Postcolonial History Research Articles

“Witchdoctors” in White Coats: Politics and Healing Knowledge in Tanzania

ABSTRACT At the center of conflict between the state and traditional healers (waganga wa kienyeji) over the meanings of traditional healing in contemporary Tanzania are debates about what constitutes knowledge, the production of knowledge, and the legitimacy of “traditional” ways of knowing. Drawing on media analysis and ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2004 and 2016, I describe how healers locate their knowledge in experience, ancestors, and spirits, while the state imagines a future where traditional healers are formally educated and practice in white uniforms. While embedded in a larger colonial and postcolonial history, this conflict arose in response to the attribution of violence against persons with albinism to traditional healers.

Two steps forward one step back: The non-linear expansion of judicial power in Pakistan

Pakistan’s superior courts have evolved from marginal state institutions to key players mediating the balance of powers in a deeply divided and politically fragmented polity during seven decades of the country’s postcolonial history. Although the political salience of the Supreme Court’s recent actions—including the disqualification of two elected prime ministers—has created the sense of a sudden and ahistorical judicialization of politics, the courts’ prominent role in adjudicating issues of governance and statecraft was long in the making. The perception of an historically docile and subservient court which has suddenly become activist has been shaped by an undue focus on the big constitutional moments of regime or governmental change in which the Apex Court has more often than not sided with the military or military-backed presidency. While these constitutional cases and crises are important, an exclusive focus on this domain of judicial action hides the more significant and consistent developments that have taken place in the sphere of “administrative law.” It is through the consistent development of the judicial review of administrative action, even under military rule, that Pakistan’s superior courts progressively carved an expansive institutional role for themselves. This article highlights the progressive, though non-linear, expansion of judicial power in Pakistan and argues that despite some notable and highly contentious moments of judicial interference in mega politics, the bedrock of judicial review has remained in administrative law—i.e., the judicial review of executive action.

Theorizing Postcolonial Deliberation and Deliberative Peacebuilding

ABSTRACT Given a legitimation problem of vertical (state vs society) and horizontal (modernity vs tradition) inequalities and differences as a historical and cultural cause of conflict, deliberation is instrumental in addressing this legitimation problem and transforming conflict into peace in the postcolonial, post-conflict context. Although deliberation has gained academic attention as a means of addressing the legitimation crisis in Western liberal democracies, its application to contemporary peacebuilding remains under-researched. This article thus aims to theorize postcolonial deliberation and deliberative peacebuilding, highlighting postcolonial history and culture and the critical role that agencies have played in deliberation to re-legitimize the non-Western polity and transform conflict into peace. It then deduces a hypothetical mechanism of the different paths to peace either with or without the external intervention that signifies how agencies deliberate.

The politics and practice of Thomas Adeoye Lambo: towards a post-colonial history of transcultural psychiatry.

This article traces the career of Thomas Adeoye Lambo, the first European-trained psychiatrist of indigenous Nigerian (Yoruba) background and one of the key contributors to the international development of transcultural psychiatry from the 1950s to the 1980s. The focus on Lambo provides some political, cultural and geographical balance to the broader history of transcultural psychiatry by emphasizing the contributions to transcultural psychiatric knowledge that have emerged from a particular non-western context. At the same time, an examination of Lambo's legacy allows historians to see the limitations of transcultural psychiatry's influence over time. Ultimately, this article concludes that the history of transcultural psychiatry might have more to tell us about the politics of the 'transcultural' than the practice of 'psychiatry' in post-colonial contexts.

SOCIAL REALISM AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF WOMEN PROTAGONIST IN NAYANTARA SAHGAL’S STORM IN CHANDIGARH AND A SITUATION IN NEW DELHI-A STUDY

The Research paper aims to focus on Nayantara Sahgal’s position in it as a novelist. It also discusses in detail a critical study of the social realism and Psychological Transformation with survival strategies of the woman protagonist in Nayantara Sahgal’s Storm in Chandigarh and A Situation in New Delhi. How Nayanara Sahgal’s writing was different from other Indian writers. During almost six decades of post-colonial history of Indian English fiction, a wide variety of novelists have emerged focusing attention on a multitude of social, economic, political, religious and spiritual issues faced by three conceding periods of human experience. With the turn of the century the Indian English novelists have surpassed their male counterparts outnumbering hem quantitatively as well as maintaining a high standard of literary writing, equally applauded in India and abroad, experimenting boldly with not only technique but also incorporating tabooed subject matters in their novels and short stories.

