Decolonial Theory Research Articles

Disrupting the Chrononormativity of Geographies of Youth and Youth Studies: Learning From Infractions at the Border

ABSTRACTThe overlapping academic fields of geographies of youth and youth studies are defined by what counts as ‘youth’, but how important are age categories to maintaining their boundaries? Descriptions of infractions at the border act as provocations for examining how the normalisation of ages and stages such as ‘youth’ constitute chrononormativities that are implicitly ‘westernised’ and culturally blind. I curate conceptual resources for disrupting chrononormativity and narrow ways of thinking about generation and intergenerational responsibilities to make the case for why this matters in climate‐altered worlds. I make two separate but related interventions. First, I critique how youth scholars and youth journals currently conceive of ‘youth’ drawing on Indigenous scholarship. I then demonstrate why this matters by challenging the pervasive discourse that climate change is a recent problem for ‘younger generations’ to solve. The research reviewed here charts a useful path forward for geographers and other scholars to resist and reconfigure youth/adult dualities and broader chrononormativities, building on scholarship stipulating the necessity of intergenerational dialogue, justice, and solidarity in climate activism that is also informed by decolonial theories and principles.

Building decolonial nursing curricula to address disparities in Indigenous women's maternal health

Social and health inequities and inequalities are rising all over the world (Smith, 2012; McGibbon et al., 2014; Chinn and Falk‐Rafael, 2018). Nursing students should therefore be educated to understand the multifaceted factors creating health inequities and the degree to which non-biological elements can be embodied and become biological (e.g., environmental stress leading changes in health.). The need for innovative undergraduate nursing curricula reform is apparent. The lack of nursing courses highlighting the effects of colonization, environmental justice, upstream structural and social determinants of health, globalization, and state violence must be addressed. Colonization, broadly speaking, characterizes the Eurocentric project to “civilize” the rest of the world utilizing various forms of violence (McGibbon et al., 2014). The persistent and ongoing reproduction and recurrence of colonialism, enacting cycles of disenfranchisement and oppression, creates significant inequities in physical, mental, and emotional health and well-being for historically marginalized groups of people (Smith, 2012). Because gaps in nursing curricula and outdated teaching practices may support persistent inequities, scholars and students have advocated for decolonization of nursing curricula (Smith, 2012; McGibbon et al., 2014; Chinn and Falk‐Rafael, 2018). This analysis utilizes decolonial theory and postcolonial feminism to suggest pathways to decolonize nursing curricula and pedagogy through decentering the colonial knowledge structures and practices that harm Indigenous health and wellbeing.

The Politics of Memory: NLP Models as Liberating Artifacts

The main argument of this article is that natural language processing (NLP) projects of Indigenous African languages can be understood as an effort to restore and preserve Africa’s memory in the digital. Language has always occupied a particular place in the African decolonial imaginary. Several African states embarked on processes of Africanisation of postcolonial institutions in their respective national contexts. One of the main features of this project in many African countries was the restoration of African languages in education and public service. Taking a social constructivist approach rooted in science and technology studies and looking through the analytical lens of decoloniality in Africa, I conceptualise NLP models of Indigenous African languages as liberating artifacts. I mobilise decolonial theory to look at language as a technology that can be used to dis-member and re-member the African subjects of their memory of being as people. The coloniser erased the memory of the African subjugated by cutting off their linguistic connections and instead planted the European memory. From this perspective, decolonisation can be understood as a process of re-memberment that can be achieved through the return of the languages of those whose humanity has been denied or questioned. In this sense, NLP projects offer instances of the digital that represent spaces of restoration and negotiated digital futurities. I contend that these digital spaces in Africa are social spaces of contestation about what common investments should be made, what collective futures are desirable and what are the perceived material consequences of such shared imaginations.

Global perspectives on platforms and cultural production

Research on platforms and cultural production is dominated by studies that take the Anglo-American world and Northwestern Europe as their main points of reference. Central concepts in the field, consequently, bear the imprint of Western institutions, cultural practices, and ideals. Critically responding to this state of affairs, this opening essay of the special issue on Global Perspectives on Platforms and Cultural Production, consisting of 20 articles, aims to: 1) challenge universalism, 2) provincialize the US, and 3) multiply our frames of reference. Pursuing these objectives, we bring together ideas from postcolonial and decolonial theory and platform studies in a systematic research program. This global perspectives program allows us to: denaturalize and rethink dominant concepts and ideas through research from around the globe; explicitly thematize and examine the global power relations that structure platform economies; and critically interrogate the knowledge production about these economies.

