Colonial Experience Research Articles

Migrant arrival infrastructures and their impact on Zimbabweans’ mobility and integration in South Africa

This study argues that arrival infrastructures play a crucial role in shaping the mobility and integration of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa. By examining the experiences of migrants with access to these infrastructures and those without, the research explores the influence of the infrastructures on the challenges of destitution and homelessness that migrants face in their new environment. Through a comparative analysis of interviews, the study reveals how arrival infrastructures contribute to migrants’ familiarity with the City of Cape Town, provide housing and employment opportunities and facilitate the overall integration processes. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the importance of arrival infrastructures and underscore their profound impact on the settlement experiences of Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa.

An Ecocritical Perspective of Flora and Fauna under the 2003 Invasion of Iraq in American and Iraqi novels

Abstract This essay offers ecocritical discussions of Iraqi flora and fauna under the 2003 invasion of Iraq from the point of view of both American and Iraqi novelists. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the American Kevin Powers’s in The Yellow Birds (2012) and Iraqi Sinan Antoon's in The Book of Collateral Damage (2019) extend their moral mission of the 2003 invasion of Iraq which moves beyond the human species to include flora and fauna in light of ecocriticism. More specifically, the paper attempts to expose the outrageous things reflected by Antoon and Powers that the US invasion has done to flora and fauna which are officially ignored. It also examines the proper employment of different forms of symbolism and techniques to strengthen their ecological conservation values. The study concludes that despite the selected writers’ different experiences of colonialism, they similarly stand in creating eco-consciousness that comes from their understanding that the costs of war are not only measured by the loss of humans, but also by the devastation of flora and fauna to institutionalize a strong oppositional stance towards the war in Iraq. Key words : Ecocriticism , Biocentric Vsion , Eco-justice Perspective , Environmental Ethics , Human and Nonhuman Relationship , Los of Biodiversity , Sustainability .

Indigenous Peoples’ Relative Risk of Homicide in the USA: A Systematic and Meta-Analytic Review

Evidence suggests that Indigenous Peoples have the highest rate of death by homicide compared to other ethnic groups in the USA. Despite this alarming disparity and its fatal implications, there seems little attention paid to this crisis outside of Indigenous communities, and literature on the violence perpetrated against this population is comparatively scarce. Among the 574 federally recognized tribes and 326 reservations across the USA, there is great diversity. Yet, Indigenous Peoples share similar experiences of colonialism, genocide, oppression, and marginalization. These experiences highlight how existing social structures and systems continue to function as oppressive forces against Indigenous Peoples. The current study meta-analytically synthesized the existing body of knowledge to summarize current understandings of the relative risk of homicide faced by Indigenous Peoples. Following systematic searches of published and gray literature, data were extracted from 38 eligible studies. As hypothesized, Indigenous Peoples’ risk of homicide was consistently about three times greater than that of others in the USA over the past generation, but counter-hypothetically no gender divide was observed. These findings suggest prevalent, grave and longstanding social-structural and ultimately, health inequities among Indigenous Peoples in the USA. Future research needs and policy implications are discussed.

Decolonizing the “state of nature” in political thought

The study of coloniality as a “social imaginary” (Charles Taylor) from the perspective of decoloniality invites European scholars, to “think again”, to interrogate their own traditions, including their modern political philosophical tradition. In this article, I will discuss a powerful modern political imaginary, namely the democratic narrative of the “social contract”. Such narratives or “imaginations of our origin” (Ursprungsphantasien: Philip Manow) give us answers to the enigma of our social and political existence: what does it mean to live in this political community? What does it give us, ask from us? In the modern narrative of the “social contract”, we are told that, to be a good citizen, we have/had to leave the “state of nature” (status naturalis), a state often described as a state of disorder, conflict, and war, and accept the status of citizenship (status civilis) and a powerful state as guarantee of peace and the rule of law. In this article, I will firstly give some examples of the use of this narrative in very diverse contexts: 1) in the context of the European religious civil wars in the 16th and 17th centuries (birth of the modern liberal political philosophy), 2) in the context of the transition of European nation-states to the European Union after WWII, 3) in the context of the transition of Apartheid South Africa to a non-racial democracy. Secondly, I will concentrate on one of the first philosophers who introduced the state of nature/civil state narrative, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), to discover that his political imagination is deeply influenced by the colonial experience in the “New World”, especially the meeting with the indigenous Indians in America. In several aspects, they are in Hobbes’ imagination the incarnation of the life in the “state of nature”. This raises the question, how the idea of a democratic social contract can be reformulated, without Eurocentric and racist premises, and without simply reversing the Hobbesian narrative: since the “colonizer” is the root of our conflict and controversies, to expel him will restore a durable peace.

