Peripheral Societies Research Articles

Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere's philosophy, contribution, and legacies

This article discusses Nyerere's African socialism (ujamaa), philosophy of education for total liberation of society, and philosophy of Pan-Africanism. The article argues that by actively using traditional African values and principles of communalism, collective production, egalitarian distribution, and universal obligation to work, Nyerere's philosophy of African socialism provided the socialist project with an indigenous African identity that was grounded in African historical memories and realities. Both the philosophy and the practice also presented the possibility of constructing socialism in non-European peripheral capitalist societies. A combination of hostile internal and external contradictions, past and present, however, made what was historically necessary historically impossible. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that Nyerere's philosophy of education challenged the relevance of colonial education and contributed to the global conversation about the pedagogy of liberation. In addition, the article maintains that Nyerere's philosophy of Pan-Africanism influenced Tanzania's unrivalled contribution to the total liberation of Africa.

Indigenous Peoples and the Institutionalization of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Greenland

According to the neoinstitutional theory of the world polity, peripheral societies switch to the complete institutional apparatus of modern social organization. The system of the United Nations leads to the expansion of legal “global models,” for instance global models of how to perceive nature and indigeneity. As rational actors, peripheral societies follow global models, which appear as given “scripts,” to gain recognition. As a local peripheral society, Greenland develops in a manner influenced by global formal structures. Hence, the impact of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) has been immense: First, environmental management and environmental protection institutions and organizations have been established in line with the global model of nature. Second, the Greenlandic Inuit have been recognized as an indigenous people possessing traditional ecological knowledge (global model of indigeneity). Hence, the CBD adopted the image of the “noble eco-savage” living in harmony with nature, an image that the Greenlandic Inuit later reproduced themselves. However, the institutionalization of the CBD is not without contradictions.

V. S. Naipaul and Historical Derangement

The consensus that the postcolonial writer must be on the side of the oppressed prevents critics from grasping the original ways in which V. S. Naipaul’s untypical writings are attuned to the historical predicament of the periphery. Naipaul’s premise is that subjects in the periphery are shaped by complex pasts that they are not well placed to comprehend. For historical reasons, peripheral societies lack the institutions and practices required for an adequate grasp of modernity’s profoundly disruptive effects. The globalizing forms of colonialism and capitalism diverted the social trajectories of the peasant formations of the precapitalist world. According to Naipaul, these deranging effects are precisely what the peripheral artist excavates. Writers born of this historical milieu must, in his view, also note how their work partakes of the order it describes. Those who explore their formation in this way may discover new ways of seeing the affiliations between subjected parts of the world. In this light, derangement also assumes a productive force: it makes available new perspectives derived from shared but diverse expressions of peripheral historicity. The fundamental significance of Naipaul’s writing lies in its inauguration of a style of peripheral reflection.

Christian ‘Renewalism’ and the production of global free market hegemony

Charismatic and Pentecostal elements of global Christianity serve key roles in the production of free market hegemony within and between states, societies and markets across the world. While many of the institutions of these Christian social forces are fiercely decentralised, this popular global movement has converged on key elements of a shared conception of the world which links core, semi-peripheral and peripheral societies across national boundaries and class distinctions. These activities highlight the necessity of linking the emergent narratives on ‘global religious economy’ with the larger narratives of Critical IPE. It is argued here that Gramsci provides us with useful conceptual tools with which we may contextualise specific transnational religious movements and social forces within the framework of globalisation and the production of neoliberal hegemony within and between specific states, societies and markets.