Towards a Critical Decolonial Turn/Theory: Beyond the Binary of the West Versus Africa

As writing on decolonisation in African Studies has surged, efforts to avoid the concept becoming a mere metaphor, bandwagon, ideological trope, or mantra have grown, with scholars emphasising decolonial theory's ongoing relevance to the emancipation of formerly colonised Africans. This essay argues that to achieve its emancipatory goals, decolonial theory and intended praxes must re-centre the everyday realities of African societies. Recentring Africans is needed to move beyond Global North versus Africa as the ontological site for decolonisation. Recentring African societies has important epistemological and methodological implications for recentring African agency to make the decolonial project less reactionary and more proactive. I propose “post-independence” as an approach to decolonisation that offers descriptive and prescriptive means to locate the (im)material responsibilities of Africans in recentring their history. Post-independence allows a reimagining of how to undo the effects of colonialism by presenting colonialism as an episodic moment in Africa's long history.

Prophecy redux: a critique of Leanne Simpson’s concept of autogenocide

ABSTRACT This article examines the thought of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson as a case study in Indigenous decolonial theory. Primarily by engaging with Simpson’s approach in As We Have Always Done, it develops a critique of the concept of ‘autogenocide’. It argues that the liberatory potential of grounded normativity is undercut by Simpson’s juxtaposition of resistance with the immediate threat of self-destruction. This is signalled by the failure to exist in an adequately Indigenous ontological domain. The result arguably summons myths about Indigenous disappearance – that Indigenous peoples are a ‘dying race’ responsible for their own demise, and thus may read as injurious to Indigenous peoples who defy the markers of indigeneity outlined by Simpson in her Radical Resurgence Project. This critique is framed with reference to biopolitics, resilience, and Indigenous suicide. Transposing autogenocide to the Indigenous suicide crisis in Canada demands that the utility of the concept be evaluated in terms of another anti-colonial imaginary, where death by suicide exposes the structural violence of settler colonialism. It further contends that Critical Indigenous Studies is uniquely charged with confronting the intellectual, political, and philosophical consequences produced by the autogenocide concept. Most importantly, the alternative forms of essentialism and erasure that it heralds.

Critical geographies of disaster, and the geographical imagination

This paper combines assemblage theory, feminist ethics of care and decolonial theory to build on recent work in disaster studies that seeks to address the systematic and intersectional inequalities that underlie the emergence of disaster. We argue that Western logics of “risk” do not always have traction with communities, and so researchers must “stay with the trouble” in engaging with tensions between lifeworlds. We suggest that geographical imaginaries provide a means to analyze the diverse ways of being and knowing that are involved in this process.

The league of nations as an imperial assemblage: coloniality, indirect rule and the actualization of ‘International Law’

Abstract In this article, I reconceptualise the League of Nations as an Imperial Assemblage that embeds and is embedded by coloniality. Relying on the return to the League’s historisisation by Third World Approaches to International Law, I argue that we can understand the League as a governance body that works across scales of international, transnational and local actors, processes and structures to reiterate coloniality within the mandated territories. I utilise Deleuzian notions of assemblage alongside the concept of ‘coloniality’ within the literature of decolonial theory within International Relations and Sociology to show how the work of the League’s various actors, processes and structures across different scales made, actualised and evolved the laws on Forced Labour and Slavery from 1925 to 1932 in the inter-war era with a particular focus on Mandate Territories B and C.

Projections on (re)designing pedagogical pathways towards decolonial praxis in postgraduate literacy education

What would it mean to teach a postgraduate course about literacy education in South Africa in a way attuned to place, bodies, ways of being, and decolonial knowledge making? In this paper, we engage with this question through reflections and projections on our ongoing work of curriculum re-design of a master’s level course on literacy theories. This course, which we have taught three times since 2018, seeks to place the existing theoretical architecture of sociocultural literacy under pressure, asking whether these various frameworks still hold relevance for literacy education in South Africa in this post-Fallist and, more recently, post-Covid-19 reality. In each iteration of the course, we have invited students to think together with us about how literacy education in the Global South might respond to the opposing forces of globalisation and decolonisation. Yet, each time, the course has flowed differently as the configuration of bodies, identities, languages, knowledges, dispositions, affects, and materialities of learning mode has changed year by year. We aim to map the pedagogical pathways, in the sense of “configurations that guide the constraints and potentialities shaping the movement of pedagogy” (Madden, 2015:2) of the course. We draw on decolonial theory and transhumanist ideas of relational ontologies to explore selected incidents when significant discursive, affective, institutional, and material elements crystallised into patterns revealing of the ways in which coloniality can be either reproduced or challenged within our particular context. Emerging insights relate to assessment issues, multimodal tasks, article selection, and student reflections across time, and gesture towards a decolonial praxis. We conclude by projecting the lessons learned into the course’s future redesign.

