Neocolonial Practices Research Articles

African Environmental Ethics and Its Ontological Foundations

Abstract The article carves out a tripartite ontology and related cosmological views, prevalent in many African philosophical accounts, and shows their significance for environmental ethics. It presents distinct cultural practices towards non-human animals and the environment such as totemism, taboos, and the sacralization of natural sites. In a next step, the author identifies specific moral principles that can be derived from this complex ontology and its related cultural practices, such as sufficiency, care, and sharing. This approach in environmental ethics can be situated as constituting a ‘plural holism’. Finally, the article contrasts this plural holism with neoliberal and neo-colonial practices prevalent in the contemporary world and calls for a consideration of these ethical values to guide the necessary transformation of our societies.

Is neocolonialism existing in global surgery practice? An analysis of a web-based survey amongst global surgery practitioners

Background There is an ongoing discussion for decolonization of global health and a resetting of global health partnerships and practices. However, a lack of understanding and agreement on the issues involved remain a major limitation. The aim of this study was to understand and identify the manifestations of neocolonialism in global surgery practice. Methods This was a qualitative web-based survey of 445 low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) and high-income countries (HICs) global surgery practitioners. We also captured through focussed interviews their perceptions and reported manifestations of neocolonialism in global surgery. Results The majority (73.9%) came from LMICs, while 26.1% were from HICs. Surgeons formed the largest group (57.6%), with many having extensive experience (38.7% with over 10 years in global surgery). Neocolonialism was defined as an unequal power dynamic favoring HIC agendas. Uncompensated work by LMICs staff and funding disparities were identified as neocolonial practices by HICs participants. Limited research capacity and frustrated LMICs providers were seen as consequences. Factors enabling neocolonialism included limited local funding and training priorities set by funders, not local needs. More than 75% of participants agreed that fear of losing HIC support was a major barrier to open communication about neocolonialism in global surgery. Conclusions This study among global surgery players unbderscores existence and experiences of neocolonialism in global surgery. The impact of this practice and the enablers need to be urgently addressed by implementing mitigating solutions.

Reclaiming the Border Narrative: Refugee Children as Victim, Witness, and Agent in Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive

Valeria Luiselli’s 2019 novel Lost Children Archive records and reimagines visa-less migrant children’s encounters with hostile borders, while also challenging the logic and legality of border policy, a set of neocolonial practices that allows former colonial powers to continue their control over the mobility of bodies and epistemologies from the Global South. In an interview with The New Yorker about her novel, Luiselli commented on the role of narrative in conceptualizing and achieving justice when the law fails to deliver or denies justice: “Perhaps the only way to grant any justice—were that even possible—is by hearing and recording those stories over and over again so that they come back, always, to haunt and shame us.” 1 Luiselli thus highlights not only the power of storytelling in delivering justice otherwise denied, but also its ability to generate a moral, emotional, and intellectual response in its audience. This paper analyzes how Luiselli employs “factional” 2 narrative to “haunt and shame us,” question existing border policies, and grant authorial and narrative justice in the absence of institutional or legal justice through the extended metaphor of children on the move. I introduce the concept of “tripartite subjectivity” in analyzing how Luiselli’s factional children are, on the one hand, victims of and witnesses to the violence perpetrated by border laws, and, on the other hand, agents who challenge and reinterpret hostile borders, transforming the static border into a site of epistemic rupture. The tripartite subjectivity of Luiselli’s lost children provide a model via which characters who have been deprived of what Thomas Nail calls “socially determined status” (and thereby are rejected border access due to their inability to contribute to the state’s kinopolitical expansion) reclaim both fictional and epistemological borders through a reverse kinopolitics of what I term “bordered expansion by archive.”

What happened to neocolonialism? The rise and fall of a critical concept

ABSTRACT This article is a history of the idea of neocolonialism from its first use in the 1960s to its more recent deployments in the 2010s. During the decolonization period, the concept of neocolonialism was a powerful ideological and analytical tool in the service of the global anti-colonial movement to denounce the persistence of subordinate relations between the former colonizers and the newly independent countries. The article argues that the decline of the concept was the result of the crisis of the postcolonial state in the 1980s and the parallel rise of the theory and ideology of globalization which was based on opposite theoretical premises. The crisis of the popularity of globalization in the 2010s has made room for a return of critical concepts in the analysis of international politics and, among them, neocolonialism. This new wave of literature on neocolonialism remains fragmented, undertheorized, and, unlike its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, disconnected from social and political movements. Moreover, Western-based sources have recently started using the concept to describe China’s activities in the Global South in a problematic way that seems to attribute solely to Beijing the very neocolonial practices that Western powers are normally denounced for.