The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape's Northern Frontier in the 18 th Century (review)

Reviewed by: The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape's Northern Frontier in the 18th Century Gary Marquardt The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape's Northern Frontier in the 18th Century. By Nigel Penn. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005). Storytelling in the discipline of History is a lost art, leaving history to be told through theoretical constructs that often manhandle the story. Every so often, however, a book such as Nigel Penn's The Forgotten Frontier comes along to refocus or, at the very least, make us reconsider the virtues of a good story and what it can tell us about history. Yes, Penn is "a master storyteller with a novelist's sensitivity" as the back of the book states. Yes, Penn's book is a dream-come-true for academics looking to access a treasure trove of primary source materials about life in the Cape Colony's northern frontier zone during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And finally, yes, Penn is filling in a gaping hole in South Africa's literature that has, for too long, gone unnoticed. But where is the theory? This book goes a long way in advancing our understanding of the political, cultural, and environmental processes that determined the advancement of the Cape's northern frontier. However, it could have increased its impact by taking some chances with interpretation of the sources and thus leading frontier histories in a brave new direction. To his credit, Penn appears to relieve himself of this Herculean task in the introduction, stating, "[This book's] intention is to go some way towards rectifying the omissions and neglect which this, in many ways foremost, frontier has suffered" (14). Over 287 pages, The Forgotten Frontier not only rectifies these omissions, it makes up considerable ground on the more popular eastern frontier in South Africa, a topic whose literature spans five decades. Penn's most vital contribution is the detail he reveals in the social relationships among the indigenous and settler groups that inhabit this region. Indigenous groups of the Orange River region are prominently displayed in chapter 5. But Penn's narrative best succeeds when discussing the shifting ground of identities and relationships between such populations. In his discussion of commando units, Penn notes how white frontier settlers begin to see changes within the "Hottentot" community, noting that the term "Bastaard-Hottentots" first appears in print during the mid-1770s. Penn notes that such a change in terminology is not trivial. Among commando units (and society), the distinction as to whether individuals could be considered "Bastaards," "Hottentots," or "Bastaard-Hottentots" had a profound influence on what role they could play in such units. Such distinctions ultimately decided who could "shoot, ride, speak Dutch and profess Christianity," not to mention who formed alliances and who became enemies (138). In spite of these revealing views of peripheral societies, the overall direction of Penn's work is conservative; he aims to tell a story, not necessarily interpret it. Therefore, the moments in which he analyzes the story or even attempts to "read between the lines" are few and far between. In numerous parts, Penn reveals the uneven legal terrain of prosecuting Khoi, San and white settlers, noting that some whites were indeed punished for their actions against indigenous communities at certain times. The fact that whites were punished for their treatment of Khoi or San is nothing new. However, the idea that these verdicts and the consequential punishment varied at different points in time (and places) is revealing. Why did this happen? Who were the individuals involved and what were their backgrounds? Are there any patterns that dictate the legal decisions regarding criminal cases in these frontier territories? Such questions, I believe, are relevant when considering that Penn's major focus is social history, especially in that it illuminates violent acts and how they are handled by the state and frontier societies. The majority of this book looks at the relationship between Dutch and local societies through a top down approach, using the vast colonial archive to inform the story. Penn hints at the Khoi and/or San voice a few times throughout the book, alluding to...

La colonialidad del ser y del saber: La mitologización del desarrollo en América Latina

This article describes the concept of coloniality of being and knowledge as a process by which a manner of hegemonic thought was built and consolidated, which became widespread in the colonial societies. The article poses the relation between coloniality and development as a historic continuum which reproduces, in the post-colonial societies, the values and beliefs of the Western Modernity. These values and beliefs make part of the modern world view which classified the colonized subjects as the othernesses of colonists, othernesses which were silenced from and by the hegemonic speeches of power-knowledge of Modernity. This classification of the others was “improved” thanks to the help of the theoretical apparatus of the XVIII century Enlightenment and the social sciences of the XIX century. Therefore, concepts like civilization, progress and development were since then the paradigms that articulated the implementation of the modern project in peripheral societies like Latin America. The reasoning of the hypothesis is based on theories of subordination/postcoloniality and on empirical data of the World Values Survey and on the Latin American Barometer.

