Colonial Institutions Research Articles

Forged in flames: indigeneity, forest fire and geographies of blame in the Philippines

ABSTRACT The forests of Southeast Asia are represented as increasingly ‘at-risk' to fire, constituting a regional fire politics concerned with the management and organisation of environmental blame. State governments often place culpability for this increasing flammability on histories of deforestation that disproportionately blame Indigenous peoples who now face a correspondingly large burden in conservation schemes. By tracing the history of fire management from the colonial period to the 1980s, this paper explores how the management of forests and fire in the Philippines has been shaped over time with imperatives to govern and economically exploit upland spaces. While these histories clearly point to a political economy of knowledge production, they also show how forest governance in the Philippines has worked to construct ethnic difference through policies and practices that naturalise livelihoods, spaces and qualities to essentialised ‘tribal' uplanders. To understand the contemporary geography of blame that surrounds forest fires and deforestation in the Philippines and Southeast Asia more broadly, we argue for a more nuanced examination of ‘the uplands’ as a post-colonial geography co-constituted with the historical production of indigeneity and environmental knowledge. We conclude by emphasising the historical role of colonial forest and land management institutions in fashioning lasting socio-spatial differences.

Ethnicity and Power in Sub-Saharan Africa: Do Colonial Institutions Still Matter?

It has been sixty years since the first sub-Saharan nation declared independence. Over the past three decades, the region has undergone significant changes. Though few, if any, would question that colonial histories shaped African societies, it is unclear to what extent these legacies continue to be relevant to contemporary inter-group relations. Does it still make sense to speak about colonial legacies? And if so, which ones? This article explores these questions by examining whether ethnic groups who were privileged during the colonial period are more likely to hold political power decades later. To do so, I conduct a multiple case study analysis of twenty-five sub-Saharan countries from which I create an original dataset of how ethnic groups were positioned during the latter stages of colonialism. With these data, I run auto-regressive logistical models correlating former colonial position to executive power since independence. I find that many of the assumptions made in the scholarship about the importance of colonial privilege are not supported by these models. However, colonial institutional legacies may still help us understand inter-group dynamics and be the source of contemporary political grievances.

La teoría arquitectónica clásica en la Nueva España y los tratados arquitectónicos como artefactos colonialistas

<p>En Costa Rica, la apertura de la primera escuela de arquitectura y la fundación del Colegio de Arquitectos favorecieron el inicio de una discusión acerca del papel de la profesión en el país (1970-1973). Este texto explora la agencia de la revista oficial del Colegio de Arquitectos como expositora de tópicos alrededor del ambiente tropical: identidad, regionalismo y modernidad, a partir de 1990. La labor editorial sugiere una aspiración permanente por consolidar el campo disciplinar de la arquitectura en Costa Rica.</p>

Cooptation, coercion and political authority: foreign assistance and control of the military in Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Upper Volta 1958-74

At independence, African governments faced a challenge of building administrative and coercive capacities to extend their control over the state territory and the population. Colonial state institutions and the availability of military and economic assistance during the Cold War contributed to concentration of power and resources in newly-independent states. The limited reach of the state, however, made it more difficult for African governments to reinforce their authority, when the citizens benefitted little from the state. This paper focuses on factors that influenced the methods governments used in controlling the society and the military in postcolonial states. Controlling the armed forces became a pressing problem for African presidents when they saw many of their colleagues ousted by soldiers. Through a comparative approach, the article analyses why governments chose to rely on violence, cooptation or ideological influencing in reinforcing their authority. Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Upper Volta were all members of the same colonial unit but varied in their postcolonial economic policies and international alignments. The three countries, however, all ended up with problems of soldiers and coercion playing a significant role in accessing political power and economic resources. The article seeks to explain why.

The Pre-colonial Roots of Colonial Coercion: Evidence from British Burma

Given fiscal constraints, how did colonial states allocate coercion within their territories? This paper proposes a new explanation for variation in colonial coercion: the extent of pre-colonial state consolidation. When the pre-colonial state achieved control over local society via capture of local agents, the latter became more compliant to the state’s demands and received less coercion from the colonial state. I evaluate this argument in British Burma, exploiting two novel data sources: revenue inquests collected by the pre-colonial state that recorded the new local headman appointments, and colonial gazetteers that recorded the distribution of colonial police. I find that villages closer to locations with newly-appointed headman before colonization received significantly fewer colonial police. The main results are not explained by spatial correlation or the presence of other colonial institutions. Further evidence shows that these differences in colonial coercion also influence political violence patterns after independence.

