Postcolonial State Research Articles

Partition’s Shadow:

Assam’s Barak Valley is an example of how the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan left behind long-term conflicts and issues pertaining to identity, place, and belonging that have created turmoil in the geo-political space that we refer to as India’s Northeast. The transformation of this space from a frontier during colonial times to a borderland in 1947 is not only significant for the genealogy and configuration of states within the region but also because this understanding subverts common assumptions about 1947, particularly on issues of communal polarizations, the formation of the border as well as the participation of non-political groups like the tribal populations who had very little stake in the playing out of the Radcliffe Line. Siddhartha Deb’s 2002 novel The Point of Return looks at some of these questions of identity and belonging that so plague the region. The novel is an exploration of the life journeys of Dr. Dam and his son Babu and their relationship to the geographical locations they come to inhabit. The spatial and temporal realities that came into being in the Northeastern region is charted through this text in the postcolonial state making practices that produce irreversible patterns of social and political chaos. Issues of ethnicity, language, and belonging that are contentious questions in this region are represented in this narrative as the continued precarity of people who had come to live here. This essay presents an analysis of the novel through the optics of history and literature, using tools from the Phenomenological analysis of Time by Paul Ricouer, to investigate how the interface of events and memory transform and complicate our understandings of a contentious divided past.

Curriculum Reform for Social Justice: A Critical Policy Historiography of Transformation in Lesotho, Zimbabwe and South Africa

The call for social justice in education has been echoed across the globe for many decades. However, the dual hatchets of racial and social-class segregation have refused to be buried in the 21st century. Inequalities within and across nations remain pervasive and conspicuous. Tapping into the framework of policy genealogy, this theoretical qualitative historiography teases the evolution of curriculum reform in three post-colonial states – Lesotho, Zimbabwe and South Africa. These three nations share a common legacy of British colonialism and unequal access to education anchored in race, social class, gender and other manifestations of injustice. Using primary and secondary documents available in the public domain, the paper traces and juxtaposes post-colonial curriculum policies initiated in search for social justice and how these policies were implemented at school and classroom levels. The grounded theory emerging from this policy historiography is that the genealogy of curriculum reform policies was dictated by historical circumstances and the unique context of each country, rather than deliberate policy sharing among decision-makers in the three post-colonial states. Although reform policy espouses equitable education, the attainment of social justice in the three nations remains largely a mirage. Only children of the new Black elite are enjoying the fruits of post-colonial curriculum reform by attending expensive and generously resourced former White-only schools, but the poor majority remain marginalised in poorly resourced schools. This study recommends collaboration among policy makers in the three nations so that policy talk may be translated into policy action.

Hong Kong Writing Today: Cantonese, Polyglossia and the Postcolonial Condition

Hong Kong Writing Today: Cantonese, Polyglossia and the Postcolonial Condition

A Problem as Colonial Legacy Northern Mali and Azawad

Mali has been experiencing a long period of instability in the security context due to terrorist activities, civil wars, and coups in the region. The turmoil following the Libyan crisis, the military coup in Mali, and the subsequent coups in West Africa have created favorable conditions for the proliferation and attacks of groups armed for different purposes. This brings to mind the current position of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), which rebelled in 2012 under the leadership of the Tuaregs, emerged as an armed movement in the northern regions of the country and declared its independence from Mali. Contrary to popular belief, the Tuareg-led armed insurgency in the northern regions is as old as the post-colonial Malian state. The recent crisis in the Sahel region is one of the most serious since the end of the Cold War, with dire long-term implications for the region's security. This article aims to provide a clearer understanding of the past and present of the crisis by examining various parameters on a historical plane that considers the Tuareg's persistent rebellion against Bamako. For this reason, it will first examine the political conjuncture in post-colonial and independent Mali, and then discuss the roots of the Azawad conflict and the potential threats it poses in today's political environment.

