Postcolonial Context Research Articles

Decolonizing social work education: Examples and reflections on inclusionary and exclusionary processes

Abstract This article considers issues of coloniality in social work education in Germany. As Quijano (2000) and Mignolo (2009) have identified, even though we are largely in a post-colonial context, ideas of coloniality are deeply embedded in everyday structures, institutions, and practices throughout the globe. Coloniality ensures that particular structures of power remain stable. We examine these power structures in the context of social work education in our university in Germany to exemplify and highlight some of the issues of power and inequalities that exist in the German context. We examine two social work programs at our university and use two examples to illustrate the inclusionary and exclusionary systems in place that maintain coloniality. The first example highlights how innovative educational programs and processes often end up excluding or limiting access for students from ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds. The second example highlights how the calls for widening participation in existing programs fail to open possibilities for ‘non-traditional’ students. We argue that addressing coloniality embedded in capitalistic, neo-liberal systems requires deconstructing ‘normality’ in systems, thereby identifying and disrupting paradoxes that limit widening participation and inclusion.

Rethinking LGBTQI+ Recognition in Vietnam

This study critically analyzes the disjuncture between Vietnam’s LGBTQI+ rights movement, including its Pride event series, and the lived experiences of local queer communities in Vietnam. Although Pride events have enhanced queer visibility and driven legal-social reforms locally, the underlying identity politics of Pride fail to fully capture the nuanced perspectives of queer individuals within Vietnamese sociocultural contexts. Using ethnographic data collected over thirteen months in several cities and provinces in Vietnam, this study aims to emphasize the local in queer studies. This article contributes to queer studies in a post-colonial context. By foregrounding the voices of local queer community members, this research illuminates the complexities and tensions that exist between identity politics of the broader global LGBTQI+ movement and local understandings regarding queer visibility and recognition in non-Western, postcolonial settings like Vietnam.

Navigating “Identity Crisis” in Taufiq Rafat’s ‘Stone Chat’ and Rizwan Akhtar’s ‘Pakistani Story’: A Post-colonial and Cultural Hybridity Theory

This research deeply studies ‘Identity Crisis’ in “Pakistani Story” and “Stone Chat” by shedding light on the complexities of identity formation in the context of post- partition Pakistan. By applying the concepts of Homi K. Bhabha; hybridity and third space and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concepts of subaltern and otherness, this study examines the post-colonialism influence on Pakistani society. Contradiction between ‘self ‘ and ‘other’, native-alien cultural clashes, love and hate relationships, third space, hybridity and subaltern are the major concepts in both poems. This paper explains the intersection of both theories in explaining the quintessential post-colonial experience explored by these writers. It also explores the psychological and sociocultural struggle for identity in post-partition Pakistan through a textual analysis of poems exploring this concept and indigenous struggle to adopt the culture of invader in order to get acquiescence but is treated as inferior or other. This study is helpful in understanding identity fragmentation in postcolonial context in Pakistani literature by highlighting the importance of hybridity, third space, subaltern and otherness.

Understanding Rangeland Desertification at the Village Level: A Comparative Study with a Social-Ecological Systems Perspective in Namibia

Abstract Desertification poses significant environmental and socio-economic threats to pastoral systems within the drylands of sub-Saharan Africa. However, there remains a paucity of interdisciplinary studies delving into the anthropogenic drivers of desertification at the local level of social-ecological systems, resulting in an inadequate understanding of its human-induced causes. This research aims to bridge this gap by presenting three case studies from Namibia’s eastern communal areas. Through an integrated approach drawing from rangeland ecology and anthropology, we offer a comparative analysis revealing nuanced differences among individual pastoral settlements, shaped by their distinct social contexts. Our findings elucidate the social determinants influencing varying degrees of desertification at the village level, highlighting local factors that mitigate the adverse impacts of grazing pressure and aridity on perennial grass populations. Notably, the study identifies the role of social institutions in managing critical environmental conditions and physical infrastructures, such as extensive pastures and cattle posts, which contribute to maintaining grassland resilience. Despite observable signs of desertification, the presence of perennial grasses both aboveground and in the soil seed bank across all settlements suggests that a tipping point has not yet been reached, emphasizing the window of opportunity for intervention. The discussion extends to the potential transferability of these findings to other Namibian communities within the existing socio-ecological framework, aiming to avert impending tipping points. Ultimately, the study challenges the notion of desertification in pastoral social-ecological systems as solely a tragedy of the commons, emphasizing the imperative of developing and implementing suitable social institutions within colonial and post-colonial contexts.