Building a Pluriverse of Nursologies: A paradigm for decolonial theory and knowledge development in nursing.

The imperative to decolonise health disciplines underscores the need for a critical examination of the coloniality of nursing knowledge development. Decolonising nursing requires epistemic resistance aimed at exposing and dismantling epistemological hierarchies that marginalise indigenous knowledges. This paper introduces the 'Pluriverse of Nursologies' as paradigm to guide decolonial theorising in nursing. Through a four-part exploration, I first elucidate the coloniality embedded in mainstream nursing knowledge. Next, I offer a decolonial critique of Fawcett's nursing metaparadigm as an exemplar of pyramidal epistemology. I then discuss pluriversality as an approach to decolonising nursing knowledge. Finally, I introduce the Pluriverse of Nursologies (PoN) as a meta-theoretical paradigm for theory and knowledge development that decentres and dismantles the pyramidal epistemology of colonial/modern nursing, and relinks diverse nursologies from marginalised communities to the centre of intellectual nursing discourse, thereby revitalising the theoretical landscape of the discipline.

“Civilization State” Concept in the Works of Non-Western Scholars

The article discusses the main ideas and theories of non-Western countries researchers that reveal the concept of “civilization state”. As a methodological basis for the study of ideas developed within the framework of a non-Western tradition, the author uses the provisions of decolonial theory, allowing to overcome the clear and implicit dominance of attitudes and epistemological foundations inherent in European-American social science. The article draws attention to the critical perception of decolonial optics, which insists on the need to revise the epistemological foundations of Western thinking and the world order as a whole. The author analyzes the features of distribution and development of “civilization state” concept in a number of non-Western countries in the first quarter of the 21st century; the article presents a brief overview of emergence and evolution of the “civilization” concept, the diversity of semantic and conceptual variations of this concept is shown, the features of this process in the conditions of decolonization of knowledge were identified, an analysis of modern ideas and justification of the “civilization state” concept in China, India, Turkey, Egypt and in a number of African countries was carried out. The author draws conclusions that the concept of “civilization state”, being the Western origin concept, nevertheless, is perceived and develops within the framework of overcoming the West-centric theories of social development. In the conclusion the main advantages, threats and risks are presented that are associated with the adoption of the “civilization state” concept. Among the advantages are such as cultural and value consolidation of society; political mobilization; the basis for sovereignty and an independent policy; preservation and development of civilizational identity; the uniqueness of the civilization country as a source of further development. Challenges and risks include the following: the ambiguity of the new world order; contradictions between the concept of civilization and the concept of the national state; civilizational populism; ideas of isolationism; the risks of becoming the failed civilizational state. The article also recognizes the need for consolidated research work for the further theoretical development of the “civilization state” concept.

The Semiotics of Solidarity: Reinterpreting Artefacts of Latin American Resistance in Contemporary Leeds

This paper examines reinterpretations of solidarity with Latin America through a student-led project at the University of Leeds. The project, ‘Thinking Inside the Box: 1973’ (hereafter, TITB), was a collaboration between the University of London – specifically, King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, and the London School of Economics – and the Universities of Leeds and Liverpool in 2023. The broader framework of TITB seeks to generate liberatory and transformative learning by approaching the educative process with students as co-creators and co-curators of knowledge. The approach draws from decolonial theory by seeking to challenge the hierarchical practices of mainstream education in which the teacher imposes knowledge on the student. In dialogue with Freirian concepts of collective interpretation and ‘conscientisation’ (Freire, 1968), scholars and students involved in the project used archives to run a series of events and public engagements. It connects students to each other and to a range of archival materials, broadly themed around 20th century Latin America, to inspire them in designing, developing and delivering an output of significant impact by engaging with local communities; in this case, the Chilean diaspora of the dictatorship. The project promotes the co-curation of knowledge, teaching and learning, and supports students to practice autonomy in their journeys of content and skills acquisition (Grimaldi, Carvalho and Natale, 2022; Grimaldi and Rofe, 2023).

