Postcolonial Times Research Articles

Resetting the forestry commons: Constitutionality as a conflict resolution strategy in African woodlands

This paper comparatively analyses three case studies in Mali, Senegal and Tanzania regarding common property institutions for forest commons and their transformations during colonial and post-colonial times. Then common pool resource management was fragmented and common property was increasingly turned into state and private property and local control over resources was removed. This led to grabbing processes by foreign investors and conflicts between local and outside users of forest resources and degradation of these resources. The paper further outlines the reactions to these processes. It also highlights the neglect of the gender and marginal groups dimensions in studies of constitutionality (developing a sense of local ownership in the bottom-up institution crafting processes for the governance of the commons). In the cases of Mali and Senegal these constitutionality processes were for managing the forest resources. This led to a mitigation of existing resource conflicts. In Tanzania, out of a land-use conflict, local people had managed to create a kind of an informal convention with a British investor about land use in the valleys, which however remains fragile. The conflict arose because women had largely been left out in land deal negotiations and institution-building about the acquired land, as well as were confronted with institution-shopping by the investor and from below by fellow community- and family-men. This impacted heavily on their workload and hampered their abilities to fulfil their care work. Thus, this paper fills the gap on gender (and more differentiated – intersectionality, and generally the involvement of marginal groups) in the constitutionality process to support the “resetting of the forest commons”. These have been neglected factors that need to be addressed for successful forest resources management and governance.

Post-Colonial Time: The Evaluation of Printmaking Practice and Present Time

Printmaking has a long and rich history that dates back thousands of years. The earliest forms of printmaking were developed in ancient china, where the artist would create prints using wood blocks as early as the 7th century. However, in the 15th century in Europe, printmaking began to develop into a proper art form. Johannesburg was a German goldsmith printer and inventor widely credited with movable type printing in the mid-15th century. In 1455 Bible was the first important Book in history. In the 16th century, Goa was the first place in India where printing technology started during the British period. Initially, it was used for religious printing and some commercial printing, like religious posters, pamphlets etc. later 20th century, this printing process transformed into fine art printmaking techniques. It became an educational part of developing printing technology and technician. This printing technology became a curriculum for the Art & Craft College, like Madras art college, Kolkata Govt. Art and Craft College, J.J art college, Lahore art college (now in Pakistan), and another essential college is Kala Bhavana under the Visva Bharati University. From post-colonial to contemporary times, printing to printmaking evolved in many ways. Most places academically followed the colonial curriculum, but commercial printing technology rapidly changed. Academically Visva Bharati University Santiniketan develops new technology for the students.

Exploring Caodai Networks and Practices in France: From Individual Itineraries to Interlocked Relations

Abstract As a Vietnamese autochthonous religion, Cao Ðài was first meant to address Vietnamese people, who received the mission to spread out humanistic and salvationist messages all over the world. Cao Ðài expanded overseas, with few hundreds of them settled in France. Firstly, I will clarify the profile of few French sympathisers in colonial and postcolonial times. Secondly, I will examine ethnographic data collected in the two main Caodai temples of Vitry-sur-Seine and Alfortville from 1996 onwards. This extended fieldwork gave me the possibility to follow the membership logics, the different challenges and obstacles they face in terms of conversion and community life in the French context of religious freedom. The organization (or not) of spirit-medium séances, and the tactics of some Caodai missionaries will reveal some of the tensions between the pastoral and missionary dynamics of Cao Ðài in France.

Methods of Dispute Settlement, Post-Colonial Restitutions and the Increasing Importance of Due Diligence in the International Art Trade

The historical window opened by President Macron in Ouagadougou on November 28, 2017, preparing the path toward the restitution of African cultural heritage objects currently held in French national collections, has established a new era in cultural relations between the North and the South of the planet. The issue of providing the financial, legal, and methodological framework to ensure the return of cultural heritage particularly in post-colonial times, is raising several questions about the existence of the legal and moral grounds of such an approach, as well as about the obstacles in its concrete achievement. Starting from the analysis of some concrete outcomes of this process, this paper explores the consistency between the fulfilment of legal duties, ethical principles, and identity links, in the light of the due diligence tools and procedures in art related transactions.

