Postcolonial State Research Articles

Traveling Outside of Time: Speculative Futurism and Environmental Justice

Subash Limbu’s recent science fiction film Ningwasum (2022) interrogates the contours of memory and futurity in relation to pressing concerns of climate change and indigenous rights. The experimental mode of the film provides a platform to question the linearity of time and its association with a teleological model of history that leads to a seemingly inevitable future. What happens, the film asks, when different ways of imagining the future lead to alternative trajectories. In this paper, I am interested in how the film responds to some of the foundational principles of colonial law and governance. For example, I examine how using the Limbu language in the film challenges Thomas Macaulay’s claims in his “Minute on Indian Education” that the English language is uniquely capable of conveying ideas of science and modernity. At the same time, I also consider the film’s representation of the Adivasi (first people) Yakthung community and its relationship to the postcolonial state. Drawing on theories of Afrofuturism that Limbu identifies as providing inspiration for the film, I frame the film’s political, artistic, and legal interventions within a global movement to interrupt predictable futurities.

The political culture of Caribbean sovereignty

ABSTRACT This article is part of a continuing discourse in the Caribbean about the exercise of sovereignty and the need to hold steadfast to the concept as a bulwark against imperial erasure of cultural identity. The essay argues against such conventional wisdom. It is intended to move beyond popular notions of sovereignty to unmask the reality of conflict, subordination and violence embedded in the idea of sovereignty. The article also looks at the way sovereignty is deployed in the Caribbean as part of popular, political discourses, and provides examples of how the concept is made unsustainable in its practice. It is an approach which allows for a materialist reading of the political development of the role the state plays in shaping the consciousness of the nation into an understanding of the idea of sovereignty. In conclusion, the paper returns to the specifically cultural logic of sovereignty, engaging the notion of “the sovereignty of the imagination,” articulated by the eminent Caribbean novelist, George Lamming, as a way of reconceptualizing this political concept. The paper ends with the notion that sovereignty in the Caribbean is a myth and should be abandoned for a more realistic understanding of the actual power of the postcolonial state in the global political economy.

Teachers’ experiences of continuous professional development for citizenship and social cohesion in South Africa and Zimbabwe: enhancing capacity for deliberative democracies

While questions continue to be asked about teachers’ content and pedagogical content knowledge to ensure quality education systems, less consideration has been placed on teachers’ ability to teach for citizenship and social cohesion that contributes equally to quality education systems. This paper illuminates the understandings of citizenship and social cohesion held by South African and Zimbabwean teachers, their experiences of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) that promote the values of citizenship and social cohesion, and how they practice these learnings in their school contexts. The South African study presents the views of eleven high school teachers where data was procured through semi structured interviews. The Zimbabwean study presents the views of seventeen high school teachers, where data was procured through an open- ended questionnaire. The two studies suggest that teachers in South Africa and Zimbabwe share similar perspectives on citizenship and social cohesion, emphasizing nation-building and respect as key drivers. Teachers also report aligning their teaching practices with citizenship and social cohesion values with a limited focus on political participation, possibly due to fear of negative repercussions. Further, CPD for citizenship and social cohesion is fragmented, inconsistent and mostly absent. This study is an important contribution to debates about improving quality education and ensuring deliberative democracies in post-conflict and post-colonial states in the Global South. Teachers play a critical role in socializing schoolchildren for citizenship. As such, they need to be equipped with the skills that allow them to do so. Further to this, teachers also need the freedom and autonomy to discuss politics in the classroom without fear of negative repercussions, including alienation and fear of losing their jobs.