'This is not a pig': Settler innocence and visuality of zoos

Settler innocence is the primary organising principle of Israel's space production. To construct themselves as innocent political actors, oppressors disavow, justify, and deny their responsibility for oppression. The rhetoric of settler innocence allows Israel, a settler colonial state responsible for the dispossession and military occupation of Palestine, to present itself as the "only democracy in the Middle East". In this article, I perform a visual analysis of the Zoological Center Tel Aviv-Ramat Gan and the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo to examine how zoos, inherently violent colonial institutions, reproduce settler innocence. Entrenched in Israel's national projects of linking modernity and Biblical antiquity, zoos naturalise settlers, normalise indigenous displacement, and obscure colonial violence.

Hawaii Mission of the MEC as a Colonial Institution among the Korean Migration Workers

Hawaii Mission of the MEC as a Colonial Institution among the Korean Migration Workers

PROBING GUYANA’S PROVENANCE OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT per Doctrine of Discovery, Degenerated Democracy & Kleptocracy

ABSTRACT
 The article, while critically examining the provenance of Guyana’s “underdevelopment”, scrutinizes effects of “Doctrine of Discovery”, and construes that “maraud” befittingly describes the purpose of European discovery voyages to Americas and the Caribbean: the “genocides”; “institutionalized-injustice”; “Human Zoos”; and “systematic atrocities” perpetuated by the European monarchies ravaged Americas, Caribbean, and African nations - inflicting irreversible devastation that persists to this day. The British, questing for Guyana’s resources, setup bare infrastructure and institutions to facilitate “looting” while keeping it “underdeveloped” and its population in “abject poverty”. They were, absolutely, not interested in developing Guyana. However, US & UK continue meddling in Guyanese affairs: bankrolling “Democracy Degeneration”; enabling “Kleptocracy” that has been draining Guyana for the last five decades; and, now, drooling over potential oil money. 
 The article recommends that Guyana is ravenous for legitimate, antidotal, “constitutional reforms” guaranteeing a decentralised, pragmatic, governing model that is: participatory; transparent; accountable; responsive; equitable; and inclusive. To abrogate “Colonial Dehumanisation Effects”, Guyana needs to restore the indigenous peoples “Human Dignity”, “Identity” and “Rights”; rid Guyana of the antiquated, repressive colonial institutions; and reform the archaic education system. “Analog Generation” has to let go; 21st century belongs to “netizens-digital generation”, they must fully participate and play a decisive role in Guyana’s politics and development. Guyanese must use technology to “Reinvent Democracy” and ensure that; it is neither “hacked” nor “hijacked”, “Global Democracy” does not undermine “National Democracy”, and “Political Clientelism” is eradicated for good.
 

Human ecology and food discourses in a smallholder agricultural system in Leyte, The Philippines

Food systems are influenced by discourses held by individuals and institutions. Market oriented food security and food sovereignty are frequently presented as co-existing discourses in food systems. This paper documents how smallholder farmers embody market food security and food sovereignty discourses in their agricultural practices, and how these discourses prevent new forms of agriculture from developing given socio-political and institutional rigidity. A human ecology systems framework is used to analyse semi-structured interviews with 39 coconut producing smallholder farmers from Leyte, The Philippines. The results document how smallholders perceive market food security discourse as the main way out of food insecure situations, and thus continue to seek institutional support for maintaining a coconut based agricultural system. Farmers also perceive elements of the food sovereignty discourse, notably decision-making agency and agricultural diversification, as parallel strategies to improve their food security. The ongoing support for coconut production and inequitable access to training and knowledge in rural systems traps farmers into an agricultural system influenced by a long history of colonial institutions and social structures. The paper demonstrates that farmers are aware of the interventions required to diversify food systems towards higher value commodities, yet sovereignty is unlikely to be enabled due to maladaptive institutions and the associated access to new training and extension opportunities. The use of human ecology advances food scholarship through embedding a systems analysis into qualitative studies to reveal the influence of food discourses on food systems’ behaviour and outcomes.

Dégradation environnementale et dragage dans la baie de La Havane (1820-1850)

The revitalization of the Cuban economy since the last decades of the 18th century marked an important milestone in the economic, social, and environmental evolution of the Havana Bay. Important facets of an integrated urban history, such as waste management, population growth, and their role in the environmental degradation of the bay have been the subject of little research. This chapter analyses the progressive environmental degradation of the Havana bay and the implementation of conservation projects during the first half of the 19th century. Reconstructing the environmental history of Havana enables us to reevaluate the political history. In this case, we observe how the socio-environmental transformations influenced the construction of the colonial state. The search for solutions to the environmental problems; developed important connections among political, economic, and scientific institutions. Accordingly, this article examines how these connections among colonial institutions contributed to create new forms of state administration.

