Colonial Past Research Articles

‘To Learn from Nature, not to Exploit Her : Discerning Postcolonial Green Speculations in Vandana Singh s Indira s Web and Widdam

As a new generation of writers and artists from the Global South deal with the effects of human-caused environmental damage and climate change, they rely heavily on science fiction and fantasy as a genre to show the most important parts of the Anthropocene. Due to the geographical peculiarity and history of the colonial past, the Global South experiences inequitable effects of the Anthropocene as compared to the Global North. Therefore, speculative climate fiction from the Global South demands a critical interpretation contextualized in the geopolitics of the Global North and the Global South. The paper discusses the manner in which science fiction anchors ecological consciousness in the narratives from the Global South and further strives to depict the specific traits of Global South SF that make it different from Global North SF. This study intends to investigate two short stories, Indira’s Web and Widdam, by an Anglophone science fiction writer, Vandana Singh. The paper demonstrates how Singh’s stories, firstly, subvert the hegemony of western sciences by legitimizing indigenous knowledge systems as scientific, rational, and eco-friendly, and, secondly, criticize the need for technological and neo-colonial advancements at the cost of our environment. With the analysis of these stories, it would be argued that postcolonial futuristic fiction not only acts as a tool to question anthropocentrism but also functions as an appropriate literary form for enunciating environmental crises and climate change affecting the Global South.

Embodying the colonial memory. White colonists and “implicated subjects” in photographs from Equatorial Guinea

Except for explicitly colonial approaches, academic research on the visual culture of former colonies tends to adopt an allegedly critical perspective towards colonial history, as a way to participate in the construction of a conscious memory that helps to transform contemporary relationships. However, for a while, the hypervisibility of colonised peoples has been compared to the lack of visibility of white colonisers in academic studies. In line with theories of cultural memory, this study examines images as critical cultural artefacts to argue that racial deidentification in images of colonial Equatorial Guinea takes the focus away from the current society of the former metropolis, and thus from its memory and its colonial responsibility. I present a theoretical approach to photographs of white people ranging from the early 20th century to family images during the final years of colonial domination (1959-1968). These chiefly depict everyday scenes whose protagonists are apparently oblivious to the colonial context, and in which nothing seems to happen, in the same way, that their descendants, understood collectively, are enabled to ignore the colonial past and its continuities.

From Discordance to Assemblages: Renegotiating French and Portuguese Colonial Identities through Indian Tourism and Heritage Sites

This article examines two cities of discordant colonial heritage in India—Chandernagore, a former French colony in West Bengal, and Panjim, a former Portuguese territory in Goa—to demonstrate how these cities experience their colonial identities through heritage spaces. It explores the ways in which the museums and public spaces of these cities use memory and materiality to perform discordant colonial pasts which differ from the dominant narrative of the British Raj. Conceptualising discordance as a framework to trace the unique ways in which the museums and public heritage sites of these two cities mobilise their French and Portuguese colonial heritage, the article shows how these discordant colonial cities distinguish themselves from the British Raj and its legacies. The article affirms these differences not in terms of a duality, but a continual process of convergence and divergence that is mutually constitutive of heritage practices in the cities.

A Fervent Crusade for the National Soul: Cultural Politics in Colombia, 1930–1946

