self-determination.

Comparative and international education research in a post‐truth era

AbstractThe paper offers a postcolonial critique of comparative and international education (CIE) research in the United States (US) by tracing the Euro‐centrism of its agendas, methodologies and publications to their colonial entanglements in the past and examining the current predicament of CIE in the context of the rising nationalist and anti‐science discourses in the US. Viewed through the prism of actor‐network theory, CIE represents a circulatory network of scholars and students, methods and surveys, national and supranational funding agencies and the public opinion that shapes education policymaking. As they seek to garner public support, create new allies among politicians and donors and infuse their network with international knowledge and scholars, CIE researchers revisit the ontological and epistemological assumptions of their field, address the dominance of Western perspectives in CIE in the context of the White House rhetoric of hostility toward non‐Western nations and justify the veracity of their science to policymakers.

“Looking for One’s Life”

This article examines how “irregular” migrants from West and Central Africa make sense of their trapped mobility in Morocco: for many, crossing into Europe has become almost impossible, returning to home countries “empty-handed” a shameful option, and staying very difficult in the face of repeated infringement of their rights. I explore the limits of contemporary depictions of a “migration crisis” that portray migrants south of the Mediterranean Sea as simply en route to Europe and fail to engage with (post)colonial entanglements. The article recalibrates the examinationof migrants’ lived experiences of stasis and mobility by exploring the emic notion of “adventure” among migrants “looking for their lives.” A focus on how migrants articulate their own (im)mobility further exposes and defies the pitfalls of abstract concepts such as “transit migration,” which is misleading in its implication of a fixed destination.

Sugarwork: The Gastropoetics of Afro-Asia After the Plantation

The politics and the poetics of sugar and its production have long connected African and Asian diasporas as the material legacy of the Caribbean plantation. This article considers the repurposing of sugar as art and the aesthetic of artists of Afro-Chinese descent, Andrea Chung and Mara Magdalena Campos-Pons. Part of a diasporic tradition of employing sugar as a medium that I call sugarwork, their artwork evokes the colonial entanglements of nutrition and labour on the plantation, centered in the belly. The womb makes, and the stomach unmakes. This practice, employing the materiality of foodstuffs, is part of a gastropoetics, wherein centering the sensorium opens alternative forms of knowledge production to the European colonial archive. As the descendants of enslaved Africans and indentured Chinese, Campos-Pons and Chung metabolize sugar in ways that grapple with the futurity of the plantation to form a new intertwined genealogy of black and Chinese womanhood.

Centering the problem child: Temporality, colonialism, and theories of the child

What would it mean to center theories of the child around those who are evacuated from childhood? I propose the idea of the “problem child” as an encapsulation of those who are constructed outside of Western understandings of childhood. In this essay, I explore how the problem child illuminates colonial entanglements between childhood and constructions of time, and the implications this holds for theories of the child. To do so, I position Carla Shalaby’s Troublemakers as a provocation to theories of childhood: her masterful portraits illustrate how problem children are constructed as such temporally, repeatedly narrated as late or out-of-sync. Put otherwise, Shalaby’s centered focus on troublemakers highlights the ways in which temporality is used as a limit to constructions of the child. I build on Shalaby’s provocation to argue that the ways in which childhood and temporality interlock are a production of colonial understandings of subjectivity, in which childhood is co-constructed with linear time. In asking what it might mean to center the problem child, I argue for the contextualization of dominant Western understandings of the child in the colonial violence in which they were produced in order to challenge assumed connections between the child and temporality.

Upholding “Colonial Unknowing” Through the IRB: Reframing Institutional Research Ethics

This article considers the institutionalization of research ethics as a site of “colonial unknowing” in which the racial colonial entanglements of academic research and institutions are obscured. I examine the origin stories situating Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) as a response to cases of exceptional violence, most notably the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, within an otherwise neutral history of research. I then consider how the 2018 revisions to the Common Rule extend “colonial unknowing” by decontextualizing the forms of risk involved in social and behavioral research. I situate these complicities as necessary starting points toward anticolonial research ethics of “answerability.”

