Colonial Power Relations Research Articles

Civilising subject(s): drawing pedagogy in Bombay in the age of industrial capitalism and empire

ABSTRACT This article charts a critical history of drawing, as it was taught within “general” schooling in colonial Bombay (now Mumbai), beyond the artisanal workshop, art, and industrial schools. Rather than children’s creative or subjective expression as it is commonly seen today, drawing’s presence in the school curriculum was a sign of the efforts being taken to create a workforce suitable for industrial capitalism, in Britain and in India. Analysing archival sources, and situating them within the broader discourses around colonialism, work, and the industrial subject, the article points out that when drawing was taught in Bombay it was hamstrung by issues metropolitan in origin, viz. course design, inconsistent pedagogic vision, lack of financial outlay as well as local conditions of low industrialisation. Similar problems plagued drawing in Britain. However, colonial power relations held Indian teachers and school-goers responsible for drawing’s “failures” in addressing the crisis of technical skilling and employment generation in India, while in Britain the critique was directed towards the system. Drawing – despite these “failures” – came to be valued as a practice necessary in and of itself. Drawing, the article contends, offered an embodied and verifiable response to wage labour, as seen in its unfolding in the colony, i.e. a moral technology geared towards wage labour.

The coloniality of internationalization: towards a power-conscious framework for studying the experiences of international students in Western contexts

ABSTRACT While existing scholarship has demonstrated that the experiences of international students in Western contexts are shaped by colonial power relations undergirding higher education internationalization, there remains a dearth of a comprehensive and nuanced perspective on international students’ relationships to colonial forms of power. To address the research gap in question, this paper proposes the development of a power-conscious framework to elucidate the international student–colonial power entanglement. Developed through a systematic literature review, the framework foregrounds three interrelated themes – subjugation, submission, and subversion – capturing the multifaceted interplay between international students and colonial forms of power. By emphasizing the complexities of the interplay, the framework challenges static portrayals of international students vis-à-vis colonial forms of power, highlighting the dynamics among the students’ vulnerability to, complicity in, and potential to resist the paradigm of otherness rooted in colonial forms of power. The framework also underscores the importance of situating inquiries on international students within the broader context of the lived realities of marginalized communities in settler colonial states, emphasizing the need to critically examine the responsibilities and agency of international students in unsettling ongoing colonial legacies of domination and oppression. Based on the development of the power-conscious framework, this paper contributes to advancing a transformative understanding of international student experiences and the (im)possibilities of engaging with internationalization in a more equitable and inclusive manner.

The “Authenticity” of Cannibalism: Persisting Nineteenth-century Colonial Perceptions in the Present-day Tourism Dynamic of Lake Toba

This paper discusses perceptions of the Batak of North Sumatra popular among nineteenth century European audiences and their continuity in the tourism industry and tourist descriptions. In particular, tourist dynamics in the Batak region of Lake Toba are contextualised and interpreted by identifying how local culture has reacted to tourist demand and tourist depictions of the Batak and their culture. The paper undertakes a historiographical survey of nineteenth century European writings that ascribe a “violent,” “primitive,” and “cannibalistic” character to the Batak to illustrate prevailing perceptions of the time. These findings are interpreted through a conceptual analysis that integrates Foucauldian discourse theory, Orientalism, Stuart Hall’s “the West and the Rest” as well as some elements of Marxist-Leninist material history. This analysis of modern tourism dynamics in Lake Toba is thus argued to illustrate how colonial perceptions and power relations have maintained currency through tourism.

Colonial Dis/Continuities in Cameroon and the Postcolonial Dilemma in the Archive

Abstract Despite how significantly processes of decolonization have shaped contemporary political and social realities, their study remains marginal in the peace and security fields. Understanding historical legacies and how embedded they are in today’s peace and conflict structures is essential to the analysis of current conflicts. This article argues that by tracing dis/continuities in colonial relations, we can gain a better understanding of these contentious processes and of the marginalized positionalities they create. In doing so, much needed research on the ambiguities of these legacies and on who had a say in shaping historical events can be done without reiterating colonial power relations. Alongside its analysis of the Cameroonian internationalized decolonization process under a UN Trusteeship and of how it developed into the current Anglophone conflict, this article uncovers and explores the existing dilemmas in, and potential new avenues for security studies research on colonial dis/continuities using post- and decolonial theories. Its findings and discussion contribute widely to debates within post- and decolonial research, peace, security, and conflict studies.