‘We Went Bravely On … ’: The Theatre and Spectacle of Everyday Life in British Written Representations of Colonial South Asia

ABSTRACT Analysing how British women and men in nineteenth and twentieth-century colonial South Asia made ‘theatre’ or ‘spectacles’ of everyday life in personal correspondence, this article examines the foundations of a particular kind of imagery of empire which often survived beyond decolonisation. It examines constructions of the quotidian in different arenas of the colonial experience – the ship, the environment and climate, and the household – to consider the textual, epistolary and discursive tools that writers used to feed seemingly innocuous details about daily life into the broader coercive work of the British Empire. The British in India reconfigured the everyday into a ‘spectacle’, framing experiences as imperial burden and sacrifice. The article uses a selection of personal, unpublished letters written by British women and men in India, to show how they rendered themselves as spectacles, staging everyday life as a theatre in which to construct identity and convey racial and cultural difference, and from which to be ‘seen’ educating and ‘civilising’ and struggling against domestic servants. In particular, this article uses the revealing, and hitherto unexamined, correspondence of missionary wife Agnes May Johnston between 1915 and 1926 from Calcutta, written to her family in Wolverhampton, England. The upkeep of regular communications about the discomfort and dangers of travel, the oppressive climate, and the maintenance of order within the household, allowed correspondents to fashion themselves as ‘out of place’ and incongruous with the colonial environment, thereby affirming their Britishness and stabilising imperial identity. The article conceptualises everyday life as an imperial construction in these terms, and foregrounds ‘the familiar’ in historical, literary and postcolonial analytical frameworks. In doing so it demonstrates how imperial conceptions of power operated through the language, gestures, and behaviours that texture day-to-day experiences, and which shape, in the process, a specific imperial gaze.

The Haitian Neoliberal State

This work attempts to understand the contemporary Haitian state, which is a paragon of the neoliberal state model. Haiti’s neoliberal state is a colonial state impoverished to serve American global capitalist hegemony under the auspices of a Haitian comprador bourgeoisie and oligarchy composed of professionals, managers, intellectuals, and business elites in Haiti and the diaspora. However, unlike Chile, which the West points to as the success of the neoliberal model and process, Haiti’s model is a complete failure, similar to the attempt to neoliberalize Russia post the fall of the Soviet Union. Whereas Russia, under Vladimir Putin, was able to combat the deleterious effects of the neoliberal process, Haiti is unable to do so. The work posits that Haiti’s failures rest on its colonial experiences under mercantilist and liberal capitalism and the embourgeoisement of its population on the island and the diaspora.

THE GOVERNORS OF VENETIAN ITHACA

The historiography of Venetian Greece has paid little attention to the colonial experience of Ithaca. While historians are served by extensive published documentary evidence for the administrations of the larger possessions in the region, the uncatalogued Venetian records at the state archive of Ithaca remain unstudied. The recent reopening of this archive has finally made it possible to survey its large Venetian collection and to provide an account of the role of the governors of Ithaca under Venetian rule. The seat of the governor was filled by Cephalonian nobles rather than by Venetian appointees in the manner of the larger Ionian islands. Here for the first time is presented a comprehensive list of Ithacan governors compiled from the Ithacan documents, together with further aid from research in the archives of Cephalonia and Venice. The account of the Ithacan governorship offered here aims to promote interest in the Ithacan archive of the Venetian administration and serve as a guide for future research into this neglected corner of the empire.