Publication of materials about the Russian­Ukrainian war in the professional scientifical journals on cultural studies in 2023

The purpose of the article is to establish the main directions in the coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war in the articles in the scientific journals on cultural studies and their heuristic perspectives.
 The methodology combined bibliometric, classical bibliographic and cultural approaches. The elements of comparativism made it possible to compare the analyzed cultural works with coverage of the topic of full-scale Russian aggression in the publications in the Ukrainian scientific journals on historical sciences.
 The results. The specific weight of scientific journals which placed such publications and the specific weight of articles on similar topics among 199 specifically cultural articles in 16 journals were determined. The experience of combining them into separate rubrics had been evaluated. 7 main thematic groups had been distinguished according to the keywords of the considered works: 1) Art; 2) Cultural identity; 3) Cultural policy; 4) Preservation and restoration of cultural heritage; 5) Transformations of the cultural landscape; 6) Burial and commemoration; 7) Forced migrants. It had been indicated that these articles only recorded certain socio-cultural phenomena or trends, which, however, refer either to the actualization or to the reconceptualization of more general problems — the multidimensionality of the Ukrainian identity and the cultural and artistic landscape, the peculiarities of the national memorial tradition, and ultimately, the post-colonial status of Ukraine.
 The scientific novelty. This article is the first historiographical review of culturological articles, that highlighted the topic of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
 The practical significance. The materials of this ar-ticle can be used in the scientific and public discussions, and for preparation of educational programs as well.

The politics of mourning in conservation conflicts: The (un)grievability of life and less-than-human geographies

Accounts of conservation conflicts often reveal that people living around protected areas feel like their lives are less valued than animals' lives —they are confined to ‘less-than-human geographies’. Recent literature on necropolitical ecology illustrates how such geographies were created and maintained by the state, which holds the power to decide over life and death in and around conservation areas. This paper integrates Judith Butler's politics of mourning into necropolitical ecology to interrogate which lives are considered grievable and which ones are not in conservation landscapes. It focuses on two vignettes of violent human-carnivore interactions in Queen Elizabeth National Park, western Uganda: the poisoning of allegedly 11 (but actually three) lions and the killing of a baby girl by a leopard. Both incidents happened in the park's condoned fishing villages, where historically marginalised Basongora pastoralists have been confined to live since the park's creation. We examine how the lost lives —of humans and animals— are publicly mourned and which lives are actually considered lost. We show how the politics of mourning in violent human-wildlife encounters goes beyond the (colonial-)state; rather, the unequal distribution of precarity is entrenched by a range of public authorities (e.g., (social) media, (I)NGOs, and politicians). This is, in part, because sovereignty in conservation territories has become transnationalised as post-colonial states allow international NGOs to carve out their own zones of influence. This coloniality of power influences human-carnivore relations and reifies racialised conservation spaces as less-than-human geographies.

Purging to Transform the Post-Colonial State: Evidence From the 1952 Egyptian Revolution

The post-WWII era saw junior military officers launch revolutionary coups in a number of post-colonial states. How did these events transform colonial-era state elites? We theorize that the inexperienced leaders of revolutionary coups had to choose between purging threats and delivering ambitious projects of state-led transformation, leading to a threat-competence calculation that patterned elite turnover. To illustrate our argument, we trace the careers of 674 high-ranking officials in Egypt following the Free Officers’ seizure of power in July 1952. A multilevel survival analysis shows that officials connected to Egypt’s deposed monarch and very senior officials were most vulnerable to being purged. Experienced bureaucrats and those with university education were more likely to be retained. This threat-competence calculation also informed which ministries experienced more purging. Qualitative triangulation with biographies, memoirs, newspaper reports, and speeches corroborates the mechanism. The findings show why radical state-led change often requires a degree of elite-level continuity.