Informality at the heart of sustainable development

As a term, the ‘structure of informality’ aims to elucidate how informality is produced, and why it persists. I argue that informality is engendered through the informal/formal dialectic, which constitutes a multiscalar process that creates global inequalities across time and space. We can better understand informality by studying colonial socio-spatial inequalities created through urbanization. Taking seriously the arguments put forward by Cobbinah and Olajide, I argue that the structure of informality must also be applied to understand contemporary neocolonial practices in relation to sustainable development. These practices include the use and misuse of informality in relation to three topics: (1) as a mode of generating and sustaining socio-spatial and economic inequalities; (2) the nascent and undertheorized relationship between informality and climate change; and (3) the importance of understanding and theorizing global informality at the heart of sustainable development to influence policy and practice. These topics have grown in salience because of the global push towards decarbonization, and despite informality being a dominant mode of economic, spatial, and political life in most of the world. Informality lies at the heart of sustainable development, thus making it essential to re-energize debates on its structures, forms, and driving forces.

Entangled engagements: a posthumanist and affirmative ethics for tourism geographies

This review summarizes some key moments in the development of ethics in tourism research and practice where three main areas of concern are identified: socio-economic inequalities, cultural discriminations, and more-than-human speciesism. Following a brief historical review, the paper delves into some current trends and ethical concerns in tourism geographies, which trace back to the utilitarian ethics within which contemporary tourism emerged, after which, and with the growing concerns about tourism’s negative impacts, normative and moral approaches to ethics held sway. Then the paper addresses a critical gap in tourism ethics’ research and practice. With few exceptions, tourism environments are seen as something apart, things to be managed, developed or even protected, where the focus is instrumental on how these environments can be maintained or manipulated for human benefit. This modernization paradigm and its promise of progress through growth, together with a tourism industry that (re)produces colonial structures through neocolonial practices reinforced by neoliberal globalization has contributed to a host of present-day challenges and injustices. We argue that to address the injustices above and current existential crises like climate change, and other threats to socio-ecological well-being, a paradigm shift in tourism thinking is needed. Specifically, we propose embracing posthumanist ethics as a novel, experimental (as against normative or moral), situated (as against universal), and affirmative (as against oppositional) critique of structural injustices and structural power; epistemological pluralism (as against essentialism), acknowledging the relationality proper of indigenous cosmologies and other traditional knowledges (where more involvement from the Global South is needed); and a new materialist ontology that overcomes human exceptionalism and abandons oppositional binary thinking. In other words, what is needed, is an affirmative posthumanist ethics for tourism that is relational, plural and differential.

A worldbuilding approach for pluriversality in codesign

ABSTRACT Design research has a long history of active engagement with issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Yet, the mainstream adoption and sometimes tokenistic cooptation of design methods, have prompted renewed concerns about a new wave of perhaps unintended neo-colonial practices. Codesign practice tends to be sensitive to these risks, however, when design is driven only by concrete deliverables it often comes at the expense of participants’ distinct identities and exacerbates problematic concepts of homogenising others. Facilitating diversity in how the other is seen, depicted, and engaged remains a challenge. Fostering pluriversality—Escobar’s vision of relational ontology and a world ‘where many worlds fit’—is even harder: it depends on enabling participants as active, autonomous agents as individuals, groups and communities. Empowering the interactions between and across participants requires a conceptual shift in the way we design. In this paper, we present our experiences with tabletop games design workshops to show how creative worldbuilding can trigger emergence and autopoiesis between participants and foster safe spaces where pluriversality is a condition for codesign to happen, rather than a desirable consequence of it.