Aboriginal plant foods policy in Australia: a critical discourse analysis

ABSTRACT The Australian continent has over 6500 edible endemic plant species, fourteen of which have been certified for commercial consumption. This paper seeks to critically analyze select Australian Commonwealth Government policy relating to these Aboriginal plant foods. The aim is to purposefully examine the positioning of non-Indigenous people in Aboriginal plant foods policy discourse and reveal tacit settler colonial power relations. This is in response to a call to action from Indigenous scholars to examine how settler colonialism manifests in regulatory mechanisms, such as government policy. This paper offers a theoretically informed critical discourse analysis methodology for examining Australian Commonwealth Government policy relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs. Analysis comprised an explanation of the socio-political context of Aboriginal policymaking in Australia, textual analysis of policy texts related to Aboriginal plant foods and an interpretation of discourse practice to reveal how policy discourse tacitly promotes ideological agendas. This analysis revealed that Australian Commonwealth Government Aboriginal plant foods policy is framed according to settler terms and upholds neoliberal interests. Considerable rethinking is required about how power is exercised in Commonwealth Government policy relating to Aboriginal plant foods to ensure it does not replicate and perpetuate unjust settler colonial power relations.

Synecdoche and Metonymy in E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India

Edward Morgan Forster in his masterpiece novel A Passage to India creatively uses synecdoche and metonymy to help him tell his story and develop its themes and characters. In this article, analyzing specific instances of synecdoche and metonymy in the text helps the reader to understand their profound impact and great effect. The article briefly introduces synecdoche and metonymy as literary methods, highlighting their characteristics and use in narratives. Specifically, it examines synecdoche and metonymy in A Passage to India, as devices to analyze many passages and places. The article examines how synecdoche and metonymy convey complex ideas, create vivid imagery, and explain many themes via textual analysis. The article also explores how Forster’s synecdoche and metonymy reflect colonial tensions and power relations in the novel’s sociocultural and historical context. The effects of synecdoche and metonymy on the reader in depth are studied. Forster’s narrative techniques enhance “A Passage to India’s Tale as a research subject. The novel shows various tactics and strategies to demonstrate Forster’s literary competence and complexity.

Building an ethical research culture: Scholars of refugee background researching refugee-related issues

Abstract Recent scholarship on the need to decolonize refugee research, and migration research more generally, points to the urgency of challenging ongoing colonial power structures inherent in such research. Increased involvement of scholars with lived experience is one way to challenge and remake unequal and colonial power relations. Through discussions with researchers of forced migration, we aimed to explore the challenges, barriers, and supports related to involvement in such research, and to identify how research practices and structures could be improved to increase and facilitate the involvement of scholars with refugee backgrounds. In this field reflection, we highlight key points and suggestions for better research practice that emerged from these discussions. In doing so, we are endeavouring to contribute to the important ongoing conversation about ethics and decolonizing research. We build on existing ethical guidelines by opening up some of the complexities of ethical practice and offering concrete actions that can be taken to work through these.

Feminist foreign policy and global (health) care work migration: Addressing the invisibility of colonial gaps in feminist policy making

ABSTRACT The state-sponsored recruitment of migrant healthcare workers from the global South into the global North is a contemporary practice that requires critical engagement. Germany, like many other like-minded countries, has developed its own recruitment program Triple Win which aims to sustainably and ethically secure its national health care system through the use of foreign labor. Absent from Triple Win is an awareness of the ongoing colonial power relations that reproduce the program as a practice in neocolonial care extractivism. This lack of awareness is set against the country’s promotion of a feminist foreign and development policy, which seeks to transform international politics through a gender centred approach. Locating Triple Win within the context of feminist foreign policy we analyse how Germany’s feminist foreign and development policy makes visible, addresses and changes the colonial power relations that sustain care work migration programs. In doing so, we seek to build on existing studies of care work migration as a gendered and racial phenomenon. To do this we adopt a postcolonial feminist approach that is grounded in an ethics of care in order to remap the local and the global through a critical analysis of care work migration as a neocolonial development practice.

Caring feminist states? Paternalistic feminist foreign policies and the silencing of Indigenous justice claims in Sweden and Canada

ABSTRACT The self-identification of Sweden and Canada as exceptionally caring and ethical states committed to the goal of global gender justice has been reinforced through their adoption of feminist foreign policies (FFPs). However, despite the enthusiasm surrounding the potential of feminism as an ethical approach to foreign policy making, critics have drawn attention to the many failings of FFPs that hamper their ability to bring about transformative change. This article posits that the shortcomings of Swedish and Canadian FFPs are rooted in an unacknowledged legacy of colonial power relations. It is from within this history of violence that Swedish and Canadian practices of feminism both “at home” and “abroad” can be seen as a re-articulation of colonialism. Through two illustrative narrative readings of reconciliation efforts, the article examines state provisions of hierarchically imposed, paternalistic expressions of care that silence Indigenous “articulations of self-care.” As such, it addresses a significant gap in the literature on FFPs by highlighting the risk of self-proclaimed “caring” feminist states reproducing colonial power relations within and beyond borders.

