Colonial Theory Research Articles

Discrimination Against Puerto Ricans in the Puerto Rican Housing Market: Evidence From a Preregistered Audit Experiment

Abstract Do locals discriminate against themselves by favoring foreigners with higher expected purchasing power? Drawing on theories of prejudice, discrimination, and colonialism, I argue that in colonized and post-colonial countries, local home sellers discriminate against local potential homebuyers while favoring foreigners with expected higher purchasing power, anticipating a more profitable transaction. I support this argument with evidence from a preregistered online audit study targeting discriminatory attitudes toward local home buyers. In the study, fictitious home buyers with distinctive language and ethnic names emailed 1,512 home sellers (realtors and homeowners) across all municipalities in Puerto Rico. Home sellers reported more houses available to Americans and invited them to more house showings than Puerto Ricans. My estimates indicate that ethnic discrimination exists in the Puerto Rican housing market. These findings provide new insights into ethnic dynamics in colonized and post-colonial societies and underscore concerns about recent legislation that turned Puerto Rico into a tax haven.

The Return of the Oppressed: Notes on Kurdish Anti-colonialism

This article critically examines the historical trajectory and contemporary manifestations of Kurdish anti-colonialism. The analysis unfolds in two parts, dissecting the intricate relationship between theory and action within the Kurdish struggle. The historical dimension delves into Ottoman-era Turkish-style colonization, elucidating the displacement strategies employed by the Ottoman state. The study underscores the delayed integration of the colonialism concept into the Kurdish intellectual framework, shedding light on the challenges faced by the oppressed in articulating their anti-colonial narrative. The second part scrutinizes the ideological challenges within the Kurdish anti-colonial discourse. The instrumental use of the slogan “Kurdistan is a colony” is explored, emphasizing the dominance of socialist objectives over national liberation aspirations. The impact of socialism and pan-Islamism on Kurdish politics and the linguistic complexities that obscure the colonial difference through language are examined. Contemporary dynamics, such as the Peace and Democracy Process and political violence, are analyzed to provide insights into the evolving nature of the Kurdish struggle. The resurgence of colonial theory within Kurdish society, particularly through techno-Kurdishness, is explored, highlighting the role of modern communication technologies in reshaping the narrative. The article concludes by reflecting on the potential of the Kurdish struggle to inspire global resistance movements.

Spiritual Leadership in the Upheaval of Settler Colonialism

In the current global landscape, characterized by religious fervour, social and political unrest, economic instability, and environmental challenges, spiritual leaders stand as pivotal agents of change. Their role is especially crucial in contexts marred by ingrained injustices and persistent conflicts, such as the Palestinian–Israeli settler colonial context—a reality I have been intimately involved with over three decades of reconciliation work. This paper contextualizes scholarship on spiritual leadership within the Palestinian–Israeli context by integrating it with settler colonial theory. By applying insights about spiritual leadership to this context, three key traits of spiritual leaders—(1) spiritual authority, (2) discernment, and (3) the ethical use of power—are identified as essential for envisioning an alternative future. By embodying these traits, spiritual leaders can effectively guide their communities through the multifaceted realities, advocating a transformative approach to leadership and interreligious work.

Why do they stay? A spatial perspective on settler colonialism, decolonization and the case of Kosovo Serbs

ABSTRACT This study offers a new perspective on settler colonial theory through the case of Serbia/Kosovo. It develops two hypotheses: (1) settler colonial projects in neighboring territories differ markedly from those overseas, necessitating a revised conceptualization called here ‘contiguous settler colonialism,’ and (2) these projects may prompt settlers to remain amid decolonization despite adverse conditions. The empirical analysis identifies three key factors leading to this outcome: the 'Serbianization' of the physical environment, the (im)mobility arrangements of Kosovo Serbs, and Serbia's coercive cooptation system, resulting in a 'settler colonial make-believe space' between the former colonial state and the emerging decolonizing polity.