Proximate Thuggery

Abstract In this paper, I rethink thuggery, an overt form of dissent, as a spatial structural frame. Through a close reading of everyday forms of thuggery in Nigeria, exemplified in literary, musical, and photographic forms, I argue that not only is thuggery ubiquitous in the African postcolony but also that it is the means by which the citizenry assert their citizenship, structure their space, and perform democracy. I use the phrase “proximate thuggery” in two ways: first, to broaden the commonplace definition of thuggery as violent antisocial behavior which does not hold up in many postcolonial states where there seems no line separating the violent from the non-violent, where the insidiously violent masquerades as non-violent; and second, to signal the quotidian nature of dissent and therefore refocus attention on those manifestations of thuggery even in corridors of power. If the purpose of critical cultural studies is to understand a problem from its roots in order to suggest useful solutions, it seems fitting to pay attention to everyday, non-spectacular forms of dissent—for, among other reasons, attention to overt forms of dissent isolates them as anomalies and leads to inadequate solutions.

Analyzing Development Administration in Nigeria: Prospects and Challenges

Economy and efficiency serves as both ends and means blurring the distinction between them. Development Administration therefore can be seen as an instrumental means for defining, consolidating, and implementing national goals in developing countries. The study is guided by two specific objectives; examine the challenges of development administration in Nigeria and ascertain plausible mitigation strategies to the identified challenges towards engineering and fostering social and economic progress in Nigeria. The study adopted the Marxist theory of post colonial state, by Alavi (1972). Content analysis were used in the study. However, the study revealed that Nation-building and socio economic development are dependent on development administration, hence recommended amongst others that promoting and creating enabling policies, environment and building capacity for participation in global economy is imperative in mitigating perceived challenges.

Labour coercion and commodification: from the British Empire to postcolonial migration states

ABSTRACTScholars of migration studies have only recently begun to focus on the interconnected histories of empire, postcolonialism, and human mobility. The existing literature presents a rather uncomplicated narrative of migration policy in a Global South unencumbered by the legacies of imperial rule. In this article, we aim to expand the concept of ‘postcolonial migration states’ by drawing parallels between imperial rule and postcolonial migration policymaking. We argue that legacies of imperialism endure in the management of mobility across postcolonial states of the Global South: a legal legacy through the adoption of colonial acts, statutes, and ordinances; and an institutional legacy through the repurposing of colonial bureaucratic infrastructures. We take the case of Indian indentured emigration under British imperial rule and trace its legacies in the contemporary movement of low-skilled labour out of South Asia to the Gulf Cooperation Council states. We find that the processes of labour coercion and commodification remain key features of migration control during and after colonial rule. Ultimately, we argue for the need to re-examine South–South migration processes to identify continuities between imperial policymaking and postcolonial states’ management of human mobility.

Leon Trotsky and the political conundrum of international relations

In this article we identify the ways in which Leon Trotsky’s ideas constitute a powerful resource to understand the contemporary crisis of international relations and its historical roots in the 20th century. Trotsky’s concept of uneven and combined development has already been highlighted as a signal contribution by an established scholarship in and around the discipline of International Relations. While this is a welcome development, we contend that it has come at a significant cost, detaching Trotsky’s theoretical insights from his revolutionary politics. We employ a different mode of engagement with Trotsky’s ideas, focusing on the theory of Permanent Revolution as an expression of an original analysis of the dialectic between the national and the international. Far from being a theoretically detachable and politically erroneous appendage to the more fundamental and applicable concept of uneven and combined development, we argue that Permanent Revolution constitutes its necessary culmination, as well as Trotsky’s most significant contribution to classical Marxism. We then elucidate how, writing in the first half of the 20th century and applying his theory of Permanent Revolution, Trotsky was able to diagnose certain essential lines of political development – the rise and ongoing breakdown of American hegemony, the political degeneration and collapse of the Soviet Union, and the emergence and failure of the postcolonial independent nation states – tracing the long and crisis-ridden trajectory of international relations from the second half of the 20th century down to today.

