Postcolonial Relations Research Articles

Brazil–Bolivia and a horse trade: a postcolonial case within South America

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of institutional changes in Bolivia (2005-2016) in the power structures within the headquarters (HQs) of a Brazilian energy multinational corporation (MNC) and its subsidiaries in Bolivia.Design/methodology/approachThis investigation is informed by a postcolonial South–South perspective. The Brazilian and Bolivian managers were interviewed and drawing techniques were used to unveil hidden power relationships. To achieve the multilayered objective, a Lukesian power framework was integrated into the analysis.FindingsTraces of a postcolonial relationship between Brazil and Bolivia were found, even though Brazil never colonized Bolivia. The power structure within this MNC’s HQ and subsidiaries reflects a postcolonial relationship: local staff members see the Brazilian MNC as the holder of power of resources, process and meaning. Finally, despite its colonizing role, Brazil is depicted as a savior, not an exploiter. Much to the authors’ surprise, the institutional changes in Bolivia – the nationalization of its oil and gas reserves and the declaration of a plurinational state – have not affected the power relationships within the Brazilian MNC.Originality/valueThe contribution to postcolonial investigations within the international business field was carried out in different ways: a review of EMNC literature was conducted in the study for a South–South postcolonial perspective; empirical data from a case within South America were added; a Lukesian power perspective was integrated into the analysis; and finally, drawing techniques were used to unveil hidden power relations.

How postcolonial is post-Western IR? Mimicry and mētis in the international politics of Russia and Central Asia

AbstractScholars of International Relations have called for the creation of a post-Western IR that reflects the global and local contexts of the declining power and legitimacy of the West. Recognising this discourse as indicative of the postcolonial condition, we deploy Homi Bhabha’s concept of mimicry and James C. Scott’s notion of mētis to assess whether international political dynamics of a hybrid kind are emerging. Based on interviews with Central Asian political, economic, and cultural elites, we explore the emergence of a new global politics of a post-Western type. We find that Russia substantively mimics the West as a post-Western power and that there are some suggestive examples of the role of mētis in its foreign policy. Among Central Asian states, the picture is more equivocal. Formal mimicry and mētis of a basic kind are observable, but these nascent forms suggest that the dialectical struggle between colonial clientelism and anti-colonial nationalism remains in its early stages. In this context, a post-Western international politics is emerging with a postcolonial aspect but without the emergence of the substantive mimicry and hybrid spaces characteristic of established postcolonial relations.

Mapping the Postcolonial Across Urban and Suburban College Access Geographies

ABSTRACTIn US cities, a domino effect of concentrating poverty and suburbanizing wealth shapes discourses of local higher education access for residents of color. How the racialization of space mirrors colonial binaries of Good/Evil, Black/White and Civilized/Uncivilized is part and parcel to understanding city and county geographies surrounding college campuses. Although the college access and choice literature addresses racial and ethnic issues related to the likelihood of students of color attending college, the literature excludes how external campus racial climates are part of postcolonial geographies that contribute to racial and ethnic diversity on local college campuses. Situated in the City of Rochester, New York, I employ Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to collect and analyze data from the US Census and Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data Systems (IPEDS). This article finds that there are postcolonial relationships in the racial composition of urban and suburban areas, local colleges, urban economic underdevelopment, and transportation.

Making Postcolonial Connections: The Role of a Japanese Research Network in the Emer-gence of Human Genetics in South Korea, 1941-1968

South Korea in the 1960s is remembered as an era marked by the rapid development of science and technology, as well as the growth of the domestic economy. Histori-ans of science have described the meaningful advancement of science during this period as a result of the establishment of a Korean science and technology system that overturned Japanese colonial precedents and sought support from U.S. science policy. In this study, however, I seek to understand the scientific achievement of South Korea in the 1960s by circumventing the binary scheme advocating either the continuity of, or departure from, colonial precedents. To that end, I shall explore Korean geneticist Kang Yung Sun`s academic career, and his ongoing connections with the Japanese scientific community, from 1941 to 1968. I argue that Kang`s sci-entific achievement in human genetics can be understood as an outcome of his efforts to develop new postcolonial relationships among U.S., Japanese, and Korean geneti-cists, by way of his colonial connections to a network of Japanese geneticists. Throughout the paper, I demonstrate that focusing on connections and exchanges among scientists beyond national borders can afford historians of science an oppor-tunity to investigate scientific activities and trends in the 1960s, without sustaining the binary scheme of continuation or rupture.