Research on the Theoretical Progression of General Secretary's Important Discourse on Women's Issues

The world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century. The degree of globalization is deepening. While the development of women in various countries has made great progress, their development demands are still increasing. As socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, Chinese women are faced with new opportunities and new challenges. Under these circumstances, General Secretary Xi Jinping has made many speeches on women's issues on important occasions at home and abroad. His discourse is based on Marxist women's theory, the women's theory of successive generations of Communist Party leaders, and the excellent traditional Chinese women's thought. The three constitute the theoretical source of its discussion. Focusing on women's special needs, realizing individual equality of women's rights to development, building a family civilization with family education and morals, strengthening the reform and innovation of the construction of the three natures of women's federations, and promoting global women's development. These are the key nuclei of his important discourses. General Secretary Xi Jinping's important discourse on women's issues is rich in connotation, profound in thought, and has great practical significance. As a film with rich connotation, Disney 's live‐action Mulan film has attracted much attention. This article uses the literature data method and text analysis method to analyze the characteristics of the real‐life version of Mulan and its connection with post‐ colonial theory. By analyzing the cultural, historical and gender identity of the film, it explores its inherent cultural significance and profound connotation.

Settler colonialism and the administrative state: The transfer of the Government of the Northwest Territories to Yellowknife in 1967

AbstractIn September 1967, the federal government transferred the Government of the Northwest Territories from Ottawa to Yellowknife. While the transfer brought the machinery of government closer to the governed, it also established settler institutions in the homelands of Dene, Métis, and Inuit peoples. Using the tools of administrative history and settler colonial theory, this article reconstructs the transfer using newly released archival papers of NWT Commissioner Stuart Hodgson, who oversaw the transfer and the development of government in the NWT until 1979. It analyzes the role federal public servants played in facilitating settler colonial development in northwestern Canada and, in turn, how that development affected the structure and work of the federal public service in Ottawa. While the transfer entrenched Westminster parliamentary government in the NWT, it also served as a focal point for Indigenous resurgence and resistance that has remade contemporary governance in the territory.

Cultural Hybridity and Identity Formation in Globalized Societies

Purpose: The general purpose of the study was to explore cultural hybridity and identity formation in globalized societies. Methodology: The study adopted a desktop research methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library. Findings: The findings reveal that there exists a contextual and methodological gap relating to cultural hybridity and identity formation in globalized societies. Preliminary empirical review revealed that cultural hybridity was pervasive, with individuals blending diverse cultural influences to construct hybrid identities. Identity formation was dynamic and influenced by globalization, migration, and historical legacies. Power dynamics, including race and socio-economic status, intersected with cultural hybridity to shape experiences of identity and belonging. The study emphasized the importance of promoting inclusivity and dialogue to navigate the complexities of cultural hybridity and foster greater understanding across diverse cultural landscapes. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The Post- Colonial theory, Intersectionality theory and Transnationalism theory may be used to anchor future studies on cultural hybridity and identity formation in globalized societies. The study provided valuable insights and recommendations that contributed to theory, practice, and policy. It enriched theoretical frameworks by adopting a multidimensional approach to understanding identity formation and underscored the importance of recognizing cultural diversity. Educators, community organizations, and policymakers utilized the study's findings to develop inclusive practices and policies that promoted intercultural understanding, social cohesion, and equitable access to resources. Additionally, media practitioners incorporated the study's insights to produce content that challenged stereotypes and fostered positive representations of cultural diversity. Overall, the study's recommendations have had a significant impact on efforts to promote inclusive development and intercultural dialogue in globalized societies.