African Spacemaking

The emerging use of Extended Reality (XR) by African artists and collectives is sparking a revival of a “third space” in urban storytelling. Addressing topics ranging from expropriation in Lagos to public surveillance in Nairobi, a new wave of artists is appropriating the spatial dimensions of virtual reality to interrogate the neocolonial dynamics of urbanization in African cities. This forms what we term “spacemaking” or, the production of virtual worlds and critical practices in the act of narrative expression. These narratives range from postcolonial to Afrofuturist, vary in interactivity or forms of address, and, fundamentally, centre the pluriversal identities of the people and places that construct urban city centres in Africa. This study is a contextual analysis of five XR works produced by African directors and Africa-based artists/collectives, developed from in-depth interviews with each creator. The works, countries, and creators in discussion include: “The Other Dakar” (dir. Selly Raby Kane, Senegal, 2017), “Spirit Robot” (dir. Johnathan Dotse, Ghana, 2017), “Azibuye – The Occupation” (dir. Dylan Valley, South Africa, 2020), “Lagos at Large” (Jumoke Sanwo, Nigeria, 2019), and “African Space Makers” (dir.TheNrbBusCollective, Kenya, 2020). Our findings reveal how artists have co-created with their cities in their VR productions, fore fronting Africa-based spatial modalities in an otherwise Westernized technology. These practices derive from decolonial lineages in spatial thinking and arts activism, while integrating new technologies into innovative expressions of agency, resistance, and transformation in postcolonial times. Decentring consumption or distribution of VR media, this research presents the narratives of production and co-creation that demonstrate new possibilities for how the arts and storytelling are core parts of shaping how we imagine public space.

Misogyny in The Eastern Slope Chronicle: An elegy for diasporic male chauvinism

ABSTRACT This article explores misogyny in the novel by Chinese Australian author Ouyang Yu, The Eastern Slope Chronicle. It argues that misogyny is not merely an individual, but also a collective practice. While scholars have discussed the loss of masculinity in the protagonist, this article examines the misogynistic tradition in Chinese culture: men’s authority and expectations of women’s subordination in the family, which partly accounts for the misogyny of the protagonist Dao and other male characters in the text. It reads the novel as an elegy, mourning the loss of male dominance and male chauvinism in the Chinese diaspora in Australia in postcolonial times. The novel’s play with voices and the implied author’s perspective combine with the characters’ frustration and their many forms of misogynistic practice to produce an elegiac tone, acknowledging change while documenting the characters’ lack of agency and their inability to change in the present day environment.

Status of women in different periods of India

Women constitute half of humanity. Throughout history, women are equal participants along with male in the struggle for survival and growth in the society. Women have been glaringly absent from the chronicles of history, and their status in society has elicited little interest in recent times, despite their equal contribution in making history. However, their position in the family, kinship, and society has fluctuated throughout history. It is necessary to examine the position of women in Indian society from ancient times to the present. The status of women must be examined in terms of what it is in fact rather than in terms of what it is in concept. In this context, this paper aims to analyse and historically traces the overall position of women in India. The main objective of this study is to discuss about their status in Indian societies to have a better understanding. The study examines the position of women in different periods like ancient to the present (that means ancient, mediaeval, pre-colonial and post-colonial times along with modern period) about their educational, economic, and political status. The study has collected secondary data and analysed by using descriptive analysis method. It also analyses the role of women in social reforms, freedom struggle and women movements in India along with initiatives (the constitutional provisions, laws, acts, schemes, and programmes after independence) taken by the government of India to enhance the status of women and also to control the discrimination against women in India.

Objects of belonging and displacement; Artefacts and European migrants from colonial Indonesia in colonial and post-colonial times

As colonial Indonesia never was intended to be a “settler colony”, many Dutch citizens spent only a certain period of their lives there before returning to the Netherlands. However, there were also Europeans, many with Asian-European roots, who had called the colony home for generations and were forced to leave that home after 1945. All these different types of colonial migrants were displaced and maintained, built and reinforced their relations with the country (whether it was the colony or the “motherland”) they had left. This transnationalism (or, as I argue here, imperial orientation) took shape not only legally or relationally but also experientially (D. Ip, C. Inglis, and C.T. Wu 1997). In this article I show how, in both the colonial and post-colonial periods, objects helped European colonial migrants establish and maintain social relationships. Objects shaped identities and people’s status; bolstering increase migrants’ sense of “a continuous transnational self and identity”, a feeling of home, but also feelings of displacement.

Addressing Hegemony within the System of Medicine for an Inclusive and Sustainable Health System: The Case of Traditional Medicine in India

There is growing interest and belief in the effectiveness and efficacy of the traditional system of medicine and its sustainability within the health system. The domination and superiority of biomedicine over traditional medicine have been visible from postcolonial time to till date. At the same time, there is also an increased attempt to streamline and harmonize the diversity of the traditional system of medicine with the modern system of medicine. However, it has often resulted in detrimental outcomes for many traditional health practitioners, including the system of medicine they practice. The dominance and interplay of the power relationships and social structural inequalities are not discussed and deliberated extensively in the published literature as one of the crucial reasons for medical hegemony. Therefore, the essay’s objective is to address the hegemony in traditional medicine regulation, professionalization, commoditization and intellectual property rights. In doing so, an attempt has been made to argue for the traditional care providers such as bonesetters and Dais (Traditional Birth Attendants) whose services remain undermined due to their social identity, often overlooking the difficult conditions in which they provide care. This may give us a more inclusive and sustainable health system perspective. The traditional medicine system and the care providers, deserve the long denied respect from the medical care and health science community; and better recognition, preservation and protection of their skills.

Securitisation or Autocratisation? Hong Kong’s Rule of Law under the Shadow of China’s Authoritarian Governance

This article examines the nature of the legal system in Hong Kong and its process of autocratisation under the Chinese sovereign. This article suggests that, in colonial and post-colonial times, Hong Kong’s legal system follows the global trend of autocratic legalism that empowers the executive branch to use laws and courts to achieve the government’s political goals. With the recent imposition of the national security law, the political and legal systems of Hong Kong are further autocratised beneath the veil of securitisation, facilitating China’s authoritarian governance in Hong Kong.

Fanon on the Dialectic of Madness and Struggle

Following the footsteps of scholars who have made contributions to the debate about the question of method and analysis in Fanon’s work, this article explores the implications of his concerns with the link between madness and struggle on our understanding of the transformative role of radical political strategies in the colonial context and the contemporary world. The main argument it pursues is that Fanon regarded madness and revolutionary violence in the colonial context as effects of colonial alienation. Most importantly, this argument sets the article apart from the works which focus on how Fanon’s proto-structuralist analysis of the process of madness and the question of cure reveals his concerns with the conditions for the possibility of a politico-philosophical paradigm or a universal morality in postcolonial time or national liberation time.

Pesantren, the COVID-19 Pandemic and Digital Transformation: A Global Development Perspective

Scholarly debate on Islamic education lingers in a system that is often criticized for its reluctance to accept any forms of modernization, and this present study tries to prove the opposite. By exploring the dynamics of pesantren (Islamic boarding school) as an Islamic educational institution in coping with distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study observes the digital transformation made by pesantren during the time of the pandemic, and examines if this indicates development as per the concept of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While SDG 4 suggests that the adoption of the Internet and computers is essential and becomes an indicator of quality education, locally it is debated whether the utilization of digital technology is compatible with pesantren values. Yet, this study argues that the pandemic situation—which requires distance learning—has forced pesantren to compromise in utilizing digital technologies. Different responses are made by pesantren depending on their institutional types: traditional, semi-traditional-modern, and modern. But significant improvement is reflected in how they have used digital technologies before and during the pandemic; either in their main pedagogical practice, or virtual study of yellow books (Kitab kuning), or in institutional and administrative matters. The discussion focuses on how—despite incompatibility in their values—digital adaptation could determine pesantrens’ survival and viability in the twenty-first century, by reflecting on how they survived the crisis during post-colonial times. In this case, not only does pesantrens’ digital adaptation satisfy the fulfillment of basic needs as in SDG 4, but it also helps them connect with the outside world, and further engage on issues within other SDGs. Overall, the study supports scholarly discussion on the resilience of faith-based education; that, despite the predicted collapse, it still manages to survive and adapt to modernity and development.

Violated by Rebels, Violated by Family: Returnee Girls of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Northern Uganda

In the prologue to his book Frontiers of Violence in North-East Africa, Richard Reid recounts how in the first few years of the third millennium, the region of North-East Africa has been enmeshed in conflict. This region which includes Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Southern Sudan has experienced intermittent violent conflicts and destruction by wars based on reasons and excuses ranging from ethnicity and religion, to political disagreements caused by thirst for power. This region also includes Northern Uganda, particularly Acholi-land, which was caught up in the throes of violent conflict since the mid- eighties, between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the government of Uganda. For more than three decades, Acholi-land was engulfed in untold suffering, unleashed upon its population by foes from without and, tragically, attackers from within! An historical occupation of being exceptionally good soldiers that had stood them in good stead in colonial and post-colonial times turned out to be a curse they would always true!

Subversive Narratives of Borders and Nations: A Reading of Debendranath Acharya’s Jangam and Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace

The proposed paper studies the narratives of ‘borders’ and ‘nations’ on the border lands between India and Burma invoking two works of fiction written in Assamese and English respectively. Jangam (1982) an Assamese novel by Debendranath Acharya is read with The Glass Palace (2000) by Amitav Ghosh to study the stateless lives of people who become victims of operative forces controlling the exclusionary lines of border and nation. Set on the backdrop of World War II, both the novels address the ramifications of border and nation in the lives of common people. They probe less explored geography of the Indo-Burmese border and the ebbs and flows during the colonial and post-colonial times. Popular representations depicting this particular geography have remained elusive, comparing for example, the Indo-Pakistan border. It is argued that the historical narratives of cross border migrations in the colonial times can be reviewed through regional writers’ expressions about home and homelessness. The fixity of borders and the consequent realisations of belonging to a nation for both the Indian migrants in Burma and their counterparts in India not only call for fluidity in the way home and homelessness are understood, but also are read against the temporal re-imaginings of national identities. Exploring beyond the historical records of such episodes, these works of fiction offer nuanced and poignant picture of what politics does to everyday human life. The contorted lives of migrants crossing these contested borders suggest that borders are sites of negotiations where ideas of nation and nationalism are constantly interrogated and ideas of ‘insider/outsider’ and ‘home/world’ are redefined.

Decolonizing Spanish: Ladino and Chavacano as