Les têtes, les cœurs et les musées

Museums as colonial institutions are filled with the tensions and contradictions of competing discourses. This makes them complex sites of public pedagogy and informal adult education and learning. But they are also becoming important spaces of counter-narrative, self-representation, and resistance as Indigenous artists and curators intervene, and thus key spaces for settler education and truth telling about colonialism. My study inquires into the pedagogies of Cree artist Kent Monkman’s touring exhibition Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience through the lens of my own unsettling as I engage autoethnographically with the exhibition. I highlight the unsettling pedagogical potentials of Monkman’s exhibition and contend that, as a site of experiential learning that challenges Euro-Western epistemologies and pedagogies with more holistic, relational, storied approaches, the exhibition offers much to unsettle and inform public pedagogy and adult education theory, practice, and research within and beyond museums.

Historical Institutions and Electoral Outcomes: The Case of India after Decolonization

There is now ample evidence that historical colonial institutions impact contemporary economic outcomes and some suggest that these links might be mediated by the influence of colonial institutions on electoral processes and outcomes. This paper examines this under-researched link in the context of India, focussing on two colonial institutions that potentially influence electoral outcomes – the type of rule, i.e. whether a territory was under direct British rule or whether it was under native rule – and the type of land tenure installed by the British. I measure electoral outcomes by three variables: voter turnout (VT), margin of victory (MV) and electoral competition (EC) and ask: Do historical colonial institutions impact contemporary electoral outcomes and if yes, in what ways? Do such impacts persist in the longer term? I focus specifically on the elections at the cusp of decolonization (1951) and those in 1970s, to assess short and longer-terms impacts. Results indicate a 4% higher VT in native ruled areas in the long run and 5% higher VT in the non-landlord areas in the short run. The latter dissipates in the longer term because of tenancy reforms. I find EC consistently higher in British and landlord areas but no robust impact on MV is noted. These results are consistent with the role played by landlords and erstwhile princes of native states after decolonization. The paper provides evidence on the potentially important mediating role of electoral outcomes in link between historical institutions and economic outcomes and suggests that research on elections should not overlook the role of historical institutions and those exploring the historical origins of economic outcomes should not overlook the role of elections.

“Female Voices on Ink”: The Sexual Politics of Petitions in Colonial Igboland, 1892–1960

ABSTRACTWhile historians have, of course, employed a host of documentary sources in reconstructing the colonial history of Nigeria, few have used petitions to understand the dynamic negotiations that occurred between the colonizer and the colonized. As a result, a vital primary source of history has been underutilized. Likewise, the voices of women lamentably have suffered the same fate as the use of petitions. This study seeks to fill this important gap by examining selected petitions and written correspondence between Igbo women and British officials in the period from 1892 to 1960. Continuously undermined by male-dominated colonial institutions and structures, African women acted in varied and complex manners from subtle to overt opposition, and sometimes violent resistance. One response was through petition-writing as women took to the pen to articulate their concerns. Petitioning became both a disabling and enabling force in exploring the relationship between subjectivity and power relations. How are scholars to understand the interactions between the often-neglected, ordinary female subjects and the British authorities? To what extent did their petitions shift the balance of patriarchal power and give voice to the otherwise “silent” women? Analysis of petitions written by women in colonial Igboland demonstrates how petition-writing gave females a subtle yet powerful voice, or agency, in a rigidly hierarchical colonial political system. This study argues that instead of simply looking at these petitions as another set of documents, they should be regarded as unique sources in which colonial subjects’ thoughts and desires are revealed. In addition, these neglected sources should be treated as an integral part of the complex power politics among colonial subjects as well as between them and officials. In thinking through these petitions, this case study reframes the sexual politics of petitions and challenges dominant, institutionalized gender ideologies that have defined women as nearly powerless and passive.

COLONIAL, POPULAR, AND SCIENTIFIC? The Exposition du Sahara (1934) and the Formation of the Musée de l'Homme

AbstractThis article explores the collection and exhibition practices surrounding the Exposition du Sahara (1934), an exhibit organized at a key moment in the transformation of the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro into France's modernized anthropological museum, the Musée de l'Homme. Through an analysis of archival material and exhibit publications, the article traces how the institutionalization of ethnographic collecting practices was shaped by interactions between museum personnel and collectors on the ground, and by the organizers’ desire to make the Exposition du Sahara, and the Musée d'Ethnographie itself, simultaneously scientific, popular, and a successful colonial institution. The account also tells the story of some of the objects from North Africa now housed at the Musée du Quai Branly, where very different modes of interpretation have been applied.