An Analysis of the Identity Structures Built Up by the Characters in Zadie Smith's Novel White Teeth

This paper has been prepared in order to analyze the construction of an identity of both Bangladeshi migrants (Samad Iqbal) as well as English men (Archies Jones) who emigrated from other countries. Those are close friends. Lived in the multicultural city of London in Britain. In the novel White Teeth, the author explores the problems resulting from immigrants from various countries living in Britain, especially those who have left behind physical artifacts (cultural properties) and intangible attributes relating to their ethnic group inherited from the past of the immigrants, who lived in Britain from the first generation to the second generation. The novel of the Smiths is interconnected with their past and also deals with their dissatisfaction with their lives in a society in which they live today. According to Smith, his work is sensitively concerned with the second generation immigrants and their beliefs, which are transmitted from ultra-modern societies via their bringing up, living standards, values, taboos, thinking processes, and the likes. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the way in which the construction of identity of different characters in the novel White Teeth is explored through the lenses of different theories of social scholars, such as Colonial theory, hybridity theory, and post-modern era theories of identity in the social system. This paper also explores how characters existing in the novel construct identity of themselves and how different cultural interact on their identity formation in White Teeth

Historical criminology and colonialism

Historical criminology, developing over the last few decades as a defined field of inquiry, has had a recent renaissance, resulting in the publication of leading texts, edited collections and scholarship, setting agendas for its methodologies and impact. We discuss the epistemological and methodological focus of this body of literature, which has been primarily centred on class-based historical criminal justice studies of Britain and the United States. We show that there has long been a parallel development of historical criminology and criminal justice research on colonialism, racial justice and state harm. Drawing upon anti-colonial and anti-criminological research, we challenge current approaches to historical criminology’s epistemological orientations to widen its vision for research, method, ethics and impact, and we highlight the risks of not doing so. This article makes a case for why research and theories of colonialism must be analytical pillars of ‘historical criminology’ and sets out possibilities for future approaches that can push historical criminology in productive directions. Most importantly, we stress the problems for future researchers of analyses that reproduce the structural harms already rampant in criminology.

Which Materialism and What Matter? Rethinking Marxism from a Materialist-Feminist Perspective

The rethinking of Marxist feminism requires the development of a materialist theory of patriarchy and colonialism. In the absence of this theory, biologism and idealism take the lead, as happens in unitary theory, which argues that the subordination of women is due to cultural values or ideas and not to material relations of production. This essay shows that the inclusion of intersectionality does not necessarily neutralize the dominant modern idealist ontology, which refutes the idea that identity is the semiotic dimension of politically relevant materialities. To rethink Marxist feminism also requires an epistemological shift that breaks with that monotheistic thinking that has room for just one evildoer, one universal subject, and one fundamental contradiction.

The role of cultural supports for Indigenous students: spaces for and impediments to decolonizing education

ABSTRACT The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) final report documents the history of residential schools while outlining responsibilities for schools to advance reconciliation. Schools have undertaken initiatives to affirm Indigenous perspectives and support Indigenous students, however progress toward decolonization remains limited. To support such initiatives, research has revealed the significance of having self-identified Indigenous peoples working at schools. Informed by critical sociology of education analysis and critical theories of settler colonialism and decolonization, we examine perspectives of 201 students, parents, and teachers working with self-identified Indigenous school staff members in Alberta, Canada, to explore spaces for as well as impediments to decolonization in school reforms and practices. Our findings reinforce research demonstrating the positive impact that interactions with self-identified Indigenous school staff can have for students, teachers, and parents. We also observe contradictions imposed by institutional practices that hinder progress towards reconciliation and decolonization.

The Position of Children's Characters in Children's Animation Postcolonialism Studies

Children's literature has now begun to shift to digital media, known as children’s animation. Instead of children's literature being created for children, these works are written, edited and distributed by adults. This shows that adults (parents) have full power over the work that children will consume. Colonialism theory then questions what it means to write for children. This research appears with the real assumption of where the child is positioned in children’s cyber literature. The postcolonial approach is used to verify this assumption. The results show that children are treated as objects, a means to endure real problems faced by adults. It appears that writing for children in addition to exploring is also stuffing and imposing the will for the needs of adults: guiding children, training children through the process of reaching civilization which is again the power of adults to define it.

