Postcolonial Countries Research Articles

Discrimination Against Puerto Ricans in the Puerto Rican Housing Market: Evidence From a Preregistered Audit Experiment

Abstract Do locals discriminate against themselves by favoring foreigners with higher expected purchasing power? Drawing on theories of prejudice, discrimination, and colonialism, I argue that in colonized and post-colonial countries, local home sellers discriminate against local potential homebuyers while favoring foreigners with expected higher purchasing power, anticipating a more profitable transaction. I support this argument with evidence from a preregistered online audit study targeting discriminatory attitudes toward local home buyers. In the study, fictitious home buyers with distinctive language and ethnic names emailed 1,512 home sellers (realtors and homeowners) across all municipalities in Puerto Rico. Home sellers reported more houses available to Americans and invited them to more house showings than Puerto Ricans. My estimates indicate that ethnic discrimination exists in the Puerto Rican housing market. These findings provide new insights into ethnic dynamics in colonized and post-colonial societies and underscore concerns about recent legislation that turned Puerto Rico into a tax haven.

Critique of Colonialism and Cultural Imperialism in Selected Poems of Tanveer Anjum from Nai Zaban Kay Huroof Alphabet of a New Language

Postcolonial complexity of thought is an integral discourse in Pakistani writers’ works. Tanveer Anjum is a contemporary Pakistani Urdu poetess and her poetry is perceptive of personal, social and political concerns of modern times. In a postcolonial country, the colonial past is never detached from the common consciousness and the unending imperialism and post war traumas are part of its subjects’ collective memories. Five poems are selected from her recent collection of Urdu poetry, Nai Zaban kay Huroof (Alphabet of a New Language) for the postcolonial analysis. The poems are: ‘Interview’, ‘There Was a Village’, ‘The Last Nail’, ‘Sister Caroline’s Dappled Cats’ and ‘Like Sunbeams’. The research is qualitative in nature and the theories of Edward Said and Homi K. Bhabha are used for the textual analysis of the selected poems. The analysis reveals a parallel structure of thoughts in her poems which at one side endorses the need of cultural resistance and on the other, calls for a negotiation, which further affirms the complexities of postcolonial thought process.

Gender and postcolonial studies: history of the concept and debate.

The debate on the concept of gender in postcolonial studies is extremely complex and involves a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives. Postcolonial studies has shown the connection between gender identity, colonial power, and decolonisation processes. This paper will explore the social construction of gender in colonial contexts, the way in which colonial practises have influenced gender dynamics, and the struggles for resistance and freedom in which women and gender-nonconforming people have engaged in postcolonial countries. The issue will be raised of how gender is interpreted and experienced in different cultures and social contexts. Furthermore, the analysis of colonisation and decolonisation processes will provide a starting point to understand how gender hierarchies have been built and criticised in postcolonial contexts, leading to the development of the most recent ecofeminist and decolonial perspectives.

First language primacy in multilingualism and emotion research: a view from Africa

ABSTRACT The interaction between multilingualism and emotions has so far mostly been researched in Northern contexts. The findings obtained suggest that the first language is typically preferred for emotional and mental activities (i.e. ‘first language primacy’). In this article, we extend this area of investigation to Africa. We use the Bilingualism and Emotions Questionnaire to probe first language primacy in South Africa, employing a novel analytical approach – multiple correspondence analysis – that allows us to examine the relationship between particular languages and their order of acquisition. Our findings, in part, do reflect favouring of the L1, but with two important qualifications. First, English is also widely used for emotional expression in non-intimate domains. Second, L1 isiXhosa speakers prefer English for mental calculations, and isiXhosa is generally not associated with positive emotional characteristics. We explain these trends in relation to the multilingual context of South Africa, which, like many postcolonial countries, uses a former colonial language extensively in formal institutional spaces.

Education during colonialism in India and Norway: A comparative study

This research compares and contrasts how colonialism affected the educational systems in Norway and India. It looks at how British colonial control affected education in India via a historical lens, highlighting how it helped spread colonial ideals and maintain social inequalities. On the other hand, the study explores Norway's history under Swedish and Danish control, emphasizing initiatives to maintain cultural identity through patriotic movements and education. The research clarifies the disparate paths of educational development by contrasting these environments and exposing different colonial control and resistance tactics. It examines how colonial education continues to influence modern educational practices, governmental regulations, and public attitudes in both nations. The research provides insights into the intricacies of colonial education systems and their lasting effects on post-colonial countries through the use of a comparative methodology.