The politics of (un)counting international migration in Senegal and the Gambia

ABSTRACT Since the European ‘migration crisis’ in 2015, various actors in politics, media and science have called for better data as a basis to efficiently manage migration. This includes a rising demand for more reliable, timely and comparable statistics on the international movement of people, especially on the African continent. International Organizations (IOs) have responded by offering various forms of ‘capacity building’ to their member states. The article looks at the development of statistical knowledge production in Senegal and the Gambia, exploring how interventions by IOs have changed statistical data practices in West Africa. West Africa is a particularly interesting case because, until recently, most post-colonial states did not generate census or survey data on questions of international migration, citizenship or ethnicity. Drawing on recent works in Science and Technology Studies on the performative power of numbers and categories, the article argues that changing data practices have enacted multiple conflicting migration realities in West Africa. Looking at IOs’ epistemic interventions in Senegal and the Gambia, the article offers insights into the ontological politics of counting and categorizing migration in a post-colonial context. It also contributes to a better understanding of the co-production of statistical knowledge and programs of migration management.

A Predatory West, Africa’s Postcolonial States, International Trade Relations and Underdevelopment in Africa: A Survey of Centre/Core-Periphery Issues

This paper examines a predatory West and Africa’s postcolonial states international trade relations and underdevelopment in Africa to divulge how centre-periphery issues evoke underdevelopment in postcolonial African states. It argues that, historically, be it a core or peripheral, in whatever mode of production, the state is the dominant laboratory for all human activities, as it plays ever-dominant roles in domestic and international politico-economic and socio-cultural affairs, being the primary vector for development or underdevelopment is society. However, international trade relations have conditioned these roles and capacities of the state, in terms of strengths or weaknesses in service delivery to its citizens. Having been incorporated and monetised into the West’s capitalism, the postcolonial Africa’s state, has despite these roles, subjectively occupied a debilitating peripheral capitalist position in global wealth production. Today, like yesterday, the postcolonial African state, exhibits excruciating and traumatising underdevelopment, incarnated by uncivilised political, social, economic infrastructures, which incubate citizens’ apathy to governance, while enhancing insecurity, poverty, conflicts and fragmentation of nationalities. Using Raul Prebisch’s (1949) dependency theory, I argue that, the weaknesses and fragilisation of the postcolonial African state accrue from the despondent peripheral capitalist position it occupies in the international capitalist division of labour. Via Wallenstein’s (1930-2019) Modern World System theory, (MWS), I seek reawakening the gratuitous Africans’ slumbering consciousness towards overcoming underdevelopment; impelled by a predatory West’s instigated peripheral capitalism.

Understanding Political (In)stability in Nigeria: Colonial Force, Post-colonial Farce and Africa’s ‘Two Public’

Peter Ekeh’s ‘Two Public’ – primordial and civic – is a novel invention to understanding the socio-political and economic life of African society. The two public espouses the existence of dual moralities resulting from colonialism while highlighting the divisive role of this colonial legacy in contemporary African politics and how it continues to undermine the possibility of unified praxis in post-colonies against the hydra-head manifestations of imperialism cum neo-colonialism. This paper examines why the moralities of both publics differ? Why does the two public and its dual moralities matter in contemporary African politics? We evoke decolonial epistemic lens to explore the aetiology of (Westphalian) state and how uncritical subscription to it constricts understanding of the character and functioning of post-colonial enclaves masquerading as states. The study utilises secondary data and concludes that uncritical quest for stability in post-colonial states is tautological as the state never was.

The Form and Character of Circulating Governing Elite in Nigeria: Past and Present

Abstract This paper is basically an application of the famous elite perspective to the Nigerian government and politics to test whether it is a theory that can be confirmed or infirmed. The observable phenomenon which is similar to virtually all regions and climes of the world is the emergence of very few people circulating in the political space over time. From pre-colonial, to colonial and post-colonial Nigerian state, a number of elites from diverse sectors of the society – the military, politicians, civil society, business tycoons, religious leaders and traditional elites kept circulating in the political firmament of Nigeria. The paper is a confirmation of the elite theory paradigm or construct to the understanding of Nigerian government and politics. The paper, however, noted that if nothing changes the required leap from a developing status of Nigeria as a country to developed one may take time after all.