The Role of CSR in (Re)framing New Post-Colonial Relations: A Case from the South

The political turn in the Euro-American management literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) attempted to go beyond the boundaries of corporate-based views regarding CSR, grounded on crude neoclassical economics. However, the political role of CSR in the diffusion of a particular type of inter-state cooperation through colonialist power relations has been largely neglected. Grounded on a Southern perspective, we ask how (political) CSR influence South- South relations? Therefore, we examine the political role of CSR in an illustrative case of a Latin American mining company operating in an African country. In this qualitative empirical investigation, we found out that the postcoloniality conditions were very much present in the company’s strategies, and that CSR has been used as the primary managerial tool to legitimize its agenda. In the end, we propose a re-theorization of political CSR from the Global South.

Race and legitimacy: historical formations of academically selective schooling in Australia

ABSTRACTA growing body of research has examined the academic success of ‘Asian’ diaspora students in North America, the UK, and Australia, much of it positioning ‘culture’ as a central analytic concern. Taking the category ‘Asian’ as a concept formed through the imagination and reduction of geopolitical and cultural histories, this article addresses the phenomenon of Asian educational success as it is constituted historically and politically rather than culturally. The article examines a series of twenty-first-century newspaper debates about the apparently disproportionate success of Asian students in qualifying for entry to a prestigious academically selective public high school in Sydney, Australia, locating these debates in a longer historical struggle over elite forms of secondary schooling. We find that race and racism were made hyper-visible in media representations of Asian success as a ‘problem’, stirring up and reframing historically longstanding anxieties about masculinity, whiteness, entitlement, and Australia’s complex postcolonial relations with Britain and Asia. The debates are considered as a case study of a racialised struggle over social and educational legitimacy, and the analysis is used to reflect on the contributions of a grounded, historical approach to research on recent and contemporary migrant educational participation and experience, both in Australia and internationally.

Indigenous worldviews and Western conventions: Sumak Kawsay and cocoa production in Ecuadorian Amazonia

This article explores the role of conventions in the normalization of cocoa production in Ecuadorian Amazonia. Convention theory provides key theoretical tools for understanding coordination among agents. However, conventions must be understood as cultural constructions with a strong Eurocentric background that must be substantially modified in originally non-European contexts. A creative application of convention theory can partially overcome bifurcation among Western and non-Western rationalities. First, it shows that Western values and forms of coordination are heterogeneous, conflictive and opposing. Second, it provides key insight for understanding the transformation of subaltern subjectivities generated from non-Western rationalities that are closely associated with subjugated knowledges. Third, in applying the concept of compromise, it allows one to understand cognitive hybridization and coordination among indigenous and Western agents and thus the complexities of processes of resistance, subversion and empowerment carried by indigenous communities. This article is focused on how cocoa production in Ecuadorian Amazonia serves as an example of the confluence and coordination of indigenous (using the concept of “Good Living” or Sumak Kawsay) and Western conventions. The assertion of Sumak Kawsay is understood as a relevant transformation of Ecuadorian post-colonial relations. It is shown that relevant industrial upgrading processes are justified by, among others, Sumak Kawsay repertoires. Additionally, dialogue on knowledge and compromise among conventions, and especially concerning Sumak Kawsay and the market, have been key facets shaping the development of a differentiated quality strand that has promoted relevant changes in the subaltern positioning of indigenous farmers in the cocoa commodity chain.