Addressing the concept of total pain in palliative care: A postcolonial South African hospice view.

Palliative care, which was formally established in the Global North, is now recognized globally as part of health care. As part of a larger study, we were interested in how decision-makers at a leading hospice in South Africa understood the changing local context and its influence on the delivery of services. We were interested in how the concept of "total pain," as outlined by Saunders, applies in a very unequal and under-resourced society in the shadow of a long, oppressive colonial, and apartheid past. We conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 12 staff at St Luke's Combined Hospices in Cape Town, South Africa, and analyzed the data following Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis approach. Four major themes emerged from the data. First, St Luke's has faced the challenge of serving a larger and far more diverse population than it had under apartheid. Second, the organization has undergone a process of rethinking holism and holistic services offered to palliative care patients in this context. Third, diversity and cultural sensitivity are key to how services are offered, and finally, the concept of "total pain" in this context is linked to questions of power and empowerment. This study is small and situated within a particular context, and it is clear that more data are needed. Nevertheless, the study shows that considering the Global South and postcolonial context is important for thinking about total pain and a global system of palliative care which is sensitive to the majority world context.

Traversing Distances and Differences: Developing the African Women’s Playwright Network

In 2015, playwright, director and screenwriter from Cape Town, South Africa, Amy Jephta and I set up the African Women’s Playwright Network (AWPN) via a mobile app to traverse literal, conceptual and historic distances to enable artists, researchers, educators, programmers and publishers from various parts of Africa and its diasporas to connect. In this article, I will trace how and why this network was set up, while reflecting on what we need to think about when creating online and in-person spaces for artists and academics to explore difficult questions across cultural lines in postcolonial contexts. These questions include how we consider colonial legacies that continue to impact this kind of contemporary cross-cultural work, and how we shifted the network from discourse on creativity to what Aristea Fotopolou terms ‘doing feminism and being feminist’ (2016:5), as lived and performed behaviours.

Religious Complexity in Postcolonial South Africa: Contending with the Indigenous

The history of religions during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been closely tied to the classification of Indigenous religions. However, recent scholarship in the field of religion has increasingly drawn on the work of subaltern and postcolonial historiography as a way of disrupting the European canon and dislodging Indigenous and non-western ways of knowing and being from the tyranny of the classical taxonomies of religion. Recent approaches to religious diversity have been challenged for reproducing imperial hierarchies of religion—assuming an accommodationist approach to Indigenous religions while also rendering invisible the internal diversity, fluidity, and adaptive orientations within Indigenous religions. In this paper, I contend that in the postcolonial context, Indigenous religions uncouple themselves from traditional taxonomies of religion, and, in particular, I propose religious complexity as a suitable framework and approach for accounting, contending with, and reporting on religious change in postcolonial South Africa. I explore questions about how to account for, ‘classify’, or ‘measure’ change related to everyday African Indigenous religious efforts and practices in the aftermath of and in response to colonialism, where conventional ideas about religious authority and affinity are displaced by Indigenous practices that can variously be described as simultaneously vital, viral, or feral.

Gender and Identity in Post-Colonial English Novels: A Comparative Study

This study explores the intricate relationship between gender and identity as represented in post-colonial English novels, highlighting how these narratives dismantle and reconstruct colonial power structures. By analyzing a selection of texts from diverse post-colonial contexts, the research reveals the complex ways in which gender roles and individual identities are renegotiated in the aftermath of colonial rule. The study places particular emphasis on the intersectionality of race, class, and culture, examining how these factors shape the protagonists' experiences and their resistance to patriarchal and imperialist norms. Using a comparative approach, the paper draws parallels between novels from Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean, illustrating universal yet context-specific challenges of post-colonial identities. This research contributes to the broader discourse on identity politics and gender equity, affirming the enduring relevance of post-colonial literature in contemporary debates.