Кризис на Шри-Ланке: долгая тень неоколониализма

The article is devoted to the study of the causes of the economic and political crisis in Sri Lanka (2019 – present) through the prism of the complex approach based on the post-colonial research paradigm. The author considers the three most affected sectors of the economy of Sri Lanka: agriculture, the textile and apparel industry and tourism. All of them in their present form are products of the modern era, formed under the influence of colonial and neo-colonial practices and provided Sri Lanka with a specific place in the world economic system as a producer of plantation crops (primarily tea), textiles of the upper price segment and tourism services, focused on the EU and the US population. During the pandemic, the orientation on the Western market, aggravated by the voluntaristic actions of the country’s leading the Rajapaksa clan, led to the collapse of key sectors of the Sri Lankan economy. Particular attention is paid to the agrarian sector. The author believes that the current disparities in the agrarian development of Sri Lanka are the result of the colonial past. The issue of mending these imbalances was politicized during the civil war (1983–2009), and as a way out, the concept of developing organic farming, itself a product of Western cultural hegemony, was proposed. The author notes that instead of admitting partial responsibility for the crisis, the Western media are inclined to blame China for Sri Lanka’s problems. The PRC is believed to have deliberately driven the island into a debt trap. It is assumed that developing countries should solve the problems of Sri Lanka, while it is clear that Western countries will derive the main benefit from the recovery of its economy and return to world production chains.

THE RADICAL ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN POLITICAL IMAGINATION AND PRODUCTION OF COMMON FUTURE IN BELARUSIAN PROTESTS

The following article explores the idea of how information technologies could serve the idea of a common future in the world of catastrophe. In a world of socio-political catastrophes, violent suppression of rights and freedoms, oppressive state machines and covert control tactics, attempts are being made to find soft tactics of resistance, non-violent forms of confrontation that would allow to overcome the existing patriarchal order and reveal neo-colonial practices. The digital environment can be not only a tool for the production of machines of total control or the maintenance of the capitalist order of consumption. They can also serve as a tool for soft, nonviolent resistance to rigid structures, creating emancipatory tools for overcoming oppressive power relations and transforming the socio-political environment into a more inclusive, open structure. The article also attempts to return to the discussion about the critical potential of the theory of cyberfeminism, which not only analyzes the social and political, but also revises information technologies from the point of view of their emancipatory potential.

The politics and spaces of public-private partnerships in humanitarian tech innovations

The past decade has seen a growing engagement of tech companies in conflict settings to develop multifaceted technological innovations, including digital biometric identification to register refugees, commercial drones to deliver cargo, and big data-fuelled algorithms to predict the spread of crises. Humanitarian technology has been largely acclaimed as a way of making aid more effective and of triggering a paradigm shift in humanitarian governance by putting crisis-affected communities in what is claimed to be the driving seat of aid programmes. Critics are however wary about the negative impacts these innovations have on humanitarian practices and crisis-affected population. This paper contributes to this debate by assessing whether technological innovations fundamentally alter the politics and spaces of humanitarian governance. To do so, it analyses the way public private partnerships (PPPs) mediate between the interests of the various stakeholders of tech experiments and distribute power among them. Drawing upon the exploratory analysis of 22 tech projects in crisis settings, a typology of PPPs is formalised based on the way they distribute power and resources among their stakeholders. The results show that only one type of PPPs - community-based digital humanitarianism – has the potential of increasing the ownership of crisis-affected communities over aid programmes and localising projects in so-called Global South societies. The two other types – technologising the humanitarian business and externalising the lab to crisis settings – appear as a continuation of neo-colonial practices with a digital touch.

Compradors of China’s Global Power: The Colonialization of Hungarian and Nicaraguan Academia through Anti-imperialist Tropes

Abstract Literature discussing imperialism and neo-colonial practices focuses on the alleged power of the West and/or the United States, as well as global neoliberalism. This article argues that neo-colonial knowledge production in the autocratizing regimes of Hungary and Nicaragua reflects the rising importance of China. It shows how both governments seek to set forth new schools of thought suiting their worldview. The People’s Republic of China serves as a narrative fix point for legitimizing dissociative diplomatic agendas via comprador academics supported by their government. In what is presented as changing global orders, China joins Russia as a new counterweight to the presupposed U.S. hegemonic and liberal interests. Besides advocating for new partners in the East, compradors colonializing academia argue for the distinctive needs of their respective nations represented by the government. Interviews, publications, and news reports allow one to reconstruct their colonialization efforts to support such nationalist narratives on China’s rise as a global power.