Cultivating Subjects: Opium and rule in post-colonial Vietnam

AbstractSwidden cultivators in the Southeast Asian highlands may work far from lowland centres, but certain crops attract powerful interests. During the First Indochina War (1946–54), French and Vietnamese political actors climbed the hills in pursuit of the Black River region's opium production and trade. Even after combat formally ended, opium contests continued into an independent Vietnam, intersecting with larger struggles over ethnic difference, state resource claims, and market organization. Using upland cultivators to examine post-colonial statemaking, this article tells a new story about opium's tangled relationship with socialist rule in Vietnam. Drawing on French and Vietnamese archival records, it traces the operation of successive opium regimes through war and into restive peace. Based on evidence of opium tax and purchase operations conducted by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) from 1951 to 1960, it argues that regulating the commodity sensitized cultivators to their long, fraught relations with state power. Far from passive, cultivating subjects animated revolutionary ideals, engaged smuggling networks, negotiated resource rights, and mounted an oppositional social movement. Peaking in 1957, the movement and subsequent crackdown illustrate tensions embedded in post-colonial relations of exchange and rule.

THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT, IDI AMIN AND THE EXPULSION OF BRITISH ASIANS FROM UGANDA

By far the most contentious issue in the postcolonial relationship between the UK and Uganda was the 1972 expulsion of British Asians by President Amin. Although it is well documented that Idi Amin refused to bow to international pressure to reverse this decision or extend its compliance period, our knowledge of the numerous schemes, especially the covert ones, that were considered and/or operationalized by the British government in order to influence a revision of this decision remains limited. This essay, using newly available evidence mainly from the British National Archives in London, attempts to fill this gap. Such insights enhances the utility value of this episode for our understanding of bilateral and multilateral relations among states.

Exploring notions of fair practice in urban renewal and the position of post-colonial citizens in Amsterdam’s Bijlmer

Social scientists in the Netherlands have pleaded for circumspection when using the colonial paradigm to discuss racism, at times ignoring the latent racialization of post-colonial migrants in political and academic discourses throughout the later half of the twentieth century. This has led to a lack of critical reflection regarding the position of the post-colonial migrant in contemporary Dutch society. This paper describes the historical and social contexts surrounding two housing renewal projects in Amsterdam’s Bijlmer to illustrate how presuppositions regarding post-colonial citizens, race relations and neo-liberal urban restructuring have brought about an unequal approach to urban renewal in a historically Afro-Dutch neighbourhood.

Richard Flanagan�s The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Matsuo Basho�s Oku no Hosomichi

This paper investigates Australian author Richard Flanagan’s novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and attempts to clarify the reason why Flanagan chose this title, which is linked to the travel writings of the Japanese author Matsuo Basho, for his novel. The novel focuses on the central character’s prisoner of war experience on the Thai-Burma Death Railway during World War II, and depicts the POW camp as well as cruel Japanese behaviour and atrocities in a realistic way. The work seems to provide a postcolonial framework in the sense that there is a colonial and postcolonial relationship between the colonizer, and the colonized. However, in this novel, the colonizer is Eastern, and the colonized is Western, and this fact reverses postcolonial theory which postulates a structure in which the colonizer is usually considered as Western and the colonized, Eastern. Postcolonial theory, thus, cannot be applied in this novel, which attempts to fuse the two opposites, the Western view and the Eastern view, through the work of the Japanese poet. As a result, Flanagan, in writing The Narrow Road to the Deep North, goes beyond being a postcolonial writer to become a writer in a globalizing age.

(Post) Colonial Encounters in the Postsocialist City: Reshaping Urban Space in Sarajevo

This article argues that postcolonial lenses can be useful in understanding postsocialism in particular urban situations, examining the postsocialist city of Sarajevo as an arena of postcolonial practices, processes and relationships. The city discussed, Sarajevo, provides a rich example of entanglements and relationships, both historical and of more recent origin. The article discusses with a postcolonial lens processes of urban reconstruction, specific to Sarajevo as a “post-conflict city”, but focuses on later urban development patterns, which in fact echo the general trends of postsocialist urban transitions in the broader region. As such, the article aims to unpack how the flows of capital reflect a postcolonial configuration of relationships between local elites, international actors and urban space. The case of Turkish investments reflects an increasing re-forging of ties between the metropole and the former province of the Ottoman Empire. New relationships also emerge, but with similar dynamics – the cases of Saudi investment and the construction of the US Embassy are explored to highlight the role of the local elites. The article argues that the postcolonial lens is useful to explore the relationship between the local elites and international capital in postsocialist cities, highlighting processes, practices, and relationships that are complementary to political economy-based urban geographies.