Entangled migration states: mobility and state-building in France and Algeria

ABSTRACT This article develops the concept of ‘entangled migration states’ as a means of highlighting the centrality of migration governance to state-building processes, the constitution of state sovereignty, and interstate relations. Drawing on the example of France and Algeria, it demonstrates the key role that migration played in three phases of state-building: the colonial period of Algérie française; the Algerian nationalist independence movement; and postcolonial state-building. In the case of France and Algeria, at least three actors constructed and instrumentalised migration and mobility regimes as sources of power and control – the French imperial state; the non-state Algerian independence movement; and the newly sovereign postcolonial Algerian state. A focus on the entangled nature of migration management allows for a deeper historicisation of contemporary migration regimes and draws attention to the central role played by migration diplomacy and transnational governmentality in contemporary migration management regimes, thus calling into question some of the spatial assumptions undergirding the ‘migration state’ concept. The article traces the evolution of mobility patterns and control in the Franco-Algerian case; their relationship to state-building processes; and the implications for rethinking the ‘migration state’.

Dismantling the Master’s House

While critical scholars have attempted to decenter internationalization, limited research has aimed to understand internationalization efforts in the context of the socio-historical particularities of the postcolonial condition. This paper takes a decolonial perspective in the study of internationalization, in light of the Eurocentric tendencies of modernity, whose major manifestation in higher education is neoliberal globalization. We unpack internationalization in the U.S. and examine how it is embedded in and reproduces neoliberalism, racism, and colonialism. Since decolonization is not merely deconstructive but also regenerative, we reconceive what it means to be international and recommend how internationalization can be deployed as a tool of decolonization, considering various possibilities for hopeful and ethical praxis. We identify promising practices to spark ongoing reflection and action about ways to contest coloniality/modernity and rethink mobility. This paper can benefit educators seeking to reclaim internationalization and [re]align it with an ethos of mutuality and practices geared at strengthening cooperation, rather than competition.

Gender Deconstruction on the Margins: A Historical Analysis of South Africa’s Post-Colonial Gender Policies in Education

Gender inequality in sub-Saharan Africa has historically been pronounced in all spheres of life. To plug that, educationists have tried to engage with local contexts to bring girls into the education system. In light of this worrisome trend, this paper assessed the extent to which policies and measures framed and circulated by the South African government in the post-independence era have addressed gender imbalances in the education sector in line with the notion that girls’ education has been promoted by policymakers as a kind of an antidote to the manifold socio-economic problems. The researchers gathered and performed close textual readings of official government policy documents and journal articles from 1994 to date. The research found that the history of educational reforms depicts that gender deconstruction is still on the margins as evidenced by the women’s limited access to education and the genderisation of the school, its curriculum and practices among others. The article thus advanced the argument that although remarkable strides have so far been made towards the enactment of policies that enhance the education of the girl child in post-colonial states, much work still needs to be done to create a better world for all regardless of gender. This study offers insights on how to navigate future educational reforms that seek to deconstruct the marginalisation of girls in education and the gendered culture of educational institutions. Keywords: Gender Deconstruction, Inequalities, Marginalisation, Policies, Postcolonial Education

Ohaneze Ndigbo and Security in the South East, Nigeria

This work examined Ohaneze Ndigbo and security in the South East, Nigeria. One research question was formulated to guide the study; as well as one objective. The study adopted the neo- Marxist theory of the post-colonial state that was propounded by Karl Max in 1921 which is an offshoot of the classical Marxist political economy approach. The study adopted Ex-post facto design. The main sources of data is through secondary method that depends on textbooks, journals, magazine, etc. The finding of the study shows that the major challenges facing Ohaneze Ndigbo as an Organisation in enhancing South Eastern security are funding and power of sanction. Hence, the study recommends that there should be contributions of the Igbo stakeholders periodically to finance the affairs of the organization.

Journalism as War: Tracing the Predatory Culture and Economy of the Pak-Afghan Cross-border News Practices

ABSTRACT Based on in-depth interviews with ethnic Pashtun war journalists, this study explores the cross-border news practices and its underlying economy in Pakistan’s troubled tribal region that straddles the Pak-Afghan border. We argue that the structural remnants, including media, of the British colonialism of the past continue to boost the neo-imperialism of the present. Several studies have examined the war reporting in the Pak-Afghan border space, however, the intersection of the postcolonial State, militarization, and cross-border news labor practices is understudied. Backdropped in the critical examination of the news pursuits during the two wars: the Afghan “jihad” and the US-led “war on terror,” we show how war as business and news labor as commodity feed into each other and contribute to the making of a material and representational crisis which sustains what Jasbir Puar calls the “economy of injury.”