Climate, Capital, and Colonialism: A Congolese Perspective

Abstract How do global inequities inherited from the past continue to profit some people and devastate the lives and lands of others? How is the contemporary physical environment suffused with traces of colonialism and how do its infrastructures accommodate neocolonial practices of extractive capitalism? What can artists, designers, and architects do to expose injustice and call for structural change? These are some of the questions the Congolese artist Sammy Baloji discusses with Dr. Becca Voelcker in a critical conversation about climate resilience and justice that considers colonial history and our extractive capitalist present.

NEW COLONIZATION IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD

In recent times, the dynamics of colonization have evolved beyond the conventional understanding of territorial conquests and dominations. This article delves into the phenomenon of "new colonization" in the Islamic world, focusing on its multifaceted manifestations and implications. By leveraging both qualitative research methodologies, the study uncovers the socio-political, economic, and cultural shifts induced by these neo-colonial practices. Drawing from primary sources, as well as secondary data like trade patterns and political alliance metrics, the article reveals a nuanced landscape of influence and control. Key findings suggest that new colonization in the Islamic world is largely characterized by economic dependencies, strategic geopolitical alliances, and cultural infiltrations. The ramifications of this are vast, affecting the very fabric of societies within the Islamic world, including their political autonomy, economic sovereignty, and cultural identity. The article emphasizes the necessity for increased awareness and proactive strategies to navigate and negotiate these neo-colonial forces.

“When there is no money, that is when I vomit blood”: the domino effect and the unfettered lethal exploitation of Black labor on Dominican sugar plantations

BackgroundIn this article, I utilize the concept of the Plantationocene as an analytical framework to generate a holistic and historical understanding of the present-day struggles of a mostly Haitian migrant workforce on sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic.MethodsInspired by Paul Farmer’s methodology, I combine political economy, history, and ethnography approaches to interpret the experiences of sugarcane cutters across historical and contemporary iterations of colonial, post-colonial, and neo-colonial practices over the course of five centuries.ResultsMy findings elucidate the enduring power of capitalism, implicating corporate and state elites, as the structural scaffolding for acts of racialized violence that condition the life-and-death circumstances of Black laborers on Caribbean plantations to this day. Although today’s sugarcane cutters may suffer differently than their enslaved or wage labor ancestors on the plantation, I argue that an unfettered racialized pattern of lethal exploitation is sustained through the structural violence of neoliberalism that links present conditions with the colonial past.ConclusionsUltimately, this paper contributes understandings of the plantationocene’s enduring effects in the global south by demonstrating how imperialist arrangements of capitalism are not a distant memory from the colonial past but instead are present yet hidden and obscured while relocated and reanimated overseas to countries like the Dominican Republic, where American capitalists still exploit Black bodies for profit and power.

Unethical Issues in Twenty-First Century International Development and Global Health Policy

Abstract Billions in development aid is provided annually by international donors in the Majority World, much of which funds health equity. Yet, common neocolonial practices persist in development that compromise what is done in the name of well-intentioned policymaking and programming. Based on a qualitative analysis of fifteen case studies presented at a 2022 conference, this research examines trends involving unethical partnerships, policies, and practices in contemporary global health. The analysis identifies major modern-day issues of harmful policy and programming in international aid. Core issues include inequitable partnerships between and representation of international stakeholders and national actors, abuse of staff and unequal treatment, and new forms of microaggressive practices by Minority World entities on low-/middle-income nations (LMICs), made vulnerable by severe poverty and instability. When present, these issues often exacerbate institutionalized discrimination, hostile work environments, ethnocentrism, and poor sustainability in development. These unbalanced systems perpetuate a negative development culture and can place those willing to speak out at risk. At a time when the world faces increased threats including global warming and new health crises, development and global health policy and practice must evolve through inclusive dialogue and collaborative effort.

An assessment of 'Inclusive' Business Models: Vehicles for Development, or Neo-Colonial Practices?