New Delhi’s All-India War Memorial (India Gate): Death, Monumentality and the Lasting Legacy of Empire in India

ABSTRACTThis paper traces the colonial and postcolonial histories of one of India’s most iconic structures, New Delhi’s All-India War Memorial. Designed and built by Edwin Lutyens immediately after the Great War, the memorial commemorated both Indian soldiers who had died in defence of the empire and the reason for such human sacrifice. As such the memorial reaffirmed and celebrated Britain and India’s unbreakable imperial bond, now strengthened by the fiery crucible of war. After independence in 1947, India took ownership of the memorial by renaming it India Gate to symbolise the country’s transition from what it had been to what it was becoming through India’s passion to be free. In the process, the memorial was re-evaluated and re-imagined in ways that transformed this site of unwelcome colonial memory into one of India’s most important symbols of national renewal. And yet this new interpretation remained as highly contested and problematic as its original colonial meaning. While the memorial became a site of national cohesion for many, it also perpetuated a colonial politics of division along communal (religious) and inter-communal (caste) lines that has eroded a sense of well-being and security for significant sections of the Indian community. Today, India Gate serves as a symbol of both national renewal and national fragmentation.

From colonial fortresses to neoliberal landscapes in Northern Tanzania: a biopolitical ecology of wildlife conservation

Drawing on critical debates in political ecology and biopolitics, the article develops a ecology of to study historical shifts in how human and nonhuman lives come to be valued in an asymmetric way. Tanzania and the so-called Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem illustrate how these biopolitical shifts became entangled with conservation interventions and broader visions of development throughout colonial and post-colonial history. Colonial efforts to balance seemingly competing domains of human and nonhuman species through spatial separation gave way to the development of the post-colonial nation through the nurturing of its wildlife population. This shift from human-nonhuman incompatibility towards human dependency on wildlife and biodiversity conservation culminated in the contemporary biopolitical ecology and geography of landscape conservation. Landscape conservation seeks to entangle human and nonhuman species. Through conservation, human populations are rearranged and fixed in time and space to allow wildlife to roam free across unbounded spaces. This conservation governmentality is tied to global environmentalist concerns and political economies of neoliberal conservation, as well as to a domestic agenda of tourism-based economic growth. It secures land tenure for some, while imposing a biopolitical sacrifice on the rural population as a whole. This forecloses alternative rural futures for a land-dependent and increasingly land-deprived population.

Ambiguous title deeds: contesting values of land and documents in Eldoret, Kenya

This paper explores changing values of land and title deeds through a case study of the Langas land dispute in Eldoret, a secondary city of about 300,000 people in Kenya's Rift Valley. Spanning Kenya's postcolonial history and taking place in the context of rapid urbanization, the Langas land dispute is emblematic of the complexity and persistence of land matters in the country. Based on ethnographic data collected between 2014 and 2016, this paper traces actors in the conflict, showing how the disputed area developed from a farm in the so-called White Highlands to Eldoret's largest informal settlement. The case study suggests that legal documents have gained significance in the past few decades, but it also shows that title deeds are deeply ambiguous. Sometimes respected for their ‘sanctity’, sometimes contested because of alleged forgery, title deeds have become the object of popular fantasy, conveying hopes and dreams of a better future. While land titles are assumed to enhance security of tenure and eradicate multiple ownership claims, I argue that they add layers of complexity to the repertoires actors mobilize to support or contest claims and that they thus expand the ways in which land can be valued.