Engaging the postcolonial state: dam, forced relocation, and the Bhil Adivasi Group of the Narmada River Valley, India

ABSTRACT This paper shows the limits of the Global North activism related to environment and indigenous identity for the South to instead highlight the primacy of regional political processes. It studies the changing perceptions of the state and the consequent political strategies used by the marginalized Bhils. They faced submergence due to the Sardar Sarovar Dam on River Narmada in western India. The Bhils, categorized as ‘aboriginal tribe’ by the colonial regime, along with other groups, are popularly called Adivasi (original dwellers). The Narmada dam followed in the wake of their sociopolitical isolation due to state policies, loss of forest, and exploitation by dominant groups. The paper highlights the continuous attempts by the Bhils to adapt and constructively engage with the state as they first opposed the dam and later mobilized for their resettlement. They made transient alliances with various external activists rather than simply being helpless victims or heroic resistors.

Evolving An African Postcolonial Condition: Cultural Property Restitution, Cinematic Independence, Globalized NGO Compassion, and Grappling with an Elite Corruption Complex

The empire-building phase of the European powers in Africa, which spanned several centuries, had its climax at the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, where the colonizers carved up and allocated the African continent among themselves as their respective colonial projects. They would subsequently invade virtually all of the continent based on this arbitrary partitioning—which, among other things, created Africa’s colonial condition. Mention must be made of the fact that uncountable numbers of artworks and artefacts were looted by the invaders from various parts of Africa during those invasions and the de facto occupations that ensued. These looted treasures were scattered all over Europe and elsewhere in museums and private collections, where they currently remain largely unaccounted for.

‘Speaking proper French’: citizen bids for state recognition in Chad and Côte d’Ivoire

Theories of international recognition posit that states’ identities are formed through dialogical relations with other states. However, they often overlook the ways in which weaker states’ struggles, constrained within the languages of the powerful, produce misrecognition and inhibit identity formation. This is the experience of many post-colonial francophone African states whose search for international recognition has been inhibited by their special relationship with France, their former coloniser. This article shows how such struggles for recognition can fail. It draws on two examples of francophone African countries, showing how their search for recognition sprung from the misrecognition of colonial experiences. Each has made explicit attempts to attract richer forms of state recognition through purposive acts but has continued to do so within post-colonial conditions. Using citizens’ understandings of these struggles, the article explores what drove them, how they manifested and how they unravelled. It draws on Frantz Fanon’s account of misrecognition, making a novel interpretation based on his concept of ‘speaking proper French’, or how experiences of ‘identity alienation’ can only produce further misrecognition.

Counterterrorism, political anxiety and legitimacy in postcolonial India and Egypt

ABSTRACT The post 9/11 global proliferation of counterterrorism legislation is increasingly being interpreted as part of a longer story of colonialism. Scholars have shown how expansive counterterrorism can be interpreted not merely as an exceptional state of violence in situations where the rule of law and guarantees of ordinary civil liberties are suspended, but as a form of law-making that draws upon colonial logics and frameworks of governance. However, a major lacuna in this scholarship is the lack of attention to counterterrorism laws in postcolonial states and their negotiations with colonial logics of law-making. This article makes a postcolonial contribution to Critical Terrorism Studies and International Politics by showing how colonial logics of counterterrorism are repurposed by postcolonial states in comparable ways. By comparing counterterror laws in two postcolonial states, India and Egypt, this article shows how colonial logics intersect with nationalist ideologies, postcolonial anxieties, as well as an attempt by postcolonial states to seek international legitimacy post 9/11 vis-a-vis the War on Terror. In both states, counterterror laws are weaponised to target civil society activists, journalists, and religious, ethnic and other minorities in comparable ways. This article, therefore, challenges the centrality of 9/11 and state of exception/emergency in the framing of counterterror laws. In so doing, it advances knowledge of counterterrorism vis-à-vis postcolonial engagements with colonial epistemes and “normal” practices of security.