Genocide and the Plague of Fantasies in La Llorona and Sueño en otro idioma

This paper examines how two contemporary Latin American films—Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona and Ernesto Contreras’s Sueño en otro idioma—engage with physical and cultural genocide through distinct deployments of fantasy elements that reflect the evolution of horror and magic-realist genres in Latin American cinema. The films repurpose fantastical elements through horror and mythopoetic narrative in order to confront the legacies of colonial trauma. Building on Slavoj Žižek’s concept of the plague of fantasies, the paper examines how La Llorona mobilizes the Mesoamerican folk figure of La Llorona to connect contemporary genocide in Guatemala with its historical necropolitical origins, while Sueño en otro idioma examines cultural genocide through the extinction of an indigenous language in Mexico. Both films demonstrate how fantasy can function in destabilizing ways in postcolonial contexts, offering distorted glimpses of horrors that resist direct representation. Through close analysis of these works, the paper reveals how contemporary Latin American cinema deploys fantasy elements, including magic realist conventions, to provide a fundamental challenge to colonial epistemologies, by exposing the phantasmatic underpinnings of colonial violence and its contemporary reverberations.

Resistance and Christian Ethics in Africa

Colonialism in Africa rewarded individuals who offered no resistance to its ideology and demonized those who did. An effect this continues to have on the African moral imagination is the tendency to idealize compliance over resistance, especially to Western hegemony. Given Africa’s sociopolitical struggles and the consequence of the continent’s ongoing entrapment in the colonial power matrix, I explore ways ethical discourses on the continent can contribute to the ongoing interdisciplinary process of decolonization. In engagement with African literature and decolonial studies on the one hand and liberation ethics on the other, this article proposes a Christian ethics for Africa, discussing resistance as both a moral imperative in postcolonial contexts and a constitutive of the Christian identity.

Difference of Approaches to the Concept of Equality: Western Tradition and L.S. Senghor

In this paper, the authors present a comparative perspective of the notion of equality in the Western school of scientific thought—a notion that became the cornerstone for specific scientific concepts in Western social and political philosophy—and the non-Western approaches to equality, taking as an example of the latter the ideas of the Senegal politician and philosopher L.S. Senghor. Such a comparison is of interest because the African thinker, although he had studied in France and enjoyed political recognition there, understood the concept of equality in postcolonial context quite differently from the Western philosophers. Other African postcolonial political figures (e.g., J. Nyerere) have also addressed the equality concept, but it is Senghor’s ideas that demonstrate so openly the African alternative to the Western approach. Senghor’s concept of equality is inseparable from his postcolonial political activities: during this period of his life, he introduced a notion of Civilisation de l’Universel, Civilization of the Universal, which was based on this concept. According to Senghor, such a civilization should evolve through the use of dialogue on equal terms, integrating the values of different civilizations of the West and East. He juxtaposed this notion with the one of civilisation universelle, Universal Civilization, the evolution of which is based exclusively on Euro-American values and can, in its technocrat rush, distort human nature, leading to the demise of humankind. Trying to resolve the dichotomies of Eurocentric approach, born of the gap between rational and intuitive thinking, Senghor adopts a concept of equality as unity, which brings him close to the Eastern Christian tradition of interpreting equality. It is in sharp contrast to Euro-American social tradition, which focuses solely on rational and ideological conceptualizing.

A critical review of dark tourism studies

The topic of dark tourism emerged in the last three decades as tourism became more accessible. It allows forgotten history to be revised and transferred to the public. This study aims to restructure existing categorization regarding dark tourism and address the research gaps in dark tourism studies. We collected studies from international publication databases – Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. We pre-processed the following data for each study: topic, authors’ location of university affiliation, study area, year of publication, top-cited articles, top productive journals in publishing dark tourism studies, keywords, and internality/externality of the author from the study area. With the current paper, we analysed review articles published from 1996 to 2024 (first quarter), applying qualitative methods. Based on these, a new analytical framework was generated. Furthermore, the connections between research topics were also analysed. The results of the analysis highlight specific research gaps in the literature on dark tourism and address poorly visible research fields in international journals, e.g. terrorism-related research, social media links of dark tourism, postcolonial contexts, or commemoration of communist past and heritage. Consequently, certain countries and regions are underrepresented in the literature. This critical review offers new research areas but also gives some directions to the theoretical enrichment of the dark tourism concept.