Pension reforms and world bank-regulated laws of the jungle: the case of pensioners in Nigeria

Peripheral societies (or better still, non-industrialized, raw materialsexporting states) are originally (and still remain) designed as raw resources supply zone not only in World Bank lexicon but also in global planning and programming of industrialized societies in general. Worker welfare of those both retired and in service may actually not visibly become emphasized in the picture. Thus, workers reaching retirement in Nigeria-type society should indeed be informally regarded as non-productive drain on national resources, such resources being rapidly transferred into private holdings. This paper analyzes the position, characteristics as well as consequences of the current pension scheme adopted by the Nigerian patrimonial state whose implication insensitively seeks to abandon state demonstrative responsibility owed that section referred to as senior citizens in pursuit of the blueprint laid out by alien agencies with questionable, if not suspected destructive agenda. Key words: Private pension scheme, Pension Fund Administrator, Pension Fund Custodian, Pension stakeholder

The Transnational Organization of Production and Uneven Environmental Degradation and Change in the World Economy

The intent of the present article is to expand upon the discussion concerning the transnational organization of production, the treadmill logic which drives this organization, and highlight theoretical and empirical research regarding ecological unequal exchange, which we envision as a central dynamic enhancing capital accumulation within the world economy. Ecological unequal exchange refers to the environmentally damaging withdrawal of energy and other natural resources and the addition or externalization of environmentally damaging production and disposal activities within the periphery of the world-system as a consequence of exchange relations with more industrialized countries. It is based upon both the obtainment of natural capital and the usurpation of sink-capacity or waste assimilation properties of ecological systems in a manner that enlarges the domestic carrying capacity of the industrialized countries to the detriment of peripheral societies. Future research oriented towards further articulating the political-economic processes underlying ecological unequal exchange dynamics holds the potential to contribute to a more refined dialogue and debate regarding the prospects for the sustainable development of human societies.

Globalization and Resistance Movements in the Periphery: An Alternative Theoretical Approach

Social resistance to globalization forces is a dominant feature of the current phase of international relations and global political economy. But there exists no satisfactory theoretical framework to study social resistance from the perspective or context of the peripheral societies. This article highlights the problems of theorizing social resistance from the peripheral context, raises new questions about the applicability of the existing Marxist and critical political economy theoretical frameworks to analyze peripheral social resistance, and proposes an alternative theoretical framework where social resistance is defined as a struggle for survival.

Relaciones científicas de medicina veterinaria venezolana con sus pares latinoamericanos: México y el Cono Sur (1933-1955)

En este trabajo se describe como las relaciones entre Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay y México se vincularon a la construcción de una capacidad endógena del primero en el campo de la medicina veterinaria. La influencia de los países en cuestión ocurre en diversas etapas del crecimiento de la comunidad de veterinarios en Venezuela. El artículo expone una experiencia de como las relaciones científico-técnicas no siempre proceden según el esquema centro-periferia (sociedad desarrollada a periférica), sino que pone en evidencia la existencia de sociedades periféricas que pueden actuar como referentes o intermediarios para la transferencia de los saberes.

О территории власти и власти территории: Заметки на полях “Сибири в составе Российской империи”

SUMMARY: Sergei Glebov reviews the volume Siberia within the Russian Empire and assesses both this volume’s contribution to existing scholarship on the history of Siberia as well as the volume’s attempt to analyze the history of Siberia with the help of new methodologies; including the new history of empire as it is explicated by the editors of the series Borderlands of the Russian Empire . Glebov contends that the premise of the new history of empire is rather conventional in that it projects the view of empire as a structure of relations between an undefined imperial center and peripheral societies. Inadvertently, this structural premise revives national narratives, insofar as in the course of historical development the legitimation of both the imperial center and peripheral societies were bound to involve the discourse of nationhood. Glebov praises the included analysis of symbolic geography and history of signification of the space of Siberia in alternating discourses. However, he notes that this aspect of the volume suffers from the exclusion of the eighteenth century from the history of “cognitive conquest” of the space of Siberia. Bringing the eighteenth century into the narrative alters the overall picture for the center of the authoritative knowledge in the eighteenth century was not in Russia but in Western Europe with whose participation Siberia was conceptually conquered while the Muscovite Tsardom was itself reframed into the Russian Empire. Furthermore, Glebov does not see any reason to reduce the symbolic geography of Siberia to administrative mapping alone and enunciates the history of confessional mapping and proselytizing activities, which offer a different dimension of the history of imperial diversity. According to Glebov, the volume’s main shortcoming is its tunnel-vision narrative of a seamless process of Siberia becoming part of the Russian space. He contrasts this tunnel vision narrative with the complex history of rule by difference directed at indigenous peoples of Siberia and criticizes the authors of the volume for simplistic comparisons with the history of colonization and the indigenous population of North America.