Suffering, Survival and Sustenance: Meos’ Post-Partition Experiences in Pakistan

More than half a million Meos from the former princely states of Alwar and Bharatpur and the Gurgaon district of the former province of East Punjab, facing discrimination, hostility and violence in the wake of the 1947 Partition, opted to trek to Pakistan. Arriving there six weeks later, bedraggled and bereft, they faced further travails as disease swept through the refugee camps. Many died, while the survivors were eventually settled along the newly created international Punjab border between India and Pakistan. A decade later, however, they were displaced by the Pakistan state in the name of border consolidation. This article traces the Meo experience of multiple state displacements, survival and re-establishing lives in the early years of Pakistan’s history when the postcolonial state was still working out its responsibilities in the process of nation formation and border consolidation. In reconstructing the story of the state’s interpreting of Meos through its files in the hitherto untapped archives, supplemented with first-hand accounts from members of the community, this article provides new insights into the existing situation of the Meos and their relationship with both the local population and the authorities and, as such, reveals many dichotomies in state and community interactions.

A Political Economy of Public Policymaking and Underdevelopment in Postcolonial African States: A Marxian Perspective

Debates over who makes public policy in postcolonial African states are lengthy, spanning from 1960s until now, even as such debates prompt pernicious human underdevelopment in this region. Driven by these unfinished debates’ impervious outcomes - the impoverishment of postcolonial Africans, this paper uses the Marxian political economy perspective to determine the mischievous insights arising from these debates, which prod irrational policymaking. It argues that, although policymaking is par excellence the impeccable and inescapable normal government activity and an important political instrument for exerting exhilarating or doldrums societies, it is fraught with inequitably precarious, intricate and dispute-prone processes for mobilising, distributing and allocating resources in societies. Consequently, the paper examines this activity’s shortcomings, not only through the cognitive capacities or incapacities of government officials, but through subjective irrational groups’ interests. Using the rational-comprehensive theory of policymaking, it concludes that, even as policymaking is estranged by malicious contestations through soft or hard power from competing forces with undemocratic claims over rights and resources, the Marxian political economy perspective and rational-comprehensive model can dependably ensure the region’s equitable development rather than underdevelopment.

Forging Communal Space: Negotiating Streets and Practices in Delhi, 1922–65

This paper examines space-making in the Jangpura-Bhogal locality of Delhi by documenting communal conflicts in the late 1920s and 1950s. First, it addresses the production of a Hindu religious space by disavowing Muslim ritual practices under a colonial regime seeking to control religious conflict. Second, it unpacks the diverse mechanisms used to produce a Sikh political space during a nascent postcolonial state’s management of linguistic subnationalisms. Grounded in power relations and cohesions around multiple social registers, these variegated spatial claims were made through political and religious processions, petitions and physical violence. These communal geographies highlight the importance of neighbourhood histories.

Hong Kong echoes across English ghost lands: A decolonizing of English-language poetry

ABSTRACT This article focuses on three women poets who deploy a Hong Kong Chinese imaginary, an imaginarium filled with memories, popular cultural references, fragments of Cantonese, and isolated Chinese characters. Jennifer Lee Tsai was born in the UK of Hong Kong immigrant parents, while Jennifer Wong migrated from Hong Kong to the UK first to study and then to write poetry. Tim Tim Cheng similarly migrated to the UK to study, having grown up in Hong Kong. Their English-language poems are peppered with Cantonese images and linguistic elements that challenge the reader to address the postcolonial condition of the poetry. Written in English in the UK, their poetry represents a poïesis of the local and the personal. While articulating a local everydayness, their work seeks out from afar and from the past, in the migrant in-betweenness of Chinese–British borderlands, poetic resolutions to the binds of their postcolonial subjecthood.