"I will attend to college to give my family a better life": Indebtedness with the family and the challenges of building occupational plans for Peruvian adolescents.

Identifying a future occupation is an important achievement during adolescence, a process particularly complex for Peruvian adolescents. Perú is a postcolonial country with many forms of inequality, and one of them is the opportunity gap to attend a college. However, most adolescents aspire to go to university as a way out of poverty, and, since Perú is a collectivist society, this is a family task: it is adolescents' responsibility to go to college in order to give a better life to their families. Theories developed for WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) do not provide an accurate explanation of Peruvian adolescents' occupational projects because they envision a person with autonomy and resources to choose a career. Thus, our goal is to analyze adolescents' occupational plans considering the role adolescent-caregivers relationships play in this configuration. This study is part of the project "Being an adolescent in Perú" (PUCP-UNICEF) which characterized Peruvian adolescence by studying 14 variables through a qualitative study with 66 participants. In depth interviews were conducted and the data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Results of the thematic analysis are organized in three topics that explain the relationship between occupational plans and adolescent-caregiver relationship (1) adolescents have occupational aspirations rather than achievable projects that are that are built alone, without adult support; (2) attending college as an occupational aspiration belongs to the family, not to the individual operating also a kind of "debt" to pay to their caregivers for being financially supported to be able to study in high school; and (3) caregivers do not have the possibility or resources of being able to accompany their adolescent's occupational plans. We conclude that Peruvian adolescents think about their future within the framework of their family's needs, rather than linked to personal and occupational goals, impeding adolescents from exploring and selecting a realistic occupational goal consistent with their interests. The results allow us to discuss the relevance of studying adolescent development taking into account the particularities of the adolescents' cultural and socioeconomic contexts as well as the core role that relationship with caregivers plays in this process in Perú.

Literary text and historical discourse: A questionnaire study

This article explores historical discourse in a literary text from a fresh perspective through an experiment. We compiled the experiment’s questions in a Google Form, drawing inspiration from Askar Altai’s "The Hunchbak." The main emphasis in formulating the questions was placed on the category of historical figures in historical discourse. 23 students of Karaganda Buketov University, aged 19-22, voluntarily took part in our experiment. We chose a descriptive method for data analysis in the study. Using this method, three levels of reader perception (simple, medium, and high) are fully analyzed. As a result of the research, it was found that the vast majority of the survey participants fully understood the text of the literary work, thought about the subtext (indirect meaning) in it, analyzed the text from the point of view of their own knowledge, analyzed the author's position, and tried to express their thoughts. This indicates that the reader’s perceived level of comprehension is moderate. At the same time, the study showed that in the minds of the youth of the postcolonial country there are still some manifestations of ‘colonialism’; it is concluded that for the full recovery of a postcolonial country from ‘colonial diseases’, the full revival of historical consciousness, school programs and textbooks should be revised in Kazakhstan, and colleges and universities should have a systematic, fundamental state program for a long period (25 years).

Manifestations of Epistemic Violence in Assumptions of Students in an Undergraduate Classroom in Bangladesh

Epistemic violence refers to the silencing and displacing of a system of knowledge deemed to be inferior by another system of knowledge self-perceived as superior. In postcolonial context, it refers to the dominance and imposition of Western ways of perceiving the world by displacing the non-Western ways of perceiving the world. Colonial discourse is so encompassing in the postcolonial countries that students come to the classroom with assumptions that carry baggage of epistemic violence. According to Freire, the manifestations of this global “theme” may take particular dimensions in particular societies. Critical interrogation of epistemic violence requires identification of the particular manifestations of epistemic violence in particular societies. Following the approach of critical discourse analysis, this paper attempts to explore how epistemic violence manifests itself in the student assumptions exposed in their classroom interactions in an undergraduate classroom in Bangladesh, a postcolonial country. The findings reveal that besides the Western form of epistemic violence, there are local varieties of epistemic violence in Bangladesh. The discourses contributing to epistemic violence have been so ingrained in society that they appear as symbolic capital exercising symbolic violence where education plays a big role. The manifestations of epistemic violence in the context of Bangladesh revealed in this study have implications for framing critical instruction for problematising epistemic violence in postcolonial countries like Bangladesh.