This timely, well-organized, and highly relevant book might best be read by starting with the epilogue and working backward. Catalina Muñoz-Rojas focuses on the cultural politics of the Colombian Liberal Republic from 1930 to 1946 and the political culture of Liberal elites and bureaucrats who sought to include the popular sectors in the national citizenry. Those policies and practices also included traditional elitist, exclusionary polices to legitimize Liberal rule. The author places her home nation into a much broader and inclusive world, revealing how this paradoxical tension between inclusion and exclusion in governance and politics shapes the formation and contestation of citizenship in Colombia and in much of the Americas.The author argues and proves that Liberal reformers invented a notion of el pueblo as legitimate but static, romanticized, and essentialized campesinos, indígenas, women, and workers all in need of paternalistic direction and moral uplift by Liberal elites for Colombia to progress. Their constructions of “popular culture” revealed an elite-imagined purity lacking in reality, the gap between classes glaringly obvious when working-class families were tutored on how to achieve middle-class dreams while stuck living lives of poverty. Overall, the author finds that the Liberal reformers opened national identity for greater inclusion—especially for mestizos and indígenas—while rewarding themselves a place of privilege that legitimized their rule. Tellingly, and a lesson of universal import, inclusion and domination became two outcomes of the same process.This work started life as a University of Pennsylvania dissertation and morphed through time and experience into a polished monograph. The introduction situates the work and orients the reader in the dynamics of state formation and cultural politics during the Liberal Republic, the author citing relevant historiography from both English- and Spanish-language sources. Four chapters cover, respectively, the cultural politics of music; the forging of citizenship on stage and screen; hygiene campaigns and the healing of a population seen by elites as sick, weak, and in need of instruction on correct habits; and a reimagined past and a more inclusive notion of citizenship beyond the traditional Hispanist, Catholic, and white paradigm inherited from the colonial past. The tensions and contradictions inherent in democratic governance, and the definitions of citizenship manipulated and limited by elite authoritarians to justify their rule, could find easy comparison in contemporary Brazil and the United States.The stunning epilogue situates the book in the contemporary dramas of Colombia from 2019 to 2021, ranging from antigovernment protests, increasing poverty and immiseration, COVID-19, and a cynical tax reform met by intensifying protests and repression rather than dialogue from a government that still saw the public as unworthy of citizenship. The author makes clear that the cultural politics of the 1930s and the 1940s are part of long historical continuities that must be understood in order to build a more just, inclusive, and democratic order.Most of the book's primary sources come from archives and libraries in Bogotá, which prevents a larger national scope while illustrating the highly centralized and pocketed nature of the Colombian state. The author is a careful historian and is open to interdisciplinary insights from anthropology as well as cultural and literary studies. Professor Muñoz-Rojas moves with ease between languages, disciplines, and nations, connecting her work across a broad swath of the Americas. One hopes that a publisher will issue a Spanish translation soon, given the importance of the author's work in Colombia and across Latin America.Minor gripes include the lack of a glossary listing government acronyms for easy review and the lack of illustrations. More coverage of the state's emphasis on physical education for both males and females would have added to the author's focus on hygiene and the shaping of a healthier, more modern population. More coverage of Afro-Colombians and their views of and responses to the Liberal reformers' reimagined past and model of citizenry, which either ignored or disparaged Blackness, would also have been welcome. Finally, more discussion of Peruvian indigenista critiques—like those of José Carlos Mariátegui—of the abuses of the Indigenous population by the Catholic Church and large landowners would have provided context for the critiques of said abuses by the Colombian Left and by José Martí in Cuba and José Vasconcelos in Mexico.The writing is clear, jargon-free, and engaging. Graduate students in history and Latin American studies, specialists, and dedicated general readers will find much in this book about Colombian history as well as informed and sophisticated debates about democratic governance. Students of sociology and political science will also find useful comparative data for their work on state formation and democratic governance and on state and society dynamics in Latin America.

Toward a pluralistic conservation science

AbstractThis editorial reflects on the history of the conservation movement, the strong continuing influence of its colonial past, and the counter‐emergence of a more pluralistic and respectful worldview. Conservation Letters seeks to support and foster an ethical and inclusive discipline of conservation that discards elements of its colonial and racist history. This will involve broadening the disciplinary scope of “conservation” and paying greater attention to traditional ecological knowledge and nonwestern conservation approaches. We also see a particular need for theoretical advances that guide conservation practice by informing and connecting different kinds of expertise to understand social‐ecological interactions and their implications for both people and ecosystems. Conservation can and should play a vital role in securing the joint future of ecosystems and people, but it will only achieve its full potential if it retains its social license and stays relevant to emerging concerns and values.