Mapping for connection, a life beyond mapping for control: lessons from ‘mapping-as-performance’ with Empatheatre in South Africa

This paper critically examines the intersections of Science, colonialism, and cartography in shaping perceptions of the ocean and its human-nature relationships. Drawing on Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies (PCSTS) and Decolonial Theory, it scrutinizes historical mapping practices, revealing how they perpetuated ontological hierarchies and controlled narratives of the ocean. Through archival research spanning from the Revolution to colonial exploration, the paper exposes how maps framed the ocean as a controllable entity, obscuring socio-cultural dimensions of biodiversity. Focusing on a case study in Northern Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, the authors explore an Empatheatre mapping process, that challenges Western ontologies and promotes counter-hegemonic cartographic practices. Situating this within critical cartography and PCSTS literature, the paper reveals how colonial projects molded perceptions of oceanic space and influenced environmental governance. In the South African context, the ocean is haunted by a violent history of racial exclusion and ecological exploitation. Initiatives like Operation Phakisa’s Blue Economy plan underscore the tension between economic growth and ecological sustainability, leading to rapid coastal developments. Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) emerges as a tool to reconcile these interests, yet its implementation raises questions about inclusivity and community participation. Introducing the Empatheatre method, characterized by a ‘Call and Response’ approach, the paper invites local communities to co-create maps reflecting their concerns and relationships with the ocean. Through attentive listening and collaborative storytelling, Empatheatre challenges traditional consultation methods, prioritizing meaningful engagement and collective meaning-making. Mapping in this context is not merely a static representation but a dynamic process of collective thinking and relationality. By foregrounding the social, cultural, and ecological context, Empatheatre’s approach redefines the mapmaker-map relationship and empowers communities as active agents in shaping their narratives. The transformative potential of Empatheatre lies in its ability to shift power dynamics and foster empathy between diverse stakeholders. Through performative storytelling and visual representations, Empatheatre creates space for marginalized voices and alternative modes of knowledge transmission. In conclusion, this paper advocates for a decolonial approach to oceanic cartographies that acknowledges diverse ontologies and fosters inclusive governance structures.

Unearthing the coloniality of neoliberalised curricular discourses to promote a public orientation towards secondary science education

ABSTRACT Considering the challenges facing curricula in science education forces a reckoning with neoliberalism and its transmogrification of education, generally. Science, which has contributed significantly to humanity, is exalted in neoliberal secular discourse and forms a key pillar of social policy governance. However, the progress and innovation attributed to scientific education, within the broader STEM agenda, must be read against the rise in societal inequalities wrought by far-right hostilities and the general erosion of democratic principles in the milieu of neoliberal policy making. This is especially prescient for science curricula given the widespread crystallisation of scientism in society and its role in framing anti-equality arguments. This must also be situated against the broad resistance movements that have arisen, demonstrating the resilience and promise from alternative perspectives such as decoloniality. While decolonial theory reckons with the epistemological violence of science, these perspectives remain underdiscussed in STEM fields. This is necessary for contemporary science curricula given the broader neoliberal erosions of public education that champion instrumentalism and mass measurement in the name of capitalism. This forms the impetus for this conceptual article which presents a decolonial consideration of recent curricular discourses in science.

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.

Postcolonial perspectives in the 21st Century: a critical analysis of modern theories and methodologies

The article is devoted to the analysis of modern theories of postcolonial perspective and methodologies applied for their research. The aim of the research is to analyze modern theories and methodologies in studying cultural and social postcolonial phenomena. Also, this research aims to outline methodologies used to investigate postcolonial theories; to introduce practical applications of postcolonial studies across cultural and social dimensions. The research is predominantly interdisciplinary and implies the use of a range of theoretical research methods (theoretical analysis of literature and scientific texts, historical research, discourse analysis, comparative analysis as well as synthesis and interpretation). The article provided the recent interpretation of the concepts of colonialism and postcolonialism. It was found that the mid-20th century marked a shift in focus from colonial to postcolonial studies. The theoretical framework of postcolonial studies is analyzed from diachronic and synchronic tiers. The specifics of six main theories were revealed (postcolonial theory, critical theory, site-specific theory, decolonial theory, and creolization theory). They offer both strengths and weaknesses when analyzing the impacts of colonialism. The methodology of postcolonial studies is usually interdisciplinary and prefers examining the impacts of colonialism based on literary sources and cultural analysis. Other methodologies include: historical research, textual analysis, ethnographic methods, interviews, observations, and comparative analysis. The implications include improving the understanding of the existing socio-political and economic structure and developing effective strategies to overcome the contemporary issues that emerged as a result of colonialism and postcolonialism.