<i>The Case for the Enlightenment. Scotland and Naples 1680–1760</i> (review)

Reviewed by: The Case for the Enlightenment. Scotland and Naples 1680–1760 David Allan The Case for the Enlightenment. Scotland and Naples 1680–1760. By John Robertson. Pp. xii, 453. ISBN: 0 521 84787 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005. £55.00. This important and thought-provoking book is strongly recommended, not only to the Enlightenment specialists who might be expected to read it but also to those scholars who are interested in the kinds of perspectives opened up by the techniques of comparative history. For John Robertson’s major new study makes an intriguing, and, in the end, persuasive case for the existence of illuminating parallels between the Scottish and the Neapolitan Enlightenments – phenomena which occurred in two ‘historically subordinate or “provincial” kingdoms on the margins of Europe, which between them produced some of the most original thinking about man and society of the entire period from 1680 to 1790’ (p. 9). Crucially, however, it is emphatically not Robertson’s contention that the two situations were particularly similar. Indeed, that would clearly be a [End Page 165] difficult point to establish, as well as unhelpful to the precise argument whose merits Robertson wishes us to consider. By the end of the period covered in this book, after all, one was patently becoming a commercial and industrial society. It also had a strongly Protestant culture and an (absentee) parliamentary monarchy, and was characterised by unusual levels of freedom of thought and expression that facilitated the emergence of a large body of challenging work by a mixed community of tenured academics, virtuosi landowners, learned lawyers and liberal clergymen. The other, by contrast, was a backward and overwhelmingly agrarian society presided over by an entrenched Catholic church, a feudal nobility and an (absentee) Spanish monarchy. Here early Enlightenment thinkers like Paolo Mattia Doria, constrained by official restrictions, were obliged to work ‘in manuscript, for the eyes of sympathetic ministers only’ (p. 379). Meanwhile, Pietro Giannone, the historian, suffered exile, imprisonment by the Duke of Savoy and the confiscation of his writings on account of their heterodoxy. Nor is it suggested that the Scottish and Neapolitan intelligentsias enjoyed an unusually close relationship with one another. In fact, they plainly did not. Rather, Robertson’s point is that it is the existence of two markedly different and in some ways contrasting national contexts, with relatively limited direct contact between them, that makes it possible, when comparing the resulting intellectual cultures, to probe the much broader and far more important question of the coherence of the European Enlightenment. Indeed, the study raises the question of whether there might exist here what Robertson’s title describes as a ‘Case for the Enlightenment’. In other words, despite everything that has lately been written about the sheer diffuseness of eighteenth-century thought and culture, and thus about the advantages of thinking of a diverse and differentiated ‘family’ of Enlightenments in the plural, was there nevertheless something fundamental that bound together practitioners situated even in peripheral societies at opposite ends of Europe and in basically very different circumstances? It will be obvious that such a detailed comparative study is necessarily a large and complicated undertaking for any historian. It is therefore very much to Robertson’s credit that he has spent many years, both in Italy and at home, gradually piecing together a masterly study of complex intellectual activity and its peculiar social and cultural contexts. At the book’s heart lies a thesis that, whilst not entirely unprecedented, as he admits, is at least somewhat unusual among the most recent attempts to characterise the Enlightenment. This is that political economy – a set of inquiries ‘whose goals were the wealth of nations . . . and the improvement of the condition of all of society’s members’ (p. 29) – formed the main project of both the Scottish literati and the Neapolitan illuministi. Readers of the present review will probably be able to guess the outlines of the argument as it relates to Scotland, even if the detailed exposition offered here is highly original. David Hume occupies centre-stage; Fletcher, Kames, Smith and a few others play significant supporting roles; the nation’s merchants and improving lairds supply a closely-engaged chorus. The...