“Why shouldn’t I Be Wanted, Even loved?”: Eugenics, Reproduction, and the Postcolonial in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death

ABSTRACT This article focuses on two postcolonial novels, Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death, and argues that through the novels’ explorations of sex, both narratives reconstruct eugenic views that haunt postcolonial societies today. Through sex scenes (and their interruption or absence), the novels illustrate how the characters from India and Sudan respectively experience oppression and discrimination. These experiences are direct outcomes of eugenic views on and practices aimed at selected groups. Through its focus on masturbation and female genital mutilation, as described in the two novels, this article frames the analysis of Animal’s People and Who Fears Death in relation to eugenics, sexual deviance, and sterilization, and foregrounds the ongoing oppression of postcolonial nations. This article carefully examines how eugenics has shaped or further intensified inequality. In particular, it draws parallels between eugenic practices and two kinds of oppression described in Animal’s People and Who Fears Death: the control exercised by the West over postcolonial countries, highlighted through western industrial capitalism’s lack of concern about the genetic health of postcolonial nations and the dysgenic impact of their industries, and patriarchal control of women.

Основні напрями протидії «русскому миру» в Україні: завдання деколонізації

Despite the fact that there is now a general public agreement in Ukraine regarding the need to oppose the “russian world”, there are quite diverse and sometimes contradictory proposals among Ukrainian citizens regarding the ways to implement such an opposition. In state policy, the main line of implementing such countermeasures is gradually beginning to emerge, however, it is necessary to logically and organizationally substantiate the main stages of its implementation. The essence of opposition to the “russian world” lies in the consistent implementation of decolonization in Ukraine, since it was russia that for centuries carried out the largest and for a long time quite successful project of colonization of Ukraine. The purpose of the article is to clarify the post-colonial situation for Ukraine, and, accordingly, the tasks of decolonization for it as a key direction of counteraction to the “russian world” in Ukraine. The degree of colonization of Ukraine is analyzed on the basis of a comparative analysis with other known histories of colonization in the world. Thanks to this, the degree of applicability of postcolonial studies and the theory of decolonization to modern Ukraine has been clarified. Ukraine repeats many classic features of a post-colonial country, but has every chance to make a significant new contribution to the theory of decolonization – thanks to its success in confronting the russian empire, which is now the russian federation, in its expansionist militarist foreign policy. Decolonization in Ukraine is carried out in three stages, during each of which the necessary institutional changes are successively implemented, each of which makes it impossible to return to the previous stage. Thus, the mirror opposition to russian colonization, the adoption of the best world experience of decolonization, and finally, the development of a self-sufficient Ukrainian world are three stages of successful decolonization in Ukraine, which can become a model for other former colonies.

Erasure of history, colonialism, and its effects: A critical discourse analysis of the Ghanaian and Pakistani history curricula

This paper reflects on history education in two postcolonial countries, Pakistan and Ghana, prompted by recent discussions about residential schools in Canada and The 1619 Project in the U.S. Drawing on decolonial theory and Sankofa, we conduct a critical discourse analysis of the history curricula in both countries to examine how colonialism and its consequences are addressed. We focus on what the curriculum says about colonialism/the colonial period in Ghana and Pakistan, and what aspects of these histories are ignored or highlighted. Our analysis reveals that the History curriculum does not problematize colonization and the colonial period in Ghana’s history and erases the effects of colonization in the Pakistani context by presenting the process of colonization as mere facts and figures without critical engagement.

Grand Narratives of Transition and the Quest for Democratic Constitutionalism in India and South Africa

There are currently two contrasting ways of narrating the Indian and South African constitutional transitions. The first contends that they were moments when liberal constitutionalism was adapted to the circumstances of the Global South. In contrast to what happened in many other post-colonial countries, this narrative goes, constitution-making in both India and South Africa was driven by a broadly representative liberation movement that had endeavoured to catch the colonial state in the contradiction between its claimed ‘civilising mission’ and the reality of its oppressive operation. At independence, the Congress party in India and the African National Congress in South Africa expressed this conception of the anti-colonial struggle in constitutions that repurposed liberal constitutionalism to the challenges of post-colonial governance. In so doing, they not only pluralised that approach to governance beyond the West. They developed it in ways that are relevant to the revival of liberal constitutionalism in the Global North. The second narrative, detectable in recent work in decolonial theory, but also in an older tradition of culturalist critique in each country, rejects this account of liberal constitutionalism’s already-achieved de-Westernisation. Far from demonstrating the universalisability of liberal constitutionalism’s animating principles, adherents of this second narrative maintain, the Indian and South African Constitutions simply reflect the values of the Westernised political elite that adopted them. As such, they prolong the colonial past into the colonial present and perpetuate the suppression of indigenous lifeways that began under colonial rule. After setting out these two narratives as they apply to each country, this paper brings them into dialogue with each other. Rather than offering a purportedly neutral framework by which to assess them, each narrative is treated as the other’s most demanding interlocutor, alert to its blind spots and convenient omissions. Proceeding in this way, the paper contends that, notwithstanding their many differences, the two narratives – charitably interpreted – are committed to the same ideal: a distinctively Southern conception of constitutionalism that gives the post-colonial state a central role in overcoming past injustices and creating the conditions for active citizenship. The final section of the paper examines the suggestions that adherents of the charitable version of each narrative make about how to realise this ideal in India and South Africa. The problem with the second narrative, the decolonial/culturalist story, is that its adherents’ call for fundamental constitutional overhaul tends to be lacking in detail and also in attentiveness to the political context in which such a call would be implemented. One very real challenge for adherents of the charitable version of this narrative is the risk that any new constitution-making process might be dominated by political actors with an exclusionary conception of the relevant national people. The first narrative, the ‘liberal constitutionalism already de-Westernised’ story, points in the direction of incremental adjustment rather than complete constitutional overhaul. While absolving its adherents of the need to design things afresh, this does not mean they have an easier run of things. Indeed, if anything, the demands on them are higher given the evident failure of the Indian and South African Constitutions thus far to realise their ambitions.