4 Political Ecology and the Event: Calusa Social Action in Early Colonial Entanglements

ABSTRACTThere are many examples of colonial entanglements resulting in shifts in religions, practices, subsistence, and political structures, largely linked to inequalities between the colonized and the colonizers. However, there are also examples in which practices, particularly among Native American societies, persisted in the context of social situations that intertwined peoples with diverse histories. At the time of Spanish arrival, the Calusa of southwestern Florida were a large‐scale, hierarchical society with supra‐community integration and were able to maintain high degrees of autonomy. Our focus here is to explicate the early colonial world of the Calusa. Specifically, we want to understand why early European interactions take such a dramatically different course in southwestern Florida than in other areas of Spanish colonization. To do so we use political ecology and recent scholarship on eventful archaeology to consider Calusa and Spanish social and political action. Our work focuses on interactions between the Spanish and the Calusa during the early and mid‐sixteenth century (ca. 1513 to 1569 CE). We argue that because the Calusa were fisher‐gatherer‐hunters, lacked maize agriculture, and had their capital on the defensible island of Mound Key, Spanish‐Calusa interactions and events transpired in a fundamentally different context compared to other Spanish outposts and colonies. With this example, we show how various events, knowledge, and traditions of the Calusa of southern Florida all worked to create a vastly different colonial entanglement that resulted in the Spanish abandonment of the area for some time.

Public pastoral care as nexus and opportunity for a transformed practical theology within decolonisation discourse in South African higher education

The discussion on decolonisation of universities that started in 2015 has been raging in different spaces within South Africa and other parts of the world. The question of the relevance of the curriculum in universities, which is a curriculum that is responsive to South African and African issues, has come to the forefront. The discipline of Theology has also been challenged to reflect on its curriculum. Given these developments, this article considers practical theology within the on-going discussion of decolonisation in South African universities. In doing so, it attempts to address the question: What are some of the issues to consider in decolonisation of practical theology in South Africa universities? Firstly, the article sketches the background to the context of the discussion. Secondly, it provides a synopsis of the discussion of decolonisation in universities. Thirdly, it highlights some colonial entanglements of practical theology evident from the current situation. Fourthly, it proposes pointers for basic steps towards decolonisation of practical theology. Fifthly, it concludes by highlighting the threats to the proposed decolonisation attempts. The article assumes a coloniality and decoloniality framework even though it is not explicitly stated.

Recollecting bones: the remains of German-Australian colonial entanglements

ABSTRACTThis article critically engages with the different politics of memory involved in debates over the restitution of Indigenous Australian ancestral remains stolen by colonial actors in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and brought to Berlin in the name of science. The debates crystallise how deeply divided German scientific discourses still are over the question of whether the historical and moral obligations of colonial injustice should be accepted or whether researchers should continue to profess scientific ‘disinterest’. The debates also reveal an almost unanimous disavowal of Indigenous Australian knowledges and mnemonic conceptions across all camps. The bitter ironies of this disavowal become evident when Indigenous Australian quests for the remains of their ancestral dead lost in the limbo of German scientific collections are juxtaposed with white Australian (fictional) quests for the remains of Ludwig Leichhardt, lost in the Australian interior.

Toward a Postcolonial Comparative and International Education

This article, which serves to introduce the special issue on “Contesting Coloniality: Rethinking Knowledge Production and Circulation in Comparative and International Education,” brings to the fore the rarely acknowledged colonial entanglements of knowledge in the field of comparative and international education (CIE). We begin by showing how colonial logics underpin the scholarship of one of the field’s founding figures, Isaac L. Kandel. These logics gained legitimacy through the Cold War geopolitical contexts in which the field was established and have shaped subsequent approaches including the much-debated world-culture approach to globalization in education. The article then reviews decolonial, postcolonial, and southern theory scholarship as an intellectual resource upon which CIE scholars and practitioners can draw to tackle these active colonial legacies. We situate the contribution of this special issue within this larger intellectual movement and call for a major collective rethinking of the way ...

TOWARDS A POSTCOLONIAL COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

This article, which serves to introduce the special issue on “Contesting Coloniality: Re- thinking Knowledge Production and Circulation in Comparative and International Edu- cation,” brings to the fore the rarely acknowledged colonial entanglements of knowledge in the field of comparative and international education (CIE). We begin by showing how colonial logics underpin the scholarship of one of the field’s founding figures, Isaac L. Kandel. These logics gainedlegitimacy through the Cold War geopolitical contexts in which the field was established and have shaped subsequent approaches including the much-debated world-culture approach to globalization in education.