Chagas Disease in Argentina: Reciprocal Construction of Social and Scientific Problems

This article intends to study the possibilities and limitations of scientific knowledge as a factor of social development in peripheral societies. We challenge the idea that the only promotion of scientific knowledge is a legitimate and adequate method to overcome the social problems that many people in Latin America are subjected to. Instead, we propose to investigate the relationships among the social actors involved in the production and circulation of scientific knowledge. We take the case of Chagas disease, a recurring theme in the public agenda since the 1950s, to show how the issue has emerged and has been taken in by public policies related to the production of scientific knowledge. We analyse the different viewpoints and conceptions about the disease, and how they moulded the different institutional initiatives of intervention into the problem. We assume that the practices associated with these mechanisms condition the type of knowledge produced and its possible uses.

Imagining Brazil

Imagining Brazil. Edited by Jessé Souza and Walter Sinder. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. 318p. $95.00.This book approaches the impact of globalization on peripheral societies by identifying the philosophical, cultural, and economic transformations that accompanied Brazil's modernization in the twentieth century. By emphasizing the foundations of national identity and searching for points of resonance between these foundations and the forces of globalization, the authors examine the conceptions of modernity and intersections of the global context with what it is—and what it means—to be Brazilian.

The Contribution of ‘Social Capital’ to Economic Growth: Lessons from Island Jurisdictions

This paper is concerned with the relationship of ‘social capital’ to economic development, with a deliberate focus on island territories. It argues that an appreciation of ‘social capital’ theory makes for a more informed understanding of how many (though not all) small, peripheral and network-driven island societies develop ‘good governance’ practices and manage a commendable standard of living. ‘Island neo-corporatism’ merits recognition on its own terms as the deep structure to ‘good governance’; and, in combination with jurisdictional powers, it is a key primer of economic development.

Genesis of feudalism in Western Europe and its influence to the globai process of history: The conceptions of L. Vasilyev and E. Gudavičius

The purpose of this article is to compare E. Gudavičius' conception of feudalism with the Russian orientalist L. Vasilyev's attitude to this issue. Both historians treat themselves as Marxists (in the Western meaning of it, i.e. supporters of the Asian mode of production). Consequently, their views on the development of the history of mankind are similar but not equal. In this article, feudalism is treated as a historical and socioeconomic formation and some stage of human development during which the feudal mode of production was dominating. L. Vasilyev describes the stage of feudalism in Western Europe as the age of orientalisation of social structure, i.e. as a regress. Only the rebirth of Antiquity bore capitalism. E. Gudavičius stresses that feudalism created an individual producer (peasant) farm and consequently it was an essential progress in the social development of the societies of Western Europe. The character of the social structure of Germanic kingdoms in the early Middle Ages differed essentially from oriental societies in the stage of early politogenesis. The reason for that was the alodization of Germanic society. So the prefeudal stage (the term of E. Gudavičius) as well as the feudal stage was unique in both chronological and geographical senses (as for this aspect, Western Europe is comparable maybe only with medieval Japan). In the early Middle Ages, a necessary condition of the feudalisation of the periphery of Western Europe was the influence of the neighbouring (already feudal) countries. Otherwise, the social structure of peripheral societies would have been developing like in the Orient. L. Vasilyev affirms convincingly that market relations in Germanic society in the early Middle Ages were suppressed by vertical (subordinating) and corporative connections. In this sense, Western Europe became similar to the Orient. Nevertheless, the main difference was that private property remained in Western Europe. Private property enabled the development of market relations when civilization and technologies were restored. Medieval cities and burghers undermined feudalism and were the first sprouts of the capitalist structure. L. Vasilyev's statement that capitalism is the consequence of a structural rebirth of Antiquity is not very convincing. The structural heritage of Antiquity was a primary stimulus during the process of the genesis of feudalism. Later, feudalism developed spontaneously and the part of the heritage of Antiquity was only auxiliary. It is very doubtful that the historical experiment of the structural synthesis took place in medieval Western Europe (according to L. Vasilyev's conception it also took place in the Hellenistic Orient and in the Byzantine Empire). Already, during the stage of the genesis of feudalism, a social mutation (i.e. qualitative change) took place in Western Europe. So, in general, there was no more structural synthesis but spontaneous development. On the other hand, the mentioned L. Vasilyev's conception was not adapted to much more prospective cases like the Philippines and especially Latin America.