“Glossary Islands” as Sites of the “Abroad” in Post-Colonial Literature: Towards a New Methodology for Language and Knowledge Relations in Keri Hulme’s <em>The Bone People</em> and Melissa Lucashenko’s <em>Mullumbimby</em>

The publication of Melissa Lucashenko’s Mullumbimby in 2013 drew attention once more to the issue of how post-colonial scholars might best engage with English-language literary texts also containing a glossary of Indigenous words. This issue emerged first with the publication of Keri Hulme’s The Bone People in 1984. This article argues that, to date, scholars like Simon During and Eve Vincent have perpetuated a binary either/or approach to the interpretation of these glossaries. The result of this approach has been that either the pre-colonial Indigenous language or the colonial/post-colonizing English language has been privileged as the locus of linguistic power in the text. One problem with this approach is that it does not adequately represent the complex historical, cultural and political circumstances of post-colonial and multi-cultural nations like Australia (setting of Mullumbimby) and New Zealand (setting of The Bone People) as these link to matters of language. Another problem is that this binary approach restrains a close reading of the differences between different types of such glossaries, and of the nuanced relationship of a glossary to the text it accompanies. In place of this approach, this article proposes a new methodology that works with Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey’s notion of “tidalectics” as a way of reading island literatures. The neologism “glossary islands” allows another way into considering the function of glossaries in islandic literary texts like Lucashenko’s and Hulme’s. The post-colonial connection between islands and glossaries lies in the fact that they are each an intensified site of knowledge.

Human-Security States to the Rescue

Paul Amar. (2013). The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism . Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 310 pp., $25.95, paperback (ISBN 978-0-8223-5398-0). When postcolonial and critical International Relations (IR) scholars analyze global politics, they often examine how the Global North draws upon and strengthens international hierarchy by engaging the Global South via international law, militarized humanitarianism, and neoliberal policies. A small but growing number of scholars are focusing on the agency of countries and communities in the Global South, particularly in terms of shaping encounters with the Global North but also within the Global South; accordingly, these scholars challenge perceptions of how hierarchy works and expand understandings of non-Western sovereignty (Rao 2010; Ling 2014). Paul Amar’s stunning, imaginative, and meticulously researched book fits into this conversation by exploring how regimes of governance originate in the Global South, focusing particularly on the semi-peripheral sites of Cairo, Egypt, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. How do states in the Global South respond when local social movements demand that their governments address deep polarization, inequalities, and fears within the society, much of which neoliberalization has catalyzed? Amar traces how states react by deploying the concept of “human security,” recasting economic and social repression as crises of morality and cultural authenticity that can be solved through “humanitarian” intervention, enforced by the military and police. Through a combination of policing, counterinsurgency, peace enforcement, and alliance with a wide range of political actors, … mnayak{at}pace.edu

The rhetoric of “responsible fishing”: Notions of human rights and sustainability in the European Union's bilateral fishing agreements with developing states

Over the past two decades, European Union rhetoric has communicated a desire to take on a normative power role in advancing human rights and sustainable development approaches in the context of global fisheries policy. Officials have propagated an image of a “new Europe,” committed to promoting good maritime governance and ensuring responsible fishing worldwide as part of its global responsibility to human rights and sustainable development. These normative principles have at times been framed as an integral part of the European Union's legal and political identity. In practice, however, the European Union's bilateral fishing agreements with developing states have come short of European Union aspirations, facing criticism for hindering rather than aiding local development. This paper explores the bilateral agreements from an international law perspective, engaging in grounded theory, discourse analysis, and a detailed case study on European Union-Senegal fishing relations. For the European Union, the article raises questions about conflicts between national and supranational fishing goals and about the challenges these conflicts present to its goal of normative leadership. More generally, the study suggests implications for enacting international law principles on the ground, as well as for the inherent power dynamics of post-colonial relations.