Restitutie van koloniale collecties volgens de ethiek van Jos van Beurden

Restitution of colonial collections according to Jos van Beurden’s ethics. The Western world is increasingly recognizing its unjust colonial past. Looted art and other illegitimately obtained cultural objects should be returned to their countries of origin. Jos van Beurden advocates a new ethics of restitution. In an interview, he addresses questions of justice and casuistry, such as: What characterizes the injustice of colonial looting? How do we know whether progress is made in the return-dossier? Should scientific finds like the Java man also be returned? To whom should Māori heads be returned? Are there good reasons to keep certain objects for Dutch museums? How should they be exhibited? Is the current return policy sufficient?

Broken View. Congo and the magic lantern

As an early projection device, the magic lantern was often used for colonial propaganda. For instance, to showcase and legitimize the ‘good works’ of the church in the colony. But lanterns were also used by missionaries in Africa to evangelize the local people and create a colonized mindset. This text is a reflection on the work process of Broken View, an essay film on colonial images from the Belgian Congo and the magic lantern. Through montage, collage, and assemblage the film examines and recontextualizes these images of the Belgian colonial past.

After the Colonial Past: Ambivalences of Assimilation in French Guiana from 1946 to the mid-1950s

Focusing on the case of French Guiana from 1946 to the mid-1950s, this article aims to contribute to reflection on the controversial notion of assimilation. The author therefore pays attention to the trajectories of the préfet, i.e. from 1947 the highest civil representative of the state and Creole teachers, the latter providing the largest contingent of indigenous colonial officials. The article argues that, while assimilation is often perceived as a policy that aims to impose an order designed for the mainland through a universalist ideal that erases differences, in reality it did not produce uniformity and its ideal could be – and often was – negotiated under the constraints of a post-slavery society in which the elites were indeed Black.

Mi casa de los Espíritus (My house of spirits): Challenging patriarchy with magical feminism

AbstractThis paper draws on magical feminism, a writing that engages in a critic of patriarchy through inexplicable events that address gender inequality and the power of the oppressed. This magic has always been in me but always dormant in my academic writing. To let this magic out has required to let myself go into a form of magical embodiment in my methods: I engage in a spiritual excavation to let emerge three Latin American feminist myths and legends that are in me to recover from vicarious violence and come back to the world. This experience opens the gates to engage with a colonial past and to celebrate other systems of belief. This paper is an invitation for those who will join to mobilize our magical forces for the recognition of knowledge production in moments of magic as legitimate.

An evolving migration-development nexus: DfID and British politics of race and belonging

The last three decades have witnessed increasing interest in the connections between migration and development. Within this body of work less attention has been paid to the ways in which ideas of race and racialised histories and geographies shape the migration-development nexus. Focusing on diasporic communities as key actors within this nexus and using empirical material from Great Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID), this paper explores the shifting constructions of ‘the diaspora’ within the global development context from DfID’s inception in 1997 to its demise in 2020. Constructions of the diaspora-development nexus can be framed as a (shifting) assemblage, bringing together contemporary post-colonial politics of belonging, the racialised histories and geographies of development and the changing (neoliberal) architectures and cultures of development. The paper concludes that in this context, diasporic-centred development can be considered a racialised socio-political mechanism, shaped by the shifting politics of race and belonging, which are themselves bound to colonial pasts and contemporary colonialities. This attends to processes of inclusion (and exclusion) in the global development sphere in contemporary Britain and speaks to the need to think more widely about how race intersects with the migration-development nexus.

The narrative practices of hostile environments: the story of the nation-as-family and the story of security

This article contributes to research into the importance of storytelling in asylum practice by examining the narratives used to promote and justify Hostile Environment policies. The two narrative practices identified are the “story of the nation-as-family”, which defines national belonging predominantly by markers of race and ethnicity, and the “story of security”, whereby racialized refugees are framed as potential threats to the nation's socio-economic stability. The former propagates a notion of consanguinity that works to exclude and silence people seeking asylum from non-European nations. The latter sees the rhetoric of a “clash of civilisations” so central to the “War on Terror” taken up in policy debates about climate-induced migration. An analysis of the way in which these stories are staged and critiqued in the writing of Abdulrazak Gurnah and Stephen Collis reveals how they elide the relationship between forced migration and the history of European colonialism. In exploring this elision, this article insists on the significance of literary texts as spaces where monocultural conceptions of belonging can be confronted, and where understanding Europe's colonial past is established as an integral part of hearing the stories of refugees in the present.