From toxic industries to green extractivism: rural environmental struggles, multinational corporations and Ireland’s postcolonial ecological regime

ABSTRACT This article articulates the historical entanglement of Ireland’s big tech ecosystem with earlier forms of economic development and state-sanctioned polluting practices, particularly focusing on strategies for attracting multinational companies since the 1960s. The outsourcing of polluting multinational industries to Ireland’s rural regions has a long history, one tied into fault-lines of the country’s postcolonial condition and developmental economy in the 1970s and 1980s. During this era of economic liberalisation, Ireland’s environmental politics were frequently organised against the outsourcing of toxic chemical, pharmaceutical, and technological industries to rural Ireland. Ireland’s position as a western European nation-state undoubtedly means that wealth accumulated via these industries merits complicity in the global supply chains sustaining “green” extractivism in the Global South. But rural Ireland also bears an uneven share of responsibility for these industries, whose destructive externalities are often imposed on these places through large-scale infrastructures. Historical struggles for environmental justice in these rural sites foreground access to land, livelihoods, health, and cultures of place. Contributing to recent debates on the colonial endurances of contemporary “green” development, we argue that these rural movements should be a starting point for a “just” transition attuned to anti-imperialist goals in Ireland.

Ancestral institutions and the salience of African ethnicity: Theory and Evidence

Abstract This paper advances a pre-colonial institutional thesis to explain the variation in the salience of ethnicity in African societies. It posits that pre-colonial political centralization facilitated the accumulation of economic and institutional advantages, positioning descendants of centralized ethnic groups to benefit from these advantages within postcolonial states. Social identity choices are rational; therefore, descendants of centralized ethnic groups, who enjoy greater advantages within the nation, find less incentive to choose their ethnicity over their national identity. Examples from Ethiopia and Ghana as well as the evidence from combining individual-level survey data from the Afrobarometer with historical data on pre-colonial political centralization support the theoretical claim. In particular, the paper presents both theory and evidence indicating that individuals with ancestors from politically centralized pre-colonial societies are less likely to favour their ethnic identity over their national identity . These findings underscore the importance of considering pre-colonial legacies when promoting national unity.

Institutions as Images of Political Authority and Power Hierarchies: Understanding Land Tenure Dynamics of State-making in Zimbabwe and Uganda

The intricate link between political power and land rights is a historical axiom and Zimbabwe and Uganda present two conflicting yet analogous situations of what happens in agrarian societies, where socio-economic life is organised around access to and use of land. In such communities, institutions of land tenure are powerful mediums that shape political relations, electoral choices and the whole landscape of political interactions that happen in rural communities. This article seeks to examine how the post-colonial state in Zimbabwe and Uganda deliberately and systematically manipulated ‘insecure’ land tenure regimes by deploying institutions as instruments of political control and relevance. We argue that while the British coloniser framed the two counties differently, that is Zimbabwe as a settler colony and Uganda as a native colony, post-colonial land tenure regimes in the two countries were framed as institutional configurations purposefully designed and redesigned by national leaders as instruments of building state authority, organising the rural masses politically and shaping state-citizen allegiances. In this context, we argue that the land reforms in both countries perpetuated economic and regional disparities, inherited from colonial economic policies, and the ethnic and racial divisions, as foundations of state-making. In that regard, the connection between land and political authority may appear delinked and far-fetched, yet, as the Ugandan and Zimbabwean cases illustrate, there is compelling evidence to confirm this contention.