Danish Colonial Healthcare Policy, St. Croix, Virgin Islands

Abstract(Post)colonial scholarship in recent decades has undergone methodological and conceptual revisions and scholars have increasingly adopted the premise that social and political transformations are the product of both global and local struggles. The goal of this paper is to position healthcare as an “imperial force field” by focusing on the development of a colonial healthcare system in the nineteenth-century Danish West Indies. I argue that challenging seemingly self-evident concepts such as healthcare forces us to recognise that interventionist healthcare was contested and negotiated at multiple levels. This paper mobilises archival and archaeological research from a plantation hospital at Estate Cane Garden, St. Croix, Virgin Islands, to provide a context for interrogating the practical negotiations of colonial healthcare policy. While colonial administrative documents and physician reports depict a rather narrow range of healthcare practices, archaeological evidence from a plantation hospital suggests that healthcare, within plantation institutions, was more heterogeneous than the documents indicate. The goal of this paper is largely methodological. It mobilises colonial transcripts and material culture in ways that disrupt and reimagine taken-for-granted assumptions to show how those most affected by colonial policies complicate colonial institutions via on-the-ground practices.

식민지 법제도와 이광수 소설의 문학법리학(Literary Jurisprudence)적 재인식 -『삼봉이네 집』과 『흙』을 중심으로-

식민지 법제도와 이광수 소설의 문학법리학(Literary Jurisprudence)적 재인식 -『삼봉이네 집』과 『흙』을 중심으로-

Tricky Stories: Settler-Academic Reflections on Anti-Colonial Teaching

Personal stories and storytelling often appear as part of an effort to decolonize our approaches to teaching and learning. However, it can be difficult to develop adequately Indigenous-informed, anti-colonial storytelling practices, especially for non-Indigenous settler–academics and would-be allies situated in colonial institutions. The lessons learned from feminist or anti-oppressive narrative-based pedagogies might help but they do not account for Indigenous epistemic differences. In this paper, I reflect upon the questions and challenges that I encounter in my practice of using quasi–Indigenous stories to unsettle mainstream approaches to knowledge in the geography classroom. Rather than presenting a clear set of solutions, I hope to evoke and share the uncertainty that this work invites.

Measuring and explaining formal institutional persistence in French West Africa

AbstractColonial institutions are thought to be highly persistent, but measuring that persistence is difficult. Using a text analysis method that allows us to measure similarity between bodies of text, we examine the extent to which one formal institution – the penal code – has retained colonial language in seven West African countries. We find that the contemporary penal codes of most countries retain little colonial language. Additionally, we find that it is not meaningful to speak of institutional divergence across the unit of French West Africa, as there is wide variation in the legislative post-coloniality of individual countries. We present preliminary analyses explaining this variation and show that the amount of time that a colony spent under colonisation correlates with more persistent colonial institutions.

Imperial inventories, “illegal mosques” and institutionalized Islam: Coloniality and the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACTLooking at the architectures of governance that have characterized the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), this essay explores the ways in which imperial inventories of colonial institutions come to influence and arbitrate contemporary debates over what constitutes legitimate practices of Islam in Bosnia–Herzegovina and Austria. Examining the larger political context in which these debates emerge, including the criminalization of Muslim communities that refuse to submit to the authority of state-sanctioned Islamic religious institutions, I detail the ways in which colonial histories are recruited to curate a homogenized, continuous representational mandate for Muslim communities and practices in Austria and BiH. Attending to nostalgic invocations of the late Habsburg governance of Islam and Muslims, I argue that these discourses serve to legitimate specific Muslim institutions and actors in Austria and BiH that privilege the Habsburg legacy through the exclusion of outlawed/illegal Muslim communities and practices in both countries.

The Catholic Church in Tunisia: a transliminal institution between religion and nation

ABSTRACTSince Tunisian national independence in 1956, the Catholic Church has maintained its presence in Tunisia despite the demographic collapse of Catholics in the country and despite the Church’s historic ties to the French state under the protectorate regime. The Church in Tunisia succeeded in maintaining a position within the country after independence by transforming itself from a triumphalist colonial institution into what can be termed a transliminal institution. Situated in a liminal position with regards to both the Tunisian and the Catholic worlds, the Church in Tunisia after independence continued to exist through a constant process of translation and mediation between these two spaces. This article examines the historical development of this situation and the key dimensions which constitute the institutional Church’s transliminality.