Three meanings of colonialism: Nehru, Sukarno, and Kotelawala debate the future of the Third World Movement (1954-61)

AbstractAs the post-colonial Global South was weaving together the Third World Movement in the 1950s, it was also struggling to arrive at a common definition of colonialism. Since the movement was primarily premised on anti-colonial sentiments, redefining the term ‘colonialism’ could change its parameters. This article examines debates between three Asian leaders – Jawaharlal Nehru, Sukarno, and Sir John Kotelawala – who proposed three different meanings of colonialism. These definitions were informed by distinct ways that the colonial experience was remembered in their respective countries. Each definition was meant to redirect the energies of the Third World Movement towards a different vision of a post-colonial global order. The three leaders debated this question in major Afro-Asian conferences of the mid-twentieth century. Their disagreements represented a foundational fissure in the movement. Relying on primary sources from multiple countries, this article recovers a political dialogue within the Global South unmediated by the West, which is often ignored by the scholarship.

Combating colonial mentality within higher learning spaces: The case of sub-Saharan African universities

As former colonies of Western imperial powers, virtually all aspects of African life have been invaded by forces of Western hegemony. Colonial mentality is the blind assimilation or internalisation of the colonial powers’ socio-cultural forms resulting in the destructive and disruptive abandonment of the ways of life of the colonies. As it applies to Africa, colonial mentality is a product of African cultural invasion in which, having been exposed to colonial experience for a long time, an average African has internalised foreign ideas and ideals—so much so that she has lost the authentic African ways of life in the process. Using philosophical methods of argumentation and critical engagements, this paper contends that a connection exists between colonial mentality and the observed failure of African universities to efficiently effectuate their relevance as Africa’s development partners. The paper identifies four key areas in which colonial mentality plays out most profoundly in African universities, namely, the nature of knowledge produced, the mode of certification, the language of instruction, and research funding. The paper argues that the incursion of colonial mentality in these vital areas continues to impede African universities’ capacity to substantively contribute to African development drives and aspirations. Given this close nexus, the paper maintains that African universities may never realise their potential as a critical sector in African development discourse. This qualitative research is based on critical inquiry through a process of identifying, questioning and assessing deeply held assumptions about Western hegemony. The paper concludes that decolonisation in learning spaces can only be a feasible project if it is accorded the seriousness that it deserves by all stakeholders both within and outside the university.

Military decolonisation and Africanisation: the first African officers in the Kenyan army, 1957–1964

ABSTRACT On 15 July 1961, the first eight African officers were commissioned into the King’s African Rifles in Kenya. This was very late to begin Africanising the colonial military force. The colonial army, even more than other institutions, was neither anticipating nor preparing for independence until it was imminent. Then, Africanisation was dramatically sped up to try and match political progress. This article explores how the first African officer corps was created in Kenya. Using lists of commissions published in The Kenya Gazette, it shows what types of people were commissioned, focusing on ethnicity, age, experience, training, education, and promotion. Three types of servicemen were commissioned: effendis, with years of colonial experience; non-commissioned officers, who were briefly trained in Britain and rapidly promoted; and direct-entry officers, better educated, younger, and trained in Britain. The article argues that the opportunities that military decolonisation and Africanisation offered to these varied groups of men had an impact which lasted for decades, as these first commissioned officers became and remained the leaders of Kenya’s military. Understanding the process of Africanisation therefore helps to explain the trajectory of Kenya’s military after independence.

벨리즈의 식민 권력과 목재 산업

The history of the Baymen, from pirates to logwood and mahogany loggers to oligarchs, is an interesting one. As pirates, the Baymen were originally a very egalitarian group that rebelled against the hierarchy of society. They were democratic in the way they chose their leaders and had a very weak sense of racism. However, their sense of equality began to erode when they settled in the Bay of Honduras and began to make money from logging logwood and mahogany. This is why they actively engaged in slavery during the logging process.
 The origins of the current Belizean oligarchy can be traced to this small group of loggers. They enjoyed wealth and power during the colonial period. Their descendants are still benefiting from the colonial legacy today, and they are blocking democracy in Belize. These issues are not new to Koreans with colonial experience. But their socioeconomic conditions were certainly different, and they created a unique social system. In this respect, the movement to stop the logging of mahogany and protect Belize’s forests will inevitably have to go hand in hand with addressing land monopolies and oligarchy.