Lumbisí and the suburban (re)colonisation of Quito’s valleys: de-facto housing policies and indigenous dwelling struggles in plurinational Ecuador

Building upon ongoing engagement with leaders, advocates, and inhabitants of Lumbisí and other communal territories in Quito’s Metropolitan District, this contribution exposes the city’s suburbanisation as state-sponsored (re)colonisation. Through qualitative socio-spatial analysis, we unpack the relation between Quito’s de-facto housing policy and Lumbisí’s dwelling struggles with three main aims: (1) to unravel the involvement of housing and land policies in the predatory transformation of Quito’s north-eastern valleys; (2) to illustrate their impact on Indigenous dispossession, elimination, and assimilation; and (3) to uncover how dwelling forms elicit and articulate dissent. Setting the grammars of dissent mobilised by local, regional, and national constituencies of Ecuador’s Indigenous Movement in dialogue with settler colonial theory, we reposition ongoing struggles within enduring colonial trajectories. Our case study of Lumbisí complexifies existing frameworks of gentrification, neoliberal urbanisation and capital accumulation. It foregrounds how Quito’s de-facto housing policy systematically relies on communal territories to externalise demands for land and labour, instrumentalising them as ‘informal’ settlements or ‘vacant’ land to extract ‘affordable’ housing and ‘natural’ assets. The (re)colonisation of Quito’s north-eastern valleys thus unfolds as the ongoing physical and ontological occupation of Indigenous territories. Within this context, comunas simultaneously absorb transformations and articulate dissent.

The legal geographies of Indigenous consultation and conservation law in Chile

ABSTRACT States with colonial legacies invest significant resources to control Indigenous lands. This article examines how state land control operates in the creation of conservation law in Chile. It analyzes Indigenous consultation applied to the Biodiversity and Protected Areas Service (2016–2017) and examines how the state dismissed Indigenous proposals to protect biodiversity. Based on interviews and the analysis of parliamentary reports, and drawing from theories of colonialism, the article argues that the state's neglect worked to lower the risk of land recovery and Indigenous disruption. The findings highlight the role of state environmental institutions in Indigenous dispossession and land grabbing.

Anthropogenic impacts of mining on indigenous peoples in Western Australia: Divergent values

The Anthropocene epoch is known as the time when the actions of humans began to impact the planet in unprecedented ways. There is consensus that the “golden spike” coincided with the advent of colonialism and especially settler colonialism. Indigenous Peoples have been impacted by what has been called contemporary colonialism or new colonialism. This has had implications, not only for their local environment, but also for their cultures, languages, health, economies, and political self-determination. Our study is framed by theories of contemporary and new colonialism as well as cultural colonialism and how this is manifested in the discourses of mining companies as they trivialise or ignore community and fuse Indigenous futures with extractive industries, also failing to recognise the non-human rights of the land and post-humanist/new materialist perspectives. The auto-ethnographic yarn (knowledge sharing) told in this article is the voice of an Indigenous Aboriginal Yawuru man living in Western Australia. Through thematic analysis of his, and other Aboriginal people’s yarns, we reveal Indigenous values and beliefs of permanence, community care, and the ensoulment of nature. Thematic analysis of the scripted narratives of the value statements of two mining companies operating in Western Australia uncovers a notion of community care discordant with that of Aboriginal people as well as a focus on courage and curiosity. The occlusion of any traditional, bottom-up understandings of human/non-human relationships in the values statements of the mining companies contrast with the way that Indigenous People’s narratives point towards ecological, social and economic sustainability in an Anthropocene dystopian future.

Are sport and traditional Inuit games identified as tools in current Inuit suicide prevention strategies?: A content analysis