Unsettling NbS: A pathway towards shifting colonial power relations in nature-based solutions research and practice

This article presents a synthesis and analysis drawing from NbS Justice, NBS Indigenous and NbS more-than-human literature, Indigenous governance, Indigenous planning and coexistence planning literature. The aim of this paper is to contribute to understandings of NbS and colonialism through critical reflection, as well as provide tools for action to for researchers and practitioners. In settler-colonial contexts, NbS are colonizing by default. Colonialism operates through producing and growing power asymmetries, which exist in NbS research and practice. These power asymmetries are perpetuated and accelerated by settler NbS practitioners and researchers. However, knowledge co-production that embodies ethical space principles with Indigenous partners in NbS may support power redistribution. To support settler NbS practitioners and researchers, we present a potential process to support mutually beneficial knowledge co-production consisting of three stages; pre-engagement, internal engagement and external/collective engagement.

A Different Hunger

In echoing the title of A. Sivanadan’s seminal examination of Black cultural-political strategies of resistance to the representational violence governing the construction of colonial identities and power relations, this article argues that the racialized regime of representation continues to support the social production of global hunger and sustain its operation. In this context, hunger must be seen as an act of exteriorized violence directed against specific populations in order to maintain the necropolitical neo-colonial settlement. Within the aesthetic logic of humanitarianism supporting this regime, the emaciated figure of the suffering, silent other is continually forced to re-enact the traumatic scene of their own disappearance into the space of the image in order to fulfil a spectatorial desire to see and to be subjectivated through seeing. The article contends that the social construction of an intrinsically theatricalized humanitarian gaze is inimical to the political functioning of colonial-capitalist ways of seeing, thereby demonstrating that critical art practices are not exempt from operating within the parameters of this aesthetic regime. The article investigates the claims of Dutch artist Renzo Martens’ performative documentary, Episode III: Enjoy poverty (2008), to expose the hypocrisy of Western food aid practices through the lens of performative intervention. Through close analysis of the film, it cautions against positioning hunger as an object ‘outside’ reflexive critical consideration of it. It demonstrates that there is no external material reality that pre-exists our imagination and desire to know; no objective correlate for our hunger for social and political change. In order to understand this ‘different hunger’, we must recognise our differential implication in, and relation to, the world in which hunger is manifest and not construct an idealised optic that would allow us to simply imagine ourselves acting upon it.

Toward a new relationship between history and global mental health

This paper explores the relationship between historical research and the field of global mental health. It identifies a gap in the current literature, and argues that an in-depth historical approach is critical for understanding and overcoming current challenges and controversies in global mental health. The authors propose that a thick historical analysis has the capacity to broaden and diversify the discussion about the core concepts in global mental health (such as illness, suffering, care or culture), and to nuance our understanding of the field’s development and impact in specific political and social contexts. The paper analyzes how a systematic historical approach is crucial for understanding colonial and post-colonial power relations embedded in the field of global mental health, and encourages researchers and practitioners to view history as a source of imagination, and of alternative ideas and initiatives in mental health that go beyond existing psychiatric frames of representations, and towards truly radical and egalitarian projects and relations. This exercise in alternative historical imagination does not need to interfere with nor disrupt the urgency of mental health practice today; on the contrary, it is meant to improve the effectiveness of interventions. It can provide practitioners with a new and enriched language to resolve long-standing clinical dilemmas (e.g. related to patient adherence or limited success of certain cultural adaptations), which could not be properly addressed previously

Workplace accentism as a postcolonial and intersectional phenomenon: The experiences of Brazilians in Portugal

What insights can postcolonialism and decoloniality offer into workplace accentism? Drawing upon these two strands of literature, this article contributes to workplace research through proposing a view of accentism as an intersectional phenomenon, rooted in the historically sedimented unequal social structure and relations formed during the colonial past. Based on a qualitative study of Brazilians in Portugal, we identify two forms of workplace accentism experienced by the participants: (1) overt accentism – which involves an explicit, direct reference to a person’s accent; and (2) accent-activated stigmatisation – which occurs upon the listener’s realisation that the speaker is a member of a particular group (specifically, nationality). We theorise the experiences of accentism as contemporary manifestations of the workings of colonial power and prejudices. In addition, we distinguish between four approaches to managing workplace accentism: suppressing, confronting, marginalising and exiting. We theorise these as contemporary expressions of resistance strategies historically used by the colonised in response to colonial power. We also highlight the intersectional differences – along the axes of class, race and gender – with regard to individuals’ deployment of each of these approaches. The article enriches our knowledge about how colonial power relations continue to underpin discrimination and its consequences throughout the global economy.