In a period of decreasing aid budgets and increasing private sector engagement in the Global South, Inclusive Business-referring to a business model that integrates marginalized people in the company’s value chain as suppliers, distributors, retailers, or customers to the mutual benefit of both the company and the community has become a preferred development strategy. However so far the impacts of inclusive business models on the livelihoods of these ‘marginalized people’ have remained elusive. With this paper I aim to contribute to a better understanding of the impacts perceived by the communities. Starting from the idea that the rural landscape is socially differentiated, I scrutinize the impact of inclusive business models on the ground at the level of the farmer communities in two very different settings: the savannah of North-Ghana and the green valleys on the slope of Mount Kenya in East Kenya. The findings indicate that diverse groups in the communities are impacted differently by inclusive business models. Both companies catalyse trajectories that in the long term might have negative repercussions on the livelihoods of smallholders. These long-term, or unintended, impacts are obfuscated in frameworks used to assess inclusive business models. Inclusive business models can only be a partial answer in overcoming poverty and food insecurity.

Othering or authenticity?: Voluntourism and cultural exchange in Peru and Fiji

As the tourism industry emerges from pandemic shutdowns and border closures, so too is “voluntourism”, the controversial combination of overseas volunteer work and more traditional tourist experiences. This has led to a resurgence of critiques, and to calls for the industry to take criticisms on board, examine past practice, reassess the role and impact of volunteering, and to take the opportunity to rethink the practice of volunteer tourism. One of the options proposed for reconfiguring voluntourism is to emphasise cultural exchange. This involves a focus on relationships, mutual understanding and respect for different cultures and knowledge systems, while moving away from discourses of ‘doing good’, helping and development.In this article we draw on primary, qualitative research from case studies in Peru and Fiji to examine voluntourism as cultural exchange. These very different examples of volunteering and cultural exchange highlight the potential of these encounters to increase mutual understanding and respect. However, they also show that emphasising cultural exchange in a context of significant inequality and difference, alongside the commodification of the volunteering experience, does not ensure cultures are perceived equally. Moreover, cultural exchange does not automatically encourage volunteer-tourists to face difficult questions regarding inequalities and differences across cultures. Therefore, we argue that voluntourism, when undertaken – as it often is – by volunteers from the global North working in the global South remains a highly inequitable, neo-colonial practice. Reframing volunteer tourism as cultural exchange may therefore further mask and even perpetuate injustice and inequality.

Dernières nouvelles

Abstract This article shows the relevance of “engaged” or “committed” literature for “post-colonial” African writers in the two collections of short stories called Dernières nouvelles. Through the analysis of narrative utterance, we argue that their position reflects the African fight against colonialism and neo-colonialism. The writers execute a kind of continuum by claiming a literary tradition inherited from the founders of the Negritude movement. However, inspired by the modern context, the writers distance themselves from the radical and racial engagement of their predecessors. This difference can be observed in the use of various literary means, such as on the pretext, “silent cry” and the oxymoron. The article finally argues that there is a contradiction between the criticism of neo-colonial practices and the writers’ collaboration with French publishing houses and different cultural associations.

‘There is Nothing Post-Colonial About it’

This interview with the writer Indra Sinha, conducted in Toulouse, France in June 2017 and reworked in January 2020, is a product of my research on the relatively recent theoretical endeavour to interrogate the relationship between postcolonial and ecocritical studies. Indra Sinha’s fictional and non-fictional works have substantially contributed to the international visibility of human and environmental injustices around the world, suggesting his potential engagement with the relationship between these two theoretical frameworks. In the interview conducted within this context, Sinha’s debut novel Animal’s People (2007), shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker prize, is discussed as a postcolonial eco-socialist work offering a fictitious account of neo-colonial practices in India. The novel, particularly as the literary representation of the Bhopal disaster, sheds light upon the continuous destruction of human and non-human beings in postcolonial lands under neo-colonial policies. Yet, Sinha’s ardent problematization of ‘postcolonialism’ as a label in particular, and of all labels in general for delineating literary works, complicates, albeit fruitfully, the course of the interview and our discussion of new theoretical frameworks emerging out of postcolonial theory. His responses on this issue are powerful statements calling for a particular focus on, if any -isms deemed necessary, transnational capitalism and ‘traditional old-fashioned extortionism’ instead of postcolonialism.

China’s International Relations with Africa: A Comparative Analysis of Neo-Colonial Practices in Angola and the DRC

China’s International Relations with Africa: A Comparative Analysis of Neo-Colonial Practices in Angola and the DRC