The Megachilidae (Hymenoptera, Apoidea, Apiformes) of the Democratic Republic of Congo curated at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA, Belgium).

Natural history collections are a cornerstone of entomology, and the conservation of specimens is the essential prerequisite for the development of research into systematics, biogeography, ecology, evolution and other disciplines. Yet, specimens collected during decades of entomological research conducted in less developed countries across Sub-Saharan Africa on pests, beneficial insects and insect biodiversity in general have largely been exported to be permanently preserved in developed countries, mainly in Europe and the United States of America. This is particularly true for the Democratic Republic of the Congos (DRC) diverse wild bee fauna, which has been investigated throughout the colonial period by visiting or resident entomologists and missionaries who have then transferred their collected material primarily to Belgium as part of a wider legacy of scientific exploration and colonialism. Digitizing NHC is one way to mitigate this current bias, by making samples accessible to researchers from the target post-colonial countries as well as to the wider international scientific community. In this study, we compiled and digitized 6,490 specimens records relevant to 195 wild bee species grouped in 18 genera within the biodiverse family Megachilidae, essentially from the colonial era (i.e., mostly between 19051960, with additional records up to 1978), and curated at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium. We provide a detailed catalogue of all records with updated locality and province names, including 29 species only available as type specimens. We also explore the historical patterns of diversity and distribution across DRC, and we provide a list of the research entomologists involved. This study is an important first step that uses digital technologies to democratize and repatriate important aspects of DRCs natural heritage of insect biodiversity, to stimulate more contemporary field surveys and modern taxonomic revisions, as well as to identify and characterize research gaps and biodiversity shortfalls in some of the less-explored regions of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Définir et identifier l’afropéanité dans les titres d’ouvrages afropéens : une question d’identité culturelle, raciale et continentale

The term ‘Afropean’ became in the twenty-first-century Western culture a trendy expression to describe the African diaspora in postcolonial countries of Europe, which recognizes in it a cultural mix that is both African and European. However, this concept remains difficult to identify, define and explain. This article aims to clearly and precisely define and delimit this reality in contemporary literature.

International Fair of Plovdiv in Bulgaria’s Trade Relations with Underdeveloped Countries in the Second Half of the 1950s

Abstract Josef Stalin’s death in 1953 was the cause of a change in the policy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the Eastern bloc. If this led to a tentative détente on the European continent in East-West dialogue, Nikita Khrushchev’s new policy toward the Third World strained competition with the United States for strategic influence over postcolonial countries. Eastern European states were encouraged to increase their contact with the former colonies at all levels. Therefore, participation of underdeveloped countries increased at the International Fair Plovdiv in the 1950s. Research curiosity, however, was sparked by the following questions: What was the place of the International Fair Plovdiv in the context of struggle for Third World countries and markets? Did Bulgaria use it only as a weapon in the Eastern bloc’s common diplomacy, or did it have economic benefits for expanding trade relations with underdeveloped countries? This article tries to answer these questions by referring to archival documents, reports in periodicals, and Bulgarian and foreign publications on the subject.