Tensions of Modernity: Privilege, Precarity, and Colonial Nostalgia among European Security Contractors in East Africa

AbstractPrivate security work can be a brutal world of short-term contracts, exploitation, and under-regulation, where the imperative of profit is expected to trump collective notions of military brotherhood. Why then do so many demobilized soldiers turn to it as a vocation? While a rich body of work has revealed the vulnerabilities of demobilized military life, ethnographic investigations into how contractors experience and make sense of precarity are less common. Drawing on fieldwork with military veterans of European descent working and living in East Africa, this article argues that a central, yet underexplored, feature of contemporary security work is colonial nostalgia. Some contractors read the travelogues of colonial adventurers, while others trace their family genealogy to ancestral colonial frontier soldiers. A few even write their own memoirs in similar fashion. Writing, reading, and living the colonial past through this contractor canon serves several present-day functions. First, the parallels between risk-taking colonial adventurers and the kind of rugged individualism associated with homo economicus masks the tensions and fissures that emerge from soldiers’ discharge from the military and subsequent remobilization as privatized contractors. Secondly, colonial nostalgia forms part of a larger political critique of Western military interventions, of which many of these contractors experienced first-hand. Here, private security work is imagined as replicating an older, more effective tradition of frontier soldiering that is rooted in a logic of settler-colonialism. Finally, fantasies of a colonial past feed into contractors’ attempts to market themselves to clients and to organize their everyday work.

Introduction

Introduction

Us and them: Privileged emotions of Cape Town’s urban water crisis

Political ecology has already engaged with emotions in order to reveal the intimate, unconscious and unexplored power dynamics which characterise patterns of water use and control. Similar explorations have mostly focused on the emotional struggles of structurally disadvantaged people rather than on the emotions of those with privilege: the elite. This oversight becomes problematic when it conceals disproportionate shares of power and the implications that such power has on the sustainable use and just distribution of water resources. The 2018 water crisis which affected Cape Town’s metropolitan area constitutes the empirical context of this paper, which sets out to address the aforementioned research gap. Focusing on the elite’s emotional responses to Cape Town’s drought and subsequent water crisis, this paper seeks to advance political ecology’s understanding of urban water crises by retracing the emotional geography of Cape Town’s most privileged urban dwellers. In particular, this work leverages the concept of subjectivity to explain the way emotions are constructed and come to materially and discursively reproduce historical power dynamics. These findings reveal that fear, anger, and a sense of pride felt by wealthier Capetonians results from and perpetuates the privileged conditions of those elite. Rooted in colonial and apartheid past, Capetonians’ privileged emotions end up perpetuating the main causes of the water crisis and eventually excluding the most disadvantaged inhabitants from future use and control of water resources. Ultimately, by connecting with privileged emotions, it is possible to challenge certain subjectivities and create space for more just and sustainable urban-water imaginaries.

Of Calimero and other stories

In my article, I explore the common roots of the different expressions, manifestations, politics, and embodiments of anti-black racism by examining the similarities and differences of anti-black imaginaries in Italy and the way they resonate with anti-black racism in the African diaspora contexts, including the Latin American one. While this comparative perspective reaffirms the global dimension of different forms of racism and anti-racist struggles, it also places the case of Italy, with its colonial past and postcolonial present, in direct conversation with the larger global context of racist narratives and practices.