ABSTRACT Eekeeluak Avalak, an 18-year-old Inuk wrestler who won the first-ever gold medal for Nunavut at the Canada Summer Games in 2022, dedicated his win to his late brother who died by suicide in 2015. Avalak openly attributed sport – specifically wrestling – to saving his own life. This story raises important questions about the role of sport and traditional games in Inuit suicide prevention strategies. Few studies have examined the role of sport or traditional games in Inuit suicide prevention strategies. In an attempt to reduce Inuit suicide rates, in addition to the National Inuit Prevention Strategy, three of the four land claim regions that constitute Inuit Nunangat have suicide prevention strategies. In this study, we used settler colonial theory, critical Inuit studies, and content analysis to examine if and how sport and Inuit traditional games are identified as prevention tools in these Inuit suicide prevention strategies. The results demonstrate that sport and traditional games have largely been overlooked as protective factors in current Inuit-wide and land-claim specific suicide prevention strategies. Moving forward, evidence-based and community-driven approaches could be funded, created, implemented, and evaluated as culturally-safe Inuit mental health intervention models to address the disproportionately high suicide rates among Inuit in Inuit Nunangat.

Phallogocentricism' of English Language: Perceiving under Gender and Colonial Theories

Phallogocentricism' of English Language: Perceiving under Gender and Colonial Theories

Reducing Indigenous suicide: Recognizing vital land and food systems for livelihoods.

Colonial trauma poses a significant risk to the physical, intellectual, and mental health of Indigenous youth and young adults. Education and mental health scholars are increasingly concerned about the emotional wellbeing of young people, particularly as rates of suicide have increased across the United States. With interest in identifying the unique contextual dynamics involved in understanding Indigenous suicide, this work considers characteristics related to colonialism that may uncover strategies for both educators and mental health practitioners that address disparities. Drawing on a larger ethnographic study, this inquiry asks how settler encroachment upon Indigenous land and food systems is related to death by suicide from the perspective of Cowichan Tribes members. Comprehensive semi-structured interviews were conducted (n = 21); each interview was audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed deductively based upon a priori suppositions related to settler colonial theory. Cowichan members' narrated explanations for suicide rooted in disruptions to (1) relationships with the land and (2) traditional food systems. They described how settler encroachment infringed upon their subsistence way of living and introduced incongruent constructions of nature-culture relations (e.g., humans as distinct and separate from the natural world). Settler futurity is secured through the arrogation of territorial dominance coupled with physical or conceptual acts of erasure, placing Indigenous lives and lifeways at risk. One outcome of the disruption to Indigenous collective capacities is a dramatic increase in Indigenous suicide.

Submerged Economies in Colombia and their Link to Social Representations of Work. A Study from the Perspective of Social Psychology

This reflection article aims at exploring the bases of the historical construction of work in Colombia, its social representations, and its incidence on the constitution of submerged economies such as illegal drug trafficking. The historical method of consulting secondary sources that testify to the behavior of Colombian society at the end of the Colony and in the Republican period is used in order to connect the historical scenarios with the present. Reference is made to the path of dependence, the critical theory of colonialism and social representations of work. The results show that social psychology and social representations of work have consequences in the creation and maturation of informal economies and in the tendency to get rich quickly and easily in some sectors of the Colombian society. In conclusion, these contexts end up being consolidated as the basis of an illegal ‘industry’ that constantly reinvents itself and gives rise to the development of certain skills useful to survive in an unequal and violent context materialized in the so-called drug trafficking era, which began in the 1970s.

Commodifying Indigeneity? Settler Colonialism and Racial Capitalism in Fair Trade Farming in Palestine

Abstract The recent proliferation of settler colonial and Indigenous studies of Palestine have addressed the historical and present-day enclosure of Palestinian land, yet the question of ‘indigeneity’ is underexamined in this literature. Claims to indigeneity in Palestine straddle varied definitions: a racial category; as constructed through the colonial encounter or preceding colonialism; and as a local relation or an international juridico-political category. Using discourse analysis and ethnography of a specific Palestinian sustainable agriculture initiative, I show how for Palestinians, claiming indigeneity brings into tension potential political economic gains, social relations of struggle, and discursive formations of collective subjectivity. A valorisation and commodification of indigeneity as a racial category narrows notions of indigeneity to the biological-cultural, offering challenges for Palestinian struggles for sovereignty. I conclude by asking what theorising from Palestine offers to Marxist theories of racial capitalism and settler colonialism, and whether indigeneity can exceed its commodification.