Feminine Re-Narrating the Nation in Nawal El Saadawi’s: A Daughter of Isis

This study introduces a postcolonial feminist analysis of Nawal El Saadawi's A Daughter of Isis, focusing on the lived experiences of Egyptian women within the intersections of gender, colonialism, and religion. It examines how patriarchal structures and colonial legacies collectively shape women's roles and identities in Egyptian society. Central to this analysis is El Saadawi's challenge of oppressive cultural and religious traditions, including female genital mutilation and gender-restrictive roles, highlighting women's resistance against systemic inequities. The study explores the strategies employed by women to assert their agency and reshape narratives of national and personal identity amidst patriarchal dominance. Additionally, it critiques El Saadawi's use of autobiography as a tool for resistance, emphasizing the re-narration of history through marginalized voices. By intertwining personal memory with broader socio-political critique, El Saadawi reclaims women's voices, offering a nuanced perspective on identity formation and the quest for justice in a postcolonial context.

Health and ethnic minorities in the Media: An analysis of the coverage of Indigenous peoples' health before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru

This essay about the media coverage of Indigenous peoples' health in Peru reveals a consistent lack of depth and nuance. Pre-pandemic, domestic outlets echoed governmental perspectives without critical analysis of the indigenous healthcare conditions; while international media, though acknowledging discrimination and primarily focused on environmental issues, did not make explicit connections between both topics and the limited access to health services in these communities. This trend continued during the pandemic, with domestic coverage remaining superficial and international media largely ignoring the pandemic's impact on indigenous communities. It reveals a persistent racism within the press, so it is possible to affirm the historical power imbalances stemming from colonialism continue shaping news framing, agenda-setting and the determination of news value both domestically and internationally, being that media representations in a post-colonial context reinforce stereotypes of formerly colonized people, whose voices and issues are considered newsworthy only when they if fit certain narratives.

Creative agency in the colonial encounter: foundations for a decolonial pedagogy

ABSTRACT This essay emphasises the imperative to move from discussions about decolonising education to the practical implementation of a decolonial pedagogy. This task necessitates challenging Eurocentric perspectives and incorporating diverse insights into curriculum design and pedagogical processes. By drawing on Edward Said’s concepts of democratic humanism, worldliness, and contrapuntal, the essay argues for an expanded understanding of colonial and postcolonial contexts that highlight the agency of colonised peoples. It underscores the significance of acknowledging cultural connections and interactions as vital components of human formation. The essay explores how enslaved people at the Cape of Good Hope navigated their circumstances, establishing creative agency to shape their worlds. Briefly discussing the literacy practices of enslaved people and the literary portrayals of enslaved women, the essay illustrates how a decolonial pedagogy can offer a more inclusive and critical perspective on historical cultural formations.

Students’ Perspectives of English within University Subculture in Sri Lanka: Resentment or Acceptance?

This study investigates Sri Lankan undergraduate students’ perceptions of the English language within the context of a technological study program conducted in the English medium. Despite global prominence of English as a vital communication tool, over the years many undergraduates in Sri Lanka have exhibited poor communicative competence in English often influenced by the so-called ‘university subculture’ that perceives English as a marker of social class, status, and power due to its historical significance. This study explores whether resentment towards the English language still persists within university subculture or if there has been a significant shift towards accepting the language as a valuable asset in the face of globalization and technological advancement. Data for the study were collected by administering an online questionnaire to a randomly selected sample of 255 second semester students who were enrolled in a technological study programme affiliated with a government university in Sri Lanka in 2024. The objectives include analyzing historical and socio-cultural factors that shaped undergraduates’ perceptions toward English and to assess whether resentment towards the language still persists or whether there is a positive shift towards accepting it as a necessary tool. The study aims to provide insights into the complex dynamics of language perception in a post-colonial context, contributing to broader discussions on language, identity and social mobility in contemporary Sri Lanka.