Embodying Empire: European Tattooing and German Colonial Power*

Abstract Via an investigation of the broader historical conditions of European tattooing practices, this article argues that the example of the last German Governor of Samoa, Erich Schultz, demonstrates the key role of the body in colonial entanglements. By allowing himself to be tattooed in Samoan style, Schultz signalled his strong affinity with Samoan social practices and politics. Not merely indicative of a subjective shift, his tattooing also furthered his authority as a German colonial official. At a time when other European officials, including Germans in other colonies, shied away from engaging with the cultural and political practices of those they governed, Schultz and other German officials in Samoa self-consciously sought to colonize the Samoans while accepting and employing Samoan symbols of authority.

Inland Sanctuary: A Synergistic Study of Indigenous Persistence and Colonial Entanglements at Hiouchi (Xaa-yuu-chit)

Inland Sanctuary: A Synergistic Study of Indigenous Persistence and Colonial Entanglements at Hiouchi (Xaa-yuu-chit)

Educating Emotions in Natal and Western Australia, 1854–65

This article argues that schools acted as important "emotional frontiers" in colonial contexts. As places where missionaries, government and Indigenous people met, colonial schools could connect, disconnect and recreate emotional ties. Drawing on two cases from the mid-nineteenth century, one from Natal and the other from Western Australia, the article highlights the centrality of affect—positive and negative—in histories of colonial schooling. Concerns about the vulnerability of Indigenous children shaped these affective exchanges. The examination of education and schools can provide an important way into thinking about the ambiguities of colonial entanglements and exchange.

Гелена викрадена або Польсько-українські зв’язки у «Вогнем і мечем» Єжи Гофмана

KIDNAPPED HELENA, OR POLISH-UKRAINIAN RELATIONS IN JERZY HOFFMAN’S WITH FIRE AND SWORDBeing one of the most beloved epics and once a vessel of patriotism, written famously to strengthen the hearts of Poles during the partition of the country, Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy still stirs a lot of controversies among other nations depicted in the novels. Considering Poland’s past colonial entanglement with Ukraine, difficult unresolved issues in our common history and disdainful descriptions of Cossacks, none of the series’ parts proved to be as problematic to adapt to the screen as With Fire and Sword. Being able to finally make the movie and complete his lifetime project of filming Trilogy after 31 years of struggle, a Polish film director Jerzy Hoffman faced a serious challenge of preserving the spirit of the novel without enhancing reciprocal prejudices between the nations. In my article, I try to identify textual and visual strategies employed by the director in order to refract disturbing colonial underpinning of Sienkiewicz’s With Fire and Sword. Analysing the narrative frame, genre shifts, construction of the characters and ideological implications of certain aesthetic choices, I argue that to a certain degree Hoffman managed to transform the novel’s classic imperialistic narrative of mission civilisatrice — providing rationale for colonization on the grounds of social evolutionism and civilizational progress — into a subversive melodrama personifying feuding nations as equal subjects. By doings so, the director managed to scale down nostalgic yearning for the bygone power and magnitude of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in order to redirect audience’s attention to the necessity of maintaining good relations with our sovereign neighbour.Translated by Stanisław Liguziński

Helena porwana albo Relacje polsko-ukraińskie w Ogniem i mieczem Jerzego Hoffmana

KIDNAPPED HELENA, OR POLISH-UKRAINIAN RELATIONS IN JERZY HOFFMAN’S WITH FIRE AND SWORDBeing one of the most beloved epics and once a vessel of patriotism, written famously to strengthen the hearts of Poles during the partition of the country, Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy still stirs a lot of controversies among other nations depicted in the novels. Considering Poland’s past colonial entanglement with Ukraine, difficult unresolved issues in our common history and disdainful descriptions of Cossacks, none of the series’ parts proved to be as problematic to adapt to the screen as With Fire and Sword. Being able to finally make the movie and complete his lifetime project of filming Trilogy after 31 years of struggle, a Polish film director Jerzy Hoffman faced a serious challenge of preserving the spirit of the novel without enhancing reciprocal prejudices between the nations. In my article, I try to identify textual and visual strategies employed by the director in order to refract disturbing colonial underpinning of Sienkiewicz’s With Fire and Sword. Analysing the narrative frame, genre shifts, construction of the characters and ideological implications of certain aesthetic choices, I argue that to a certain degree Hoffman managed to transform the novel’s classic imperialistic narrative of mission civilisatrice — providing rationale for colonization on the grounds of social evolutionism and civilizational progress — into a subversive melodrama personifying feuding nations as equal subjects. By doings so, the director managed to scale down nostalgic yearning for the bygone power and magnitude of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, in order to redirect audience’s attention to the necessity of maintaining good relations with our sovereign neighbour.Translated by Stanisław Liguziński