Indigenous Fire Futures

Abstract Dominant causal explanations of the wildfire threat in California include anthropogenic climate change, fire suppression, industrial logging, and the expansion of residential settlements, which are all products of settler colonial property regimes and structures of resource extraction. Settler colonialism is grounded in Indigenous erasure and dispossession through militarism and incarceration, which are prominent tools in California's fire industrial complex. To challenge settler colonial frameworks within fire management, Indigenous peoples are organizing to expand Indigenous cultural controlled burning, fire stewardship, and sovereignty. These initiatives emphasize reciprocal human-fire relations and uphold Indigenous knowledge systems and livelihoods. Concurrently, Indigenous fire sovereignty is threatened by knowledge appropriation and superficial collaborations. In this article, we review contemporary research on Indigenous burning in order to highlight the strategies that Indigenous communities and scholars employ to subvert colonial power relations within wildfire management and actualize regenerative Indigenous futures.

Rooted Constitution: A look into the Living Tree Doctrine and Indigenous Rights

The living tree doctrine is a landmark amendment that transformed how the Constitution was understood. However, it is often not used to its fullest extent in Indigenous rights cases. This paper explores how the underutilization of the living tree doctrine in Indigenous cases has been impacted by Canada’s settler state mentality. This essay argues that the dismissal of the living tree doctrine in Indigenous rights cases has restricted Indigenous self-governance and that this is purposely done by the Canadian state to maintain oppressive colonial power relations. The paper will first explain the reasoning behind not employing the living tree doctrine in Indigenous rights cases and how it is rooted in maintaining colonial power relationships and will then explore why and how the doctrine can help promote Indigenous rights.

Visual Necropolitics and Visual Violence: Theorizing Death, Sight, and Sovereign Control of Palestine

Abstract The Israeli military’s occupation of Palestinian territory relies heavily on its ability to shape the visual environment and set the terms of how Palestinians may see and be seen. However, the relationship between violent occupation and violent visualities has yet to be fully theorized. This article gathers several conceptual strands—biopolitics, visual biopolitics, and necropolitics—to theorize what I term “visual necropolitics.” Visual necropolitics is proffered as an analytical tool that furthers our understanding of the violent visual regulations that enable and sustain the conditions for the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the subjugation of the Palestinian people. To illustrate this, three distinct but related forms of visual violence will be analyzed: the deliberate infliction of ocular trauma through targeting of the eyes, the strategy of maiming in order to prevent telegenic death, and the imposition of visual regulations to govern the death of captured bodies. This theorization allows us to move beyond considering the politics of sight, vision, and representation only as an artifact of the colonial power relations that govern life and death in Palestine, towards understanding how visual violence is a constitutive dimension of occupation. Not only does colonial occupation use visual violence, but it cannot be sustained without it.

Divided Self in Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark

This paper discusses the problems of identity, time and place in Jean Rhys’ 1934 novel, Voyage in the Dark. It analyses Rhys’ aesthetics concerns in the creation of a subjective construction of the imperial metropole and the colonial space. In doing, this paper suggests how Rhys builds a bridge between contemporary modernist narrative techniques and a preceding Post-colonial perspective. The constant juxtaposition of time and place makes of Rhys’ protagonist, Anna Morgan, an elusive self. By means of this fragmented self, the author aims to reformulate colonial power relations and raise crucial questions about discourses of gender and national identity. As a result, this paper engages in a Post-colonial thought, arguing how issues about gender and race issues are articulated in Rhys’ novel. Rhys creates the subjectivity of a marginalized woman showing the effects of colonization and creating a metropolitan female identity based on fragmented and juxtaposed memories.