The ‘situatedness’ of security in postcolonial spaces: Examining the historical and spatial trajectories of localised practices in Tunisia

Preventing and countering violent extremism programmes (P/CVE) programmes in western and postcolonial countries present several differences as well as similarities. The differences are a consequence of specific coordinates of time and space in which security programmes are situated. This article builds on a growing scholarship focusing on the dimension of time, highlighting how the investigation of global and local historical trajectories brings to light postcolonial processes of security policymaking and their role in shaping local security measures. Through interviews carried out in Tunisia with local and international NGOs working on P/CVE, this research examines the agency of international and local actors, and their role in implementing or challenging global and local security narratives. The objective of this research is to show the connection between global and local security narratives and practices, and the role of colonial historical trajectories in the evolution of security.

The globalization of postcolonial pop music: putting the success of the K-pop industries into theoretical perspectives

ABSTRACT It is uncontested that the unexpected rise of K-pop in the last decades has been no less than impressive. Korea has become the 7th largest music market in the world, and K-pop idol groups routinely are ranked on Billboard charts despite originating from a postcolonial country. However, there is dearth of scholarship theoretically and empirically to explain this phenomenon. This collection aimed to address this gap through investigating how and why the K-pop industry has achieved its present status. The eight articles included in the special issue deal with this question from various perspectives: the nature of the music itself, (gender) diversity in its fandom, and innovative strategies employed by the leading firms. Together, we believe that our collection paints a comprehensive picture of K-pop and its success, advancing our collective understanding of innovation management, cultural industries and the global pop music in general.

Comparison of Concepts in Poetry

The article presents a comparative cognitive analysis of Uzbek and Kazakh poetry. The poems of the poet T. Abdikakimov and the prominent representative of Uzbek poetry M. Yusuf on the theme of their native land and homeland are also considered. General aesthetic features and literary, cultural ties, characteristic of post-colonial countries, are determined on the basis of Kazakh, Uzbek poetry. The article made a comparative conceptual analysis of poetry. On its basis, through poetry, through literary creative space, the features and values ​​of the Kazakh, Uzbek nations are deeply analyzed. In the second part of the article, on the example of Kazakh and Uzbek poetry, a conceptual analysis is carried out and in the course of the analysis the role of cultural, mental, spiritual and literary ties between these peoples is determined. Research work through a conceptual analysis on the example of poetry opens the way to a deeper knowledge of the world of values ​​of fraternal peoples and, being fateful, reveals through poetry the manifestation of differences associated with the way of life. In the course of the analysis of national concepts, the concept of “tugan zher” based on the poem by T. Abdikakimov in Kazakh poetry and the concept of “otan” in the work of M. Yusuf, a prominent representative of Uzbek poetry, were studied. In the article we define the role and power, the influence of poetry as a "driving force", linking it with the mental consciousness of peoples, with the world of values. Conceptual analysis opens a wide path for this.

Shifting the belief of the “hard-to-reach parents” to “reachable parents”: Parent-teacher collaboration within schools in a post-colonial country

Interacting with Indigenous parents effectively can be a challenge for primary school teachers, regardless of their teaching experience. Unfortunately, within schools in post-colonial countries, teachers often perceive that this challenge exists because Indigenous parents are hard-to-reach or unresponsive to their children’s educational needs. With the intention of dismantling these destructive colonial views towards Indigenous groups, this phenomenological study explored how 22 Indigenous West Papuan parents perceived their roles in their children’s education and how these parents and 8 teachers discursively established their own versions of parent-teacher collaboration. Parents in this study believed that their role is critical for their children’s educational success. Two types of parent-teacher collaboration were identified: transactional and culturally responsive. Although both parents and teachers understood the importance of their collaboration, this did not necessarily result in effective collaboration. Some parents reported that their collaboration with teachers was hindered by teachers’ lack of understanding of the impact of discriminatory treatment, colonisation, and erosion of Indigenous culture on their communities and the implications of teachers’ attitudes towards pedagogical practices. Further implications for practice are also discussed.

Does Colonial Institutional Legacy Fully Explain Why Nations Fail? Theoretical and Empirical Confrontations Using the Case of Haiti

Economic history is mobilized by neo-institutionalists to explain the different paths to development observed in post-colonial countries. Acemoglu and Robinson have considered Haiti as an archetype of colonial institutional legacy to describe why Nations fail. Is this deterministic lecture sufficient to understand the troubled development journey of the first free Black Country? In this research, we show, with empirical and historical evidence, that institutional path-dependence theory is not the best analytical framework for the case of Haiti. Critical juncture theory appears to be more appropriate to capture what is really going on in neocolonial Haiti. We also contribute to the critical juncture theory with long-term historical evidence.