Navigating Challenging Digital Literacy Practices: The Settlement Experiences of Adults from Migrant and Refugee Backgrounds

Digital literacies are critical for adults from migrant and refugee backgrounds as they settle in a new country. However, institutions, leaders, and teachers often feel uncertain about how to teach digital literacies. Using the notions of digital literacy practices and assemblages, this article reports on a qualitative case study and explores how 30 adults from migrant and refugee backgrounds navigated challenging digital literacy practices related to settlement in Australia. This research found that to deal with challenges, the participants brought together different personal, social, material, symbolic, temporal, and spatial resources. However, sometimes the required resources were not available, which constrained the participants’ practices. Some participants were aware of the need to find new solutions but they often did not know how this might be done. In contrast, some participants were reluctant to take a risk. The article concludes with implications for EAL practice by suggesting strengths-based pedagogies for digital literacies.

Last year’s model? Investment arbitration, negotiation, and the gap between Model BITs and IIAs

ABSTRACT With more than 3000 international investment agreements (IIAs) worldwide, states negotiate similar agreements multiple times with numerous partners. Accordingly, many states have developed template agreements known as ‘Model bilateral investment treaties (BITs)’. Nevertheless, concluded IIAs commonly deviate from the corresponding Model BITs, albeit to varying degrees. Investigating this variation, we examine the impact of Model Countries and their Partner Countries’ investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) experience. Specifically, we argue that the Model Country adopts changes sought by the Partner Country during the negotiation process in order to accommodate the latter’s preferences, which were shaped by lessons learned from ISDS cases. Empirically, we introduce novel measures of divergence between Model BITs and IIAs, based on the concept and scheme of state regulatory space, with respect to several key aspects of investment rules. Coding a large number of Model BITs and IIAs on these variables and controlling for a host of alternative explanations, we find that the higher number of investment claims filed against the Partner Country, but not the Model Country, is associated with greater divergence between the Model Country’s Model BITs and its IIAs. This effect is especially noticeable with respect to important substantive investment rules.

Public monuments, palliative solutions? Political geographies of memory in Goa, India

ABSTRACT This article examines some of the compromises that emerge in the process of converting colonial-era material culture into ‘heritage’ claiming to foreground a critical postcolonial consciousness. Prompted by recent controversies about statuary celebrating figures who engaged in colonial exploitation and slavery, I look at how frictions inherited from the colonial period are projected onto colonialism’s physical remains. This article, however, enquires into ways in which disputes over the proper function of postcolonial heritage projects may be framed not in a militant, but in a conciliatory register, that aims to accommodate diverse representational imperatives, instead of elevating one as supreme. In postcolonial settings such as the one discussed, these imperatives awkwardly include the tourism industry's promotion of ‘colonial nostalgia’ via the restoration of ‘colonial ambiences’. Focusing on a Portuguese-era fort that served as a prison for Goa’s 'freedom-fighters', I investigate the unexplained, and subsequently contentious, display of pictures authored by the nationally-renowned artist Mario Miranda in one section of the fort. The article then recounts the contours of a public challenge to this exhibition’s legitimacy, and examines the introduction in an adjacent space at the fort of a Freedom Fighters’ Gallery. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, I analyse tensions within and between each of these exhibitions, connecting them to deeper fissures in colonial experience and postcolonial memory. I argue that these fissures are best understood in their relationship to recriminations both about colonial experience and about inequalities traceable to its ‘aftermaths’, which are now consolidated in uneven political geographies.