EMERGING SECESSIONIST THREATS IN NIGERIA: A FOCUS ON THE ACTIVITIES OF IPOB AND UNKNOWN GUNMEN IN EASTERN NIGERIA

This study examines the reemergence of separatist movements in Nigeria, particularly in the Eastern region, and their impact on the security situation in the country. It reveals that the separatist groups, such as IPOB and Unknown Gunmen, have been able to mobilize support from the Igbo people by highlighting their historical, economic, and political grievances against the Nigerian state. The failure of the Nigerian state to address the legitimate grievances of ethnic minorities has contributed to the emergence of separatist movements. The analysis of reports and data sources shows that the activities of IPOB and Unknown Gunmen have had a significant impact on the security situation in the Eastern region of Nigeria. The findings of this study have important implications for the security and stability of Nigeria. The study concludes that secessionism in Nigeria has a complex and multi-layered history that is rooted in the country's colonial past and perpetuated by the failure of the Nigerian state to address the legitimate grievances of ethnic minorities. The recommendations include addressing the root causes of secessionism, promoting inclusive governance, and engaging in meaningful dialogue with separatist groups. These steps can help to find a peaceful solution to the issue of secessionism and ensure the security and stability of Nigeria.

Decolonising Teaching and Learning in Anthropology, A Holistic Approach.

The task of decolonising anthropology is not yet complete. Rather, it is an ongoing process, and recent times have reminded us that evidence of the colonial past can still be found in anthropology departments (and are potentially reproduced through our teaching). In this article, I argue for a holistic approach to the decolonising of teaching and learning. This is in contrast to more isolated attempts to decolonise anthropology, for example, in the inclusion of previously suppressed voices. I explore a repertoire that includes student-centred methods, links between fieldwork practices, teaching practices and ethics, and a practice of encouraging students to place their interlocutors aims and objectives at the centre of anthropological practice. Moreover, I argue for the importance of assignments, fieldwork exercises, and performative teaching techniques that assist students to experience, rather than merely discuss, anthropology. I also go on to encourage the teaching of an actively engaged and relevant anthropology, which is open to student engagement with contemporary issues and which is directly relatable and relevant to them. Finally, I provide examples of collaborative research methods as a medium for decolonising anthropology. I argue that these methods allow students to fathom more deeply the ways in which contemporary anthropological knowledge is produced.

An Atomic Age Unleashed

Abstract While tens of thousands of Koreans were subject to the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, early peninsular analysis of the bombings rarely grappled with the existence of these individuals. The general exclusion of colonial subjects from the story of the atomic bombings has long been identified as part of a nationalization of the wartime years, a move that situates the history of the attacks as a specifically Japanese experience. Less understood is how postcolonial intellectuals in Korea encouraged this historiographical trend. Across the peninsula, a common commitment to the idea of science as emancipatory enabled postcolonial Korean writers to conflate political liberation with advancements in the field of atomic science. This fusion of postcolonial developmentalism and atomic scientism, common in both the North and the South between 1945 and 1950, drowned out the critical temporalities introduced by peninsular survivors of the atomic attacks. This article outlines the historiographical obstacles Korean bomb victims posed to emancipatory accounts of the attacks. Postcolonial bomb victims were interpolated into a postwar community that was physiologically unable to leave the fact of the bombings in a colonial past.

Unfixing timelines: connecting colonial pasts and contemporary constructs

Unfixing timelines: connecting colonial pasts and contemporary constructs

Men. Male-biased sex ratios and masculinity norms: evidence from Australia's colonial past.

We document the historical roots and contemporary consequences of masculinity norms-beliefs about the proper conduct of men. We exploit a natural experiment in which convict transportation in the and centuries created a variegated spatial pattern of sex ratios across Australia. We show that in areas with heavily male-biased convict populations, relatively more men volunteered for World War I about a century later. Even at present these areas remain characterized by more violence, higher rates of male suicide and other forms of preventable male mortality, and more male-stereotypical occupational segregation. Moreover, in these historically male-biased areas, more Australians recently voted against same-sex marriage and boys-but not girls-are more likely to be bullied in school. We interpret these results as manifestations of masculinity norms that emerged due to intense local male-male competition. Once established, masculinity norms persisted over time through family socialization as well as peer socialization in schools. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10887-023-09223-x.