‘A Most Gruesome Sight’: Colonial Warfare, Racial Thought, and the Question of ‘Radicalization’ during the First World War in German South‐West Africa (Namibia)

AbstractThis article examines an episode of German military violence against civilians during the First World War in Namibia (formerly German South‐West Africa). Placing the violence against the Rehoboth Baster community in April–May 1915 within a longer history of German and other European colonial violence on the African continent, I argue that the tactics employed by the German military in Rehoboth – namely, collective punishment, destruction of property, and the refusal to distinguish ‘civilians’ from fighters – were normal and practised forms of warfare for European armies facing African communities that challenged colonial powers. With this in mind, I question the geographical scope of the ‘radicalization’ concept – the debated idea of the First World War as a turning point in a world history of violence against civilians, when new tactics and ideologies of warfare ushered in an unprecedented breakdown of distinctions drawn by armies between enemy ‘civilians’ and ‘combatants’. The Rehoboth case provides an opportunity to explore the relationship of racial thought to the management and execution of violence during the First World War, at the level of complex local colonial entanglements.

Current Research on the Historical Development of Northern Iroquoian Societies

The archaeological record of Northern Iroquoian peoples contributes to global questions about ethnogenesis, the emergence of settled village life, agricultural intensification, the development of complex organizational structures, and processes of cultural and colonial entanglement. In the last decade, the rapid accumulation of data and the application of contemporary theoretical perspectives have led to significant advances in Iroquoian archaeology, including new insights about how demographic, ecological, and cultural processes intersect at multiple temporal and spatial scales. Internal and external factors accelerated processes of cultural change, particularly during periods of conflict, coalescence, and encroachment. This review considers the historical development of Northern Iroquoian societies from the beginning of the Late Woodland through the colonial era. The dynamism of the settlement landscape is highlighted, together with the fluidity of sociopolitical identities.

Mission sites as indigenous heritage in southern Vanuatu

Christian missions are often characterized as a physical expression of Western colonial power, institutions that were resisted by indigenous people in various ways. In Vanuatu, while there was indeed dramatic resistance to mission incursion, the success of Christianity in many places (for not everyone converted) developed from a series of complex entanglements between indigenous Melanesians and Christian missionaries. This is apparent in oral traditions and in the physical remains relating to mission encounters. Indigenous ni-Vanuatu see the archaeological remains of mission sites as an integral part of their heritage, rather than as relics of a foreign colonial past. This tendency relates to other aspects of missionary heritage as well, including museum collections and sacred texts. The historical archaeology of missions in Vanuatu and beyond can be best understood through the lens of colonial entanglement, destabilizing categorical oppositions such as colonizer–colonized, foreign–indigenous, and power–resistance.

The ties that blind: making fee simple in the British Columbia treaty process

Property is a crucial means by which space is made, and remade. This is powerfully evident in settler societies, such as British Columbia, Canada. To understand the work that property does requires us to attend to the manner in which it is entangled in and constitutive of a multitude of relations (ethical, practical, historical, semantic and so on). Yet for property to function, some of these relationships must be bracketed. That which is designated as inside a boundary must be partly disentangled from that identified as outside. Property practice and theory helps organise these exclusions. Yet this is not disinterested: Property's frames, therefore, can become political battle lines. Drawing from a modern‐day treaty process involving indigenous communities and the federal and provincial governments in British Columbia, Canada, I trace the ways in which the state has sought to disentangle property from its recently re‐emergent colonial entanglements. One of the ways in which it has tried to do this is to insist that First Nations hold their treaty settlement lands as a form of fee simple, this being bracketed as a clear and certain entitlement, replacing a messier ‘Aboriginal title’. First Nations negotiators, however, have pushed back, re‐entangling fee simple in culture, politics and place. I explore the performative use of categorisation on the part of the Crown in their attempt at re‐framing fee simple as ‘simple’. Apart from documenting this understudied postcolonial moment, I also encourage geographers to recognise the important work that property does in making space. To do so, I theorise property as an effect, performed through multiple technical and categorical enactments.