Decolonial Reproductive Justice: Analyzing Reproductive Oppression in India

Abstract: The reproductive justice framework shifted understandings and analyses of reproductive oppression beyond individual 'choice' by incorporating analyses of structural injustice, racism, and social and economic concerns. In this article, we build on understandings of the reproductive justice framework by integrating a postcolonial lens and bring the powerful conceptual tools of postcolonial feminist theory to bear on issues of reproductive oppression in India. We articulate the elements of such a postcolonial lens—the transnational operation of race, Orientalism, the subjective experience of colonialism as well as the role of the nation-state and nationalism in shaping reproductive lives—and demonstrate how these elements, along with religion, caste, and right-wing Hindu fundamentalism, structure reproductive oppression in India. Through our discussion of the issues of sterilization, sex-selective abortion, and commercial surrogacy in India we reveal how the underlying coloniality of Malthusian ideas of controlling population to reduce poverty, Orientalist and racist tropes of moral and intellectual inferiority and sexual licentiousness, and the Orientalist and colonial framing of the "East" as backward, uncivilized, and dependent clearly shape reproductive issues in India. Offering a nuanced analysis of the heterogeneity of reproductive oppression within India, our discussion brings reproductive justice into conversation with a feminist postcolonial perspective to foreground the continued impact of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and settler colonialism on reproductive oppression.

TRANSFORMATION OF COLONIAL EXPERIENCE REFLECTION IN THE BELGIAN PUBLIC DISCOURSE

In the article, the dynamics in the perception of the Belgian colonial experience in Congo are examined on the evidence of public discourse produced by public political actors in contemporary Belgium. Apart from the universally accepted postcolonial and decolonial optics, the authors suggest employing the five stages of grief model by Kübler-Ross, widespread in psychoanalysis. The concluding stage of acceptance took place in the 2020s caused mainly by public demand; it was performatively landmarked by the return of the Congolese prime minister's remains to his homeland. The authors demonstrate the complexity of the common historical experience reflection in the European and African states and the necessity of this reflection for the dynamic development of bilateral and multilateral ties.

A Cotton Mather Reader

A Cotton Mather Reader

Ethnic Media, Diversity and Settlement: A Qualitative Study

This article examines the role of migrant media and communication in the long- and short-term settlement experiences of migrants through interviews with community leaders from seven migrant communities in South Australia. Bringing together literature on ethnic media and migrant settlement, multiple, interacting and overlapping forms of communication are incorporated into the analysis. These including traditional ethnic media, digital media and face-to-face communication. It is argued that the role of communication is best understood when migrants are taken as active ‘achievers and consumers’ who still face challenges to settlement. The results show the importance of migrant-controlled communication in providing a granular and tailored approach in which migrants are able to shape and determine the communication forms that best serve their needs. However, the paper also demonstrates the impact internal differences have on experiences of communication.

Political Consciousness in the Select Works of Chinua Achebe, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Richard Wright

This paper introduces three writers Chinua Achebe, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Richard Wright to explore the socio political consciousness reflected in their select works. The first two writers come from African countries which have gone through the experience of colonialism and neo-colonialism that resulted in common social, political and economic problems. As a result, the literature that emerged from these countries has a unifying theme despite diverse sociological contexts. Richard Wright, with an African origin, is a prominent black writer from America. It is evident from wright’s writings that he writes with a political consciousness born out of his understanding of Marxism. These three writer of twentieth century display their creative talents to raise the consciousness of the suppressed people in their own countries and the world over. An effective presentation of the contemporary social as well as political problem has become the primary task of these writers, and the select works taken here serve as evidences.

An anthropological perspective on contextualizing entrepreneurship

This paper develops an anthropological perspective on contextualizing entrepreneurship. We argue that interconnectedness is the quintessence of such a perspective and takes the form of (1) sociocultural ties between people; (2) interrelationships between micro, meso, and macro levels; and (3) connections between the past and the present. We illustrate this perspective through our research among ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia, identifying three kinds of sociocultural ties among the ethnic Chinese (kinship, spiritual, and patron-client ties) and positioning these ties in the historical and contemporary experiences of Chinese migration, settlement, and business venturing. In doing so, we show that an anthropological perspective broadens the empirical scope (including developing countries, minority groups, and “everyday” entrepreneurship), the methodological scope (employing ethnographic methods), and the conceptual scope (considering sociocultural ties at the interpersonal level) of entrepreneurship research. The contribution lies in operationalizing and theorizing context: we operationalize context through interconnectedness – comprising our three forms as well as ethnographic methodology to examine these – and theorize interconnectedness by elaborating how entrepreneurs “do” context through enacting the sociocultural ties that “embody” this context, while considering the micro-meso-macro and past-present connections that have engendered these ties. Our anthropological perspective presents a fine-grained and holistic analytical framework for contextualizing entrepreneurship.