An Ante Litteram Critique of Orientalism: The Case of Abu’l-Faḍā’il-i-Gulpāyigānī and E.G. Browne

Since the late 1970s, the term Orientalism has been closely associated with Edward Said (d. 2003) and his influential monograph of the same name. First published in 1978, Orientalism advanced a number of critiques about the discipline of “Oriental Studies”, its frequently condescending portrayal and depiction of the Eastern world, and the complex relationship between knowledge and power in the context of the Middle East. As revolutionary as a number of Said’s theses have been, in his critique of Orientalism and in particular his penetrating analysis of the relationship between knowledge and power, Said was not breaking entirely new ground. In fact, seven decades earlier, a voice from the Orient itself, the Persian Bahā’ī scholar Mīrzā Abu’l-Faḍā’il-i Gulpāyigānī (d. 1914), expressed a similar, albeit embryonic, critique of Orientalism. Abu’l-Faḍā’il’s analysis, presented in the opening chapters of his final book Kashfu’l-Ghiṭā’, focused on one of the foremost Orientalists of his time, the Cambridge scholar Edward Granville Browne (d. 1926). Rather than studying the extent to which Browne fits the paradigm of Orientalism (a topic some scholars have previously expressed views on), this article explores ways in which Abu’l-Faḍā’il’s critique of Browne’s study of the Orient can be viewed as a nascent prefiguration of some of the theses developed and advanced by Said decades later. Gulpāyigānī’s precedence as a Bahā’ī scholar in discerning and addressing the link between Western scholars’ knowledge production and the colonial power relations of their respective governments with the countries or areas they studied, helps correct a misconception forged about Bahā’īs. Historical narratives produced in anti-Bahā’ī polemics decades after Gulpāyigānī’s death created a master-narrative that cast Bahā’īs as agents of colonial powers, sweeping under the rug counterarguments such as those posed by Gulpāyigānī’s critique. The authors of this article have been motivated by this corrective goal.

Energy justice in the context of green extractivism: Perpetuating ontological and epistemological violence in the Yucatan Peninsula

As the world gets warmer, the deployment of low-carbon infrastructure is seen as the cornerstone to mitigate the pressures created by fossil capitalism, prompting questions over what constitutes a 'just' energy transition. This has simultaneously broadened the discussion over what are the social justice and colonial legacies embedded in the infrastructural, technological and material composition of energy systems. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with different actors, this article looks at the deployment of low carbon infrastructure in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, as the colonial legacies, politics and power relations embedded in energy systems interact with the construction of the so-called "Maya Train", a regional integration project seeking to interconnect the southeast of Mexico. It asks the question: can we speak of energy justice in a context of total extraction? Drawing on the literature of green extractivism, it argues that as long as energy justice is linked to a Westernized conception of modernity and development it risks reproducing injustices instead of solving them. The article suggests that political ecology must pay closer attention to emancipatory struggles in defense of the territory as they move away from a universal definition of energy justice. 

On Dammed Landscapes and Invasive Infrastructures

In this article I turn my attention to two hydropower plants, HPP Dabar and HPP Nevesinje, part of the massive Upper Horizons scheme, which is currently the largest infrastructural project in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Built by the China Energy Gezhouba and financed through a large loan from the Export–Import Bank of China, the enterprise forms a part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, an unprecedented global development programme that involves nearly half of the world’s countries. The project is being built on the Zalomka, one of the largest sinking rivers in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the world, and its potential impacts are hotly debated and may be extremely far reaching. As Rob Nixon has argued, the mega-dam projects in many postcolonial nations have ‘depended’ on both physical structure and metaphorical discourse on ‘submergence’: of ‘disposable people and ecosystems, but also on the submerged structures of dependence that lay beneath the flamboyant engineering miracles’ (2011: 167). Drawing on these reflections and insights from the energy humanities, blue humanities and infrastructure studies, I consider dams as concretizations that ‘harness, produce, materialise, and symbolise’ (neo)colonial power relations (Max Haiven (2013) ‘The dammed of the Earth: Reading the mega-dam for the political unconscious of globalization’, in Cecilia Chen, Janine MacLeod and Astrida Neimanis (eds) Thinking with Water, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press). Thus, from this perspective, this infrastructural project could be seen not only as ‘Chinese invasion’ through the Belt and Road Initiative, but also an invasion of nature by the nation state, often constituted as the necessary means to pursue a view of national and regional integration towards globalized modernity. Finally, I discuss an invasion of the dominant narrative by resistance, turning attention to the anti-damming intersectional and coalitional work in the Balkans, which includes protests, marches, forums, artistic interventions, and legal pressure aimed at stopping both local and the Chinese state-owned companies from dredging and blocking the rivers. Intervening in the normalized view of the extractive zone – the article argues – these acts of resistance form part of a broad struggle against what the anthropologist Anne Spice calls ‘invasive infrastructures’ (2018) that numerous communities are fighting against in the region (‘Fighting invasive infrastructures’, Environment and Society 9: 40–56).