Eurocentrism and Coloniality of Power in Knowledge Production in Postcolonial States

Eurocentrism and Coloniality of Power in Knowledge Production in Postcolonial States

Traditional authority, democracy and protected areas: a quandary for African states

This article examines the role of traditional authorities around protected areas in Africa, engaging with debates regarding the efficacy of traditional authorities in contemporary governance in Africa. Some scholars have supported such authority as epitomising African customs and practices, and thereby offering continuity and relevance. Others have questioned the usefulness and relevance of such authority in democratic spaces given their hereditary nature. The article considers these debates in relation to the challenges that arise due to protected areas being spaces of bifurcated governance, in contrast to other rural areas, utilising two case studies: Gwayi Forest in Zimbabwe and Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve in South Africa. Protected areas pose challenges for post-colonial African states regarding how they should be governed. The article argues that it is time for states to bring finality over the governance of such areas. State institutions should be restricted to an advisory role in protected areas. Local populations should be able to choose their own leadership and governance over these spaces.

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.

Racialized Impacts of Migration Governance in Mali

Perceptions of Africa as a non-racial space are belied by cases such as Mali. This article explores how racial arguments were deployed by black returnees in Bamako after their repatriation from Libya. Race, racialization processes, and racial violence were one of the cornerstones of French colonization in Mali, and then of the post-colonial state. Mali had a complex relationship with its northern neighbour Libya, for many decades a destination for Malian migrants. The fall of the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011 created new problems, as both black Malian migrant workers and Tuareg ex-combatants were returned to the country. Both experienced, in different ways, the effects of a migration regime, influenced by European Union programmes. This article shows how racial categories and migration politics intersect in Mali, becoming mutually constituent and interrelated, and leaving various actors, institutions, processes, histories, and multiple scales entangled with each other.

Post-Colonial Nigerian State and Complexities of Irregular Cross-Border Migration

The post-colonial Nigerian state has been confronted with internal socio-economic and political quagmires. Over the years, the globally accepted standards for sustainable human capital development seem to have eluded the Nigerian citizens, thereby creating situations of reoccurring social complexities. Irregular migrations across Nigerian borders have implicated trans-national illegalities especially within West African region, and African continent in general. Today, there is a consensus among scholars that human migration across borders of Nigeria has remained an issue of national concern with far-reaching consequences. The study aims at examining how cross-border human migration had been orchestrated by internal contradictions, hence leading to unprecedented increase in organized trans-border illegal and criminal activities in Nigeria and beyond. The study adopts documentary method and employs the push and pull theory of migration that explains the phenomenon within analytical framework of trajectories of post-colonial Nigeria and complexities of cross border migration of Nigerians. The study argues that many migrants who chose irregular migration routes seemed not to be aware of the challenges they would encounter, neither are they sure of job opportunities in their destination countries, but due to years of governance failure in Nigeria, Nigerian migrants consider leaving the country as a better alternative. The paper further argues that no matter all measures put in place by Nigeria government and other West African states to prevent irregular migration, the possibility of achieving that is far from reality. As long as the Nigerian state remains irresponsible and irresponsive to economic hardships of its citizens, there will always be outflow of Nigerians who are ever willing to ‘escape’ from the abysmally poor living standards in the country.

THE FORM AND CHARACTER OF CIRCULATING GOVERNING ELITE IN NIGERIA: PAST AND PRESENT

This paper is basically an application of the famous elite perspective to the Nigerian government and politics to test whether it is a theory that can be confirmed or infirmed. The observable phenomenon which is similar to virtually all regions and climes of the world is the emergence of very few people circulating in the political space over time. From pre-colonial, to colonial and post-colonial Nigerian state, a number of elites from diverse sectors of the society – the military, politicians, civil society, business tycoons, religious leaders and traditional elites kept circulating in the political firmament of Nigeria. The paper is a confirmation of the elite theory paradigm or construct to the understanding of Nigerian government and politics. The paper however noted that if nothing changes the required leap from a developing status of Nigeria as a country to developed one may take time after all more so that the country needs new thinking and perspectives to be able to adapt to modern technological era. The paper infers that there is an imperatival need to opening up of the political space to accommodate vibrant youths and new set of elites that can drive the polity to a greater height with new innovative thinking.