Discourses of “the Balkans” in Cyprus: Tactics, Strategies and Constructions of “Others”

While the issue of constructions of “others” from the perspective of established centres of power has received a significant amount of attention, constructions of “others” from the perspective of peripheral societies have not been adequately explored. This article examines this issue by comparing constructions of “the Balkans” articulated by Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. Such constructions, are in turn, compared with those emanating from “the West” in order to highlight their differences. The author suggests that societies centrally located within the hierarchy of power are able to develop more stable representations of “others”, while those located outside centres of power only develop ephemeral and shifting interest in other societies, beyond the usual specific preoccupations with neighbouring “national enemies”.

A gramática social da desigualdade brasileira

Este artigo pretende fundamentar uma alternativa teórica acerca dos temas da construção social da subcidadania e da naturalização da desigualdade no contexto de sociedades periféricas como a brasileira. Para isso, são aproveitadas de maneira seletiva e pessoal, no contexto do debate sociológico e filosófico-social contemporâneo, as discussões acerca do reconhecimento social e de teorias sobre a desigualdade que enfatizam seu componente sociocultural. O objetivo é elaborar uma concepção teórica alternativa, tanto em relação às abordagens personalistas, patrimonialistas e "hibridistas" desses fenômenos, paradigmas intimamente relacionados entre si e ainda dominantes entre nós, como em relação às percepções conjunturais e pragmáticas que perdem o vínculo com qualquer realidade mais ampla e totalizadora.

Environmental History and British Colonialism in India: A Prime Political Agenda

THIS ARTICLE HAS DEVELOPED FROM A DESIRE TO DEVELOP A THEORETICAL position for "Nature" in the context of modernity. It argues that the near-total absence of theories of nature in modern Western social thought stands in stark contrast to the remarkable extent to which nature has assisted and indexed the rise of modernity itself. This historical-theoretical imbalance has had grave social consequences, and it calls for an urgent reintegration of nature in theoretical discourses. The recently emerging genre of "environmental history" has carved a small but significant niche for itself in this direction. Some exciting literature has been produced that addresses itself to the task at hand. It is interesting to note that even though, as a discipline, environmental history registers its rise in the West, particularly the United States in the early 1970s, most of the radical environmental histories that are being written today emanate from the "peripheral" zones of the global political economy. While the peripheries have been severely exploited for their raw materials and natural products in the international division of labor since the beginnings of the modern world-system, it is also strangely not coincident that in the cultural division of labor, so to speak, these peripheries [End Page 113] have been seen as part of the wild, natural world, whereas the core, Western regions have portrayed themselves as bearers of civilization and cultural advancement. Thus, it is appropriate that some of the radical environmental histories have committed themselves to analyzing the environmental impact of colonialism on peripheral societies. I would like to propose the term environmental colonialism as a metaphor and point of departure through which I will locate and critique practices and structures of colonial-capitalist-modernity over the last five hundred years, along with the different strategies, discourses, and narratives employed to enact environmental colonialism in different parts of the earth.

A história da ciência e o objeto de seu estudo: confrontos entre a ciência periférica, a ciência central e a ciência marginal

The historiography of science has undergone a profound change from the traditional perspective of a few decades ago, according to which only mainstream science was worth pursuing as a research field. Such a restricted outlook was not conducive to a thorough understanding of the whole process of the construction of science. New approaches have breathed new life into the discipline, taking into account not only scientific endeavours from so-called peripheral societies, but also from different quarters within or close to the central groups. From this a new and far more interesting view has emerged, showing a complex and richer texture.