MSU-Main as Heterotopia: Perspectives and Memories of Retired Meranaw Employees

This study examines Mindanao State University-Main Campus at Marawi through the lens of Foucault's concept of heterotopia, exploring its role as a unique academia within the complex socio-political landscape of the Bangsamoro region. A mixed-methods approach, including document analysis, ethnographic interviews, and autoethnographic reflection, was used to investigate the experiences of retired Meranaw employees and the campus as an emplacement. The study reveals MSU-Main as a multifaceted heterotopic space, simultaneously embodying characteristics of both crisis and deviance heterotopias. It originally functioned as an apparatus of the Philippine Government while serving as a 'social laboratory' for cultural integration. Findings indicate its complex feature as an apparatus of power, as a socio-economic base, with a striking ethnopolitical characteristic, and a tendency to mirror the socio-cultural expectations of its location. Its characteristic as physical territory is shaped by the resistance of indigeneity over the constitutionality of land ownership. It uncovers tensions between the university's mandate for diversity and recent demographic shifts and its perception as a symbol of state power during periods of conflict. Despite challenges, the research reveals MSU-Main as a site of intercultural harmony and mutual support, particularly evident during times of crisis. This study contributes to the understanding of educational institutions in post-colonial contexts, offering insights into the role of universities in shaping cultural identities and navigating complex power dynamics. It provides a foundation for future research on the long-term effects of heterotopic educational spaces and their potential to foster inclusive, culturally sensitive learning environments.

Predicting Papiamento and Dutch reading comprehension development in a post-colonial context

Abstract The current research aims to predict L1 Papiamento and L2 Dutch reading comprehension development in 180 children in the upper primary grades (4–6) in a post-colonial Caribbean context from initial language of decoding instruction, cognitive and linguistic child characteristics, and linguistic transfer. Overall, children showed better reading comprehension proficiency in L1 as compared to L2 Dutch. Over the grades, strong autoregression effects in reading comprehension development in both languages were evidenced. Language of decoding instruction was found to predict L2 reading comprehension, but not L1 reading comprehension. The development of L2 reading comprehension showed better outcomes in the case of initial decoding instruction in L2. Word decoding, reading vocabulary, and grammar in respectively L1 and L2 were related to L1 and L2 reading comprehension in Grade 4, while L2 reading comprehension was additionally related to L2 basic oral vocabulary. Moreover, only reading vocabulary was related to L1 and L2 reading comprehension development across the grades. Finally, evidence of cross-linguistic interdependencies in the development of reading comprehension in L1 and L2 was found.

Missionary Positions: How American Evangelicals Learned to Love Global AIDS Work, 1985–2005

Abstract: From the mid-1980s to mid-2000s, American missionaries conducted information campaigns across the United States to change US evangelicals’ perceptions of the AIDS epidemic and secure their support for global AIDS work. Drawing on colonial discourses about suffering foreign bodies and souls, missionaries conditioned US evangelicals to shift their feelings about AIDS from disgust to grief, which activated practices of compassion. Evangelicals then funded abstinence-only sex education courses packaged as AIDS prevention programs across the Global South. Missionaries’ messaging facilitated US evangelicals’ transformation in these decades from the most implacable foes of people with HIV/AIDS domestically to some of the biggest supporters of AIDS work internationally. Assessing US evangelicals’ changing attitudes about and involvement with the AIDS epidemic reveals how transnational religious networks linked US conservative political priorities to global health humanitarianism and how religious actors expanded American global power in a postcolonial context.

Identity Negotiation And Resistance In The Short Story 'Rose In The Tiger Canal': A Review Of Feminism Poscocolonial

This study examines the negotiation of identity and female resistance in the short story Mawar di Kanal Macan by Iksaka Banu, focusing on the dual oppression faced by women in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Using a descriptive-analytical method and a postcolonial feminist approach, the research explores how colonial and patriarchal power structures shape women's identities and incite resistance. Drawing on theories of identity, subalternity, and hybridity, the analysis investigates how women in subaltern positions negotiate their identities within dominant power structures. Furthermore, it examines how hybridity and intersectionality create spaces for resistance through both subtle and overt actions. The findings reveal that the main character, Adelheid Ewald, navigates complex identity negotiations due to the intersecting influences of colonial and patriarchal dominance, with resistance manifesting in legal and symbolic forms. These insights contribute to postcolonial feminist discourse in Indonesia, offering a deeper understanding of how women assert their agency despite operating within layered systems of oppression. The study suggests further exploration of other literary works that engage similar themes to expand discussions on identity and resistance in postcolonial societies.