Translation as a means of constructing cultures: philosophical foregrounding

The aim of the article is to portray translation as a means of constructing cultures in terms of philosophy. Proceeding from the idea that cultural enrichment occurs due to the translation of not only literary works, but also ideas, traditions, way of living, etc., the hypothesis was put forward that philosophical description and analysis of translation should be carried out on the basis of two interwoven phenomena – culture and creativeness. Methodology of the article is determined by general humanitarian principles of interdisciplinarity (use of methods and theories of such correlated disciplines as cultural studies, translation studies, philosophy), anthropocentrism (emphasis on the agent of action as a focal point of translation process), and poliparadigmatism (combination of provisions of classical structural and modern cognitive paradigms resulting in the complex character of the research). Scientific novelty of the research is determined by obtaining some new information concerning the role of translation as a means of (self)cognition / (self)reflection; individual and collective development; and shaping cultural continuum. Innovative approach to translation allows to come to a more profound philosophical understanding of this phenomenon going beyond its linguistic and/or communicative essence and to appreciate its significance for creative self-improvement of all the involved individuals (author, translator, and recipient) as well as for sustained cultural growth all over the world. Conclusions. Conducted research revealed global creative function of translation that helps establish and develop cultures on a universal scale since the majority of national cultures were constructed in the process and under the influence of translation. In the context of Ukrainian colonial and post-colonial history, the article highlighted the role of translation as a cultural catalyst, transmitter of ideas, and defender of spiritual values.

Beam Me Up/Out/Elsewhere, Tovarishch: Negotiating the Everyday in Late Socialism

Beam Me Up/Out/Elsewhere, TovarishchNegotiating the Everyday in Late Socialism Alexandra Oberländer (bio) Juliane Fürst and Josie McLellan, eds., Dropping out of Socialism: The Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc. 352 pp. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. ISBN-13 978-1498525145. $100.00. Anna Ivanova, Magaziny “Berezka”: Paradoksy potrebleniia v pozdnem SSSR (The Berezka Shops: Paradoxes of Consumption in the Late Soviet Union). 304 pp. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2017. ISBN-13 978-5444806456. Gleb Tsipursky, Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, and State-Sponsored Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1945–1970. 366 pp. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016. ISBN-13 978-0822963967. $29.95. For quite a while now it has been common knowledge that the Iron Curtain may have been iron, yet at the same time it provided huge holes to look through.1 Recent rephrasings of the Iron Curtain include terms like “Nylon Curtain” or “semipermeable membrane.”2 Even as the notion of a transparent [End Page 433] curtain became prominent in new histories about the Eastern bloc, the transparency of the Iron Curtain seems to be more of a one-way street. This can be observed in how rarely present-day historians or political scientists interested in “Western history” engage with the East. As much as postcolonial history, global history, or transnational history have gained in popularity in the last decade or two, these global perspectives often end where the iron curtain used to be.3 Until the 1930s, the East provided the place where “Western” people went to search for their utopian dream, but this situation dramatically changed with the onset of the Cold War.4 The “imaginary West” (to quote Alexei Yurchak) was omnipresent and informed consumption practices and lifestyles among all social strata of the socialist bloc during late Stalinism. The same cannot be argued for an “imaginary East.” There were hardly consumption practices or lifestyles that made it into the capitalist West. The “imaginary East” was perceived as the land of gray and did not provide anything to be copied or hoped for (even hardboiled Western Communists had trouble finding anything desirable in the East other than rather abstract ideas). The notion of an “imaginary West” in the postwar socialist bloc, however, not only was extremely vibrant but essentially provided a utopia people longed for.5 The “West,” both “imaginary” and “real,” is an important reference in all three books under review. Although since Yurchak’s intervention it seems fair to assume that a Komsomol teenage youth leader could wear blue jeans and listen to the Beatles without meaning to challenge the system he/she lived in, some doubt still lingers when, for instance, Michael David-Fox considers Western influences to be “fateful.”6 A similar perspective is brought forward in many research areas as consumption and leisure, dissent [End Page 434] or grassroots activism. The assumption of many scholars dealing with late socialism seems to be that practices that by themselves on an individual level were not threatening, and certainly not for an entire political system, those practices on a larger scale gained momentum. At one point the situation had to flip—and it did flip. The books under review implicitly all deal with this flipping moment, the moment in which late socialism turned from being forever into being no more.7 Anna Ivanova’s book explores the paradoxes of Soviet consumer culture. Once a suspect notion among historians of the Soviet Union it has become common knowledge that there was not only consumption in the Soviet Union but indeed a consumer culture.8 While many books in recent years have looked at Soviet consumer culture by focusing on items that transformed from luxury to almost everyday use (cars, dachas, refrigerators), Ivanova decidedly studies shopping options. Her topic of interest are berezki, closed stores under the auspices of the Soviet government, which sold rare or foreign products for either hard currency or certificates. Consequently, the group of customers in berezki was privileged per se. Western tourists could shop for foreign currency in a chain of stores around the Soviet Union. Those Soviet citizens who either had access to foreign currency (the use of which within...

What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa? ed. by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga

Reviewed by: What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa? ed. by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga Frank Edward (bio) What Do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?. Edited by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017. Pp. 241. €30.42. For several decades, the studies on the interwoven relationship between science, technology, and innovation (STI) in Africa have been characterized by mono-disciplinarity. Written predominantly by economists, STI works delve into investigating how African economies should modernize and benefit by importing technology from outside the continent, or how it has deteriorated from the imported technologies—a scenario which has delineated the postcolonial relations between the Global North and South. Wangwe's Exporting Africa: Technology, Industrialism and Trade is a good example of such an analytic framework. Arguably, this emphasis on Schumpeterian innovation frames technology as undermining a component of society as if technology and economy exist in a vacuum. Only a handful of STI works have discussed the interplay between innovation, economy, and society, including such classics as Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa and Edgerton's "Creole Technologies." Mavhunga's edition demarcates itself from the economic perspective on STI by arguing that Schumpeterian analysis fits better in the Global North and its industrial economies than in African socio-economic contexts. It does so by examining the epistemological foundations of African STI to challenge various positions that portray Africa negatively. The temporal-spatial dimension is distinctly apparent in the volume from the introduction through chapter 9. The volume's multidisciplinarity is commendably vindicated by variegated analytical tools from philosophy (chapter 1), history (chapter 2), archaeology (chapter 3), ecological anthropology (chapter 4), cultural anthropology (chapter 5), and policy studies (chapter 9). Different themes and analytical tools support the premise that African STI should employ unique methodologies and philosophies because it stems from different historical, social, spatial, economic, and epistemological foundations. Put bluntly, the volume puts forward a methodological denunciation of previous African STI studies, on the grounds that they were researched and written using inappropriate methods and theories. In the authors' view, methods and theories of the existing STI studies were blindly appropriated from the Global North, where [End Page 815] the tradition was to subscribe to grand narratives. Chapter 4, for instance, urges scholars to rethink how they articulate the concept "innovation" by denouncing the "machine" dimension and in its place explore Africans as conscious and active innovators—a social construction of technology perspective. In so doing, Mavhunga's edition revisits the 1960s argument of Africanists that called for the recovery of African agency that was so conspicuously missing in colonial narratives. The contributors have innovatively and commendably employed maps, pictures, tables, and conceptual tables to illustrate various statements. The language is also lucid and intelligible enough to be read by undergraduate and graduate students as well as professors. Mavhunga's edition is correct in critiquing several STI works because of their methodological poverty. Unfortunately, the critique does not provide sophisticated and detailed discussion of alternative methods and theories to readers. To argue that researchers should revolutionize theories of knowledge by employing novel ones and discard all that is "colonial" and old, paradoxically, reduces the complexity and diversity of Africa. As historian Luise White reminded Africanists in 2015, writing African post-colonial history is necessarily "hodgepodge" in nature. When we try to go away from conventional historical practice, we cannot forsake everything associated with older traditions because they do have something to offer. Thus, I argue that African STI studies cannot be completely different from other historical, cultural, social, economic, and political studies in methodology. STI studies cannot invent new epistemologies and methodologies and ignore all that is perceived as old, conventional, and colonial. Mavhunga does well to trumpet STI voices from the continent and to urge African scholars in the continent to take the lead. Ironically, however, only one out of nine chapters is authored by an African scholar residing in Africa. Lastly, the STI perspective of this volume emphasizes research on small-scale technological materiality and practice at the expense of studying large technical systems (LTS) such as roads, railways, and electrical and water systems. Given the boldness of the volume title, a chapter on...

Preservation between empire, nation and nationalisms: the problem of history and heritage in India

AbstractThis article looks at the problematic questions of heritage and history in a postcolonial nation‐state such as India. It looks at the colonial past of the preservation of historical buildings and relates this to the postcolonial history of the use of heritage and history for both nation‐building and also to assert the claims and counterclaims of postcolonial identity politics. The article shows how the state and its bureaucracy historically acquired the right to be the custodian of culture, history and heritage, and it also argues that the state nevertheless was and remains circumscribed by subnational and communitarian claims to heritage and the past.

Issues facing postgraduate international students: a view from an international students’ group on a Masters programme in Art Psychotherapy

This paper describes case study research of four years of a support group for self-identified international students on an MA Art Psychotherapy programme. The research sought to understand the role of the group in the processing of international students’ issues, to broaden thinking on the internationalising of curricula. A key finding was that the students’ experiences were dependent on the relationship between them and the whole learning community, and that this was inseparable from a history of post colonialism.

“Music for Progress”: A Study of Pau Casals’s Music Institutions in Puerto Rico as an Extension of US Neocolonialism

Abstract Debates on postcolonialism and neocolonialism in Latin American musicology and ethnomusicology are embryonic, reflecting socioeconomic asymmetries and an imbalance in academic contributions. This article contributes to the nascent literature by providing a musicological case study of the development of prominent Puerto Rican musical institutions (the Festival Casals, Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, and Puerto Rico Conservatory) as expressions of US neocolonialism. Although Casals’s legacy may arguably be praiseworthy in some respects, Festival Casals Inc., tethered to Operacion Serenidad, embodies developmental policies that express US values along political, economic, and cultural lines and are best appraised through postcolonial history.

American liberal education and the civic university: ‘citizenship’ and ‘learning’ at the American University of Beirut

ABSTRACTThis article examines constructions of ‘citizenship’ and ‘learning’ in university initiatives and curricula at the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, contributing to theorizing in critical geographies of education. The methodology entailed examining: (i) educational rationales from the AUB archive (1922–2012); (ii) university catalogues (1880–2015) and (iii) contemporary university initiatives from the AUB website. This empirical examination is contextualized in relation to: (i) discourses on the mission of higher education including nation-building, the ‘civic’ university and its local embeddedness, and (ii) the neoliberal internationalization of higher education. These constructions of ‘citizenship’ and ‘learning’ are also socio-politically located in relation to the post-colonial history of the institution and region. My empirical analysis identifies three themes: discourses of the ‘moral’ role of education at AUB, its importance in a precarious region, and discourses of ‘common values’ amongst a diverse student body. I illustrate how these contested discourses of ‘citizenship’ and ‘learning’ are situated both within a discourse of the civic university, yet simultaneously negotiated and in tension with discourses and practices of neoliberalism in higher education. Despite these challenges, I propose that the post-colonial particularities of AUB in the region construct a space that enables faculty and students to exercise their agency.

Good Governance and Development in Nigeria: The Gap between Rhetoric and Reality

The Nigerian state as governance template has been dominated by vexatious problem of underdevelopment since the post-colonial history. Good governance and development as an intertwine concept have largely been elusive resulting from leadership problems, weak institutions, pervasive corruption, existence of multiple centros of loyalty base regime, ethnic and religious interest among others. The paper deploying secondary source of data to scrutinize the extent to which Nigeria has been effectively governed. Whilst there have been some highlands of sincerity and integrity among leaders, there have nevertheless been a preponderance of abysmal leadership in our most populous state in Africa. It is the contention of this paper that the country has not been properly governed. The paper therefore recommended that the “change” mantra upon which the president rode to win the 2015 presidential election be rather realistic rather than rhetoric towards actualizing socio-political cum economic development.

“Victory over Communism: South Korean Protestants’ Ideas about Democracy, Development, and Dictatorship, 1953–1961”

This article complicates the traditional narrative of anti-Communist Christians in Korea, examining the history of anti-communism among them in light of their claims to support democracy and development. Changes in Christian thinking in Korea followed the end of formal fighting in the Korean War. The conflict transformed Korea’s post-colonial history into a developmental struggle, pitting communism versus capitalism in a deadly battle. From the mid-1950s, South Korean Protestants saw the struggle as a competition between two systems, not simply one to eradicate the North Korean regime. From this new perspective, they began condemning political injustice and corruption under President Syngman Rhee. The contradictions in the ideas of Christians were partly embodied in their support for the civil uprising that would topple the Rhee regime, but also in their endorsement of Park Chung-hee’s military takeover in 1961. South Korean Protestants assisted the coup’s central leadership and helped a totalitarian regime come to power. This paradoxical aspect within Korean Protestant history is closely tied to the unique characteristics of its anti-communism and how it evolved after the Korean War.

Against Supersessionist Thinking: Old and New, Jews and Postcolonialism, the Ghetto and Diaspora

AbstractThis essay focuses on the liberatory possibilities and political and disciplinary difficulties of bringing together Jewish and postcolonial studies. It begins and ends with Adorno’s critique of “actionism” in order to see what is lost when the clarity and certainty of political action is privileged over scholarly nuance and complexity (“praxis” over “theory”). This loss is surveyed through a set of related binaries (supersessionism, foundationalism, and disciplinarity), which, it is contended, reduces critical thinking to polemic and makes it all but impossible to explore interconnected Jewish and postcolonial histories. The argument is illustrated with reference to postcolonial literature and by examining the disciplining of postcolonial and memory studies in relation to the Holocaust. A way out of the binary impasse, it is suggested, is to utilize as “traveling concepts” transcultural and transnational histories (such as “diaspora” and “ghetto”) that Jewish and postcolonial studies have in common.

India’s Northeast and the Enigma of the Nation-state

One of the major challenges before the “mainstream Indian nationalists” at the dawn of India’s independence was the political integration of the “Northeast” with India envisaged as a nation-state. Some parts of the colonial frontier, such as the Naga Hills, had already witnessed a parallel nationalist discourse with the imagination of sovereignty before India’s independence. With independence, the Indian nation-state project was made difficult by the geopolitical significance of the region, shaped by the experience of the partition, which separated India and Pakistan (East and West), creating a milieu of not-so-favorable international politics. The postcolonial history of the troubled periphery has been marked by an imposed notion of homogeneity and a binary of the nation-state (or the Indian mainstream) and the Northeast. Political theorists have long refuted the notion of national homogeneity. Nevertheless, the dichotomy between the plains and the valley constructed by the colonial logic was and is reinforced by the nation-state ideology, turning the periphery into a cauldron of conflict. This article engages critically with the history of conflict witnessed in the region since independence, against the backdrop of colonial interventions and the integrationist logic of the nation-state. This article argues that the political and developmental strategies, adopted by the Indian state to integrate the region, have led to the perpetuation of conflict in different forms.

Political Settlements and the Governance of Extractive Industry: A Comparative Analysis of the Longue Durre in Africa and Latin America

This paper synthesises findings from research in Bolivia, Ghana, Peru and Zambia to address the following three questions: 1) How does the nature of political settlements affect the governance of the mining and hydrocarbon sectors and the relationships between those sectors and patterns of social inclusion and exclusion? 2) How do the circulation of ideas and the materiality of the resources in question affect this relationship? 3) What is the role of transnational ideational, institutional and political economic factors in these relationships? These questions are approached by considering the relationships between political settlements and extractive industry since the late 19th century, with special emphasis on the last three decades. The paper concludes that the nature of settlements has had important implications for the relationships between resource-dependent economies and the nature and degree of social inclusion, but far less effect on productive structure, with no political settlement having particular success in fostering economic diversification or reducing the weight of resource rents within the national economy. The paper also concludes that the very nature of the extractive economy influences the dynamics of national political settlements for the following reasons. First, the potential rents that resource extraction makes possible, and the high cost of engaging in mining or hydrocarbon industries, create incentives for particular forms of political exclusion. Second, colonial and post-colonial histories of resource extraction give political valence to ideas that have helped mobilise actors in ways that change relations of power and institutional arrangements. Third, the materiality of subsoil resources has direct implications for subnational forms of holding power that can influence resource access and control. Finally, the global nature of mineral and hydrocarbon economies, combined with the materiality of resources, bring both transnational and local political actors into the constitution of national political settlements. This makes for a particularly complex politics of scale surrounding settlements in resource-dependent economies.