Decolonizing “Decolonization” and Knowledge Production beyond Eurocentrism

Abstract I historicize decolonial theories within the context of epistemic contestations and knowledge production in Africa. I offer a critical appraisal of decolonization as simulated within Western academic institutions and argue that the current tempo of decolonization movements is by no means an accident of history; it is, in fact, a residual narrative of colonial epistemology. I offer internal critique and discuss the limitations of decolonization as an intellectual strategy, before addressing how Western academics have appropriated the discourse in a manner fitting an intellectual crusade. The decolonial scholar is, at the same time, perpetuating the mandate of colonial epistemology by substituting coloniality with subjective displacement. Finally, I suggest a modest proposal for adopting a new framework that admits the epistemic virtues of decolonization while eschewing its limitations and internal contradictions. My argument is that decolonization studies, as understood in contemporary African philosophy, has remained afflicted with the same disease it seeks to cure by (i) uncritical affiliation with historical generalizations, (ii) failure to recognize that history is no location of innocence and (iii) recolonization of non-Western ontologies through epistemic imperialism and network legitimation.

Engaging Antiracist And Decolonial Praxis To Advance Equity In Oregon Public Health Surveillance Practices.

Public health surveillance and data systems in the US remain an unnamed facet of structural racism. What gets measured, which data get collected and analyzed, and how and by whom are not matters of happenstance. Rather, surveillance and data systems are productions and reproductions of political priority, epistemic privilege, and racialized state power. This has consequences for how communities of color are represented or misrepresented, viewed, and valued and for what is prioritized and viewed as legitimate cause for action. Surveillance and data systems accordingly must be understood as both an instrument of structural racism and an opportunity to dismantle it. Here, we outline a critique of standard surveillance systems and practice, drawing from the social epidemiology, critical theory, and decolonial theory literatures to illuminate matters of power germane to epistemic and procedural justice in the surveillance of communities of color. We then summarize how community partners, academics, and state health department data scientists collaborated to reimagine survey practices in Oregon, engaging public health critical race praxis and decolonial theory to reorient toward antiracist surveillance systems. We close with a brief discussion of implications for practice and areas for continued consideration and reflection.

Unlearning emotional imperialism in education: political, theoretical and pedagogical implications

ABSTRACT This paper emerges from a set of questions about what it means pedagogically to undertake the paradoxical and difficult task of unlearning the emotional experience of imperialism. The analysis discusses the notion of ‘emotional imperialism’ and the various forms in might take; to do so, the author draws on concepts from affect theory (Reddy’s notion of ‘emotional regimes’) and decolonial theory (Fanon’s concept of ‘affective ankylosis’) to shed light on what emotional imperialism might involve in social and political life, including education. The analysis concludes with a discussion of the political, theoretical and pedagogical implications of ‘unlearning emotional imperialism’ in educational settings. It is argued that calls for undoing and unlearning emotional imperialism in education are an inseparable part of new onto-epistemological, affective and political imaginaries that aim to transform colonial violence into nonimperial ways of living in our common world.

Toward a globally inclusive knowledge base on adolescent development: A charge to the Majority World and a plea for epistemic and paradigmatic pluralism.

Ongoing internal dialog on the limitations of Euro-American developmental science has opened up space to explore how best to work toward a knowledge base that is adequately representative of the values, cultures, epistemic traditions, and lived experiences of peoples, nations, and regions around the world. So far, recommendations for the advancement of a global developmental science have focused preponderantly on (1) methodological considerations and (2) an architecture to support cross-disciplinary international collaborative inquiry and/or enhance research capacity building for Majority World scholars and institutions. In this commentary, instead of focusing on specific contributions to the Special Issue, I make a case for an explicit commitment to field-building within Majority World contexts as the primary gap-closing path toward the cultivation of a global developmental science knowledge base. I begin with a worldwide population analysis to demonstrate the magnitude of geopolitical, eco-cultural, and epistemic imbalances inherent in the shaping of Euro-American developmental science. In tandem with the Special Issue's central theme, I draw on scholarship from the fields of history, sociology, and political economy to link decolonial theory to the advancement of a global developmental science. Finally, I explore ways in which exemplary research establishments already engaged in prolific inquiry and research training may be ideal candidates to support field-building and help to advance multidisciplinary inquiry within an ethos of epistemic and methodological pluralism.