Postcolonial endgame

This position paper assesses the present-day situation of black and Asian writers against that of earlier generations; the generation of post-war migrants and a second generation born or raised in Britain wrote under the pressures of postcolonial independence struggles and charged race relations in the former mother country. Whereas the writers of these generations could – out of necessity – develop alliances and a clearer sense of their own position as “black” or “Asian” writers in British society, the situation for non-white writers is more complex today in light of new identity choices, new kinds of migration and a fast-changing world. The article asks whether race still trumps ethnicity in the marketplace of ideas; how citizenship interacts with nationality and nationalism; and, if so, in what ways it affects the work of writers.

Ghosts of Macau: The Last Time I Saw Macao’s haunting transnational performance

This essay analyzes The Last Time I Saw Macao, the first feature-length joint effort from Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues and his longtime collaborator João Rui Guerra da Mata. Rodrigues transposes his previous studies of individuals living on the fringes of Portuguese society onto the global stage, investigating the unique transnational position of Macau, a locale caught between the borders of China, Portugual, and exociticized media memories. Providing a glimmer of familiar film noir conventions which are swiftly jettisoned in favor of a decentered narrative and the abandonment of human subjects, Rodrigues and Guerra da Mata's film invites the viewer to observe a performance of transnationalism taking place on the hybridized stage of Macau. This essay will argue that The Last Time I Saw Macao is not only a thorough examination of the complex post-colonial power relations that exist between Portugal and Macau but also an opposite example of the ‘decentered subjectivities’ and ‘new realist’ tendencies that have come to define the formal arrangement of transnational cinema.

Disappearing Bitches: Canine Affect and Postcolonial Bioethics

This article engages with the animal bodies that haunt the transnational pet-cloning industry: the “used-up” surrogate-mother dogs said to be returned to dog-farms and slaughtered for human consumption in South Korea. I explore how “Western” criticisms that reduce the problem to Korea’s dog-eating culture and lack of bioethics—interlocking with nationalist and cultural relativist responses among Koreans—reiterate postcolonial relations within transnational bioethics, further pushing these animals into the shadows. I trace shame and disgust (as affective remainders of canine bodies) as a way to critically examine the bioethicalization of animal welfare as an operation of the biopolitical order of things among human and nonhuman bodies in the field of transnational biotechnology, in an effort to remind us of the canine others within us.

Sound migrations in Portuguese: cultural representations of the portuguese diaspora in the brazilian radio

Portuguese language is a multiple sounds language. Regarding the different possible accents, Portuguese-speaking way seems to be one of the language’s most relevant characteristics. Radio, as a sound media, is able to represent this diversity. There are several radio shows produced towards the Portuguese culture diaspora. In this paper, we will analyse radio shows produced in Brazil for the Portuguese diaspora: strategic differential, representation ability and the way they relate to diaspora and migrant communities. Looking at Portugal and Brazil as case-studies, we will reflect on post-colonial relationships between the two countries, based on radio as a medium able to undertake the decolonial turn.

Behind the scenes of sport for development: Perspectives of executives of multinational sport organizations

This article reports findings from a study designed to examine cricket’s role as an international development tool – with a particular focus on how decisions are made at the highest institutional levels to support cricket-related development initiatives. Data for the study are drawn from interviews with executives in the International Cricket Council and the Marylebone Cricket Club who were asked about how and why decision-makers in their organizations chose to engage in development-related work. The study is informed by literature on postcolonialism, sport for development and peace, global politics and the sociology of cricket. The results illustrate that: (a) a select group of executives in the International Cricket Council and the Marylebone Cricket Club make decisions hierarchically, and that decisions reflect organizational mandates; (b) decision-makers tend to be dismissive of critiques of sport for development and peace, with notable exceptions; and (c) the goals and implications of development-related programmes are portrayed differently to different audiences. This article concludes with commentary on the ways that cricket continues to be implicated in postcolonial relationships and on the processes of decision-making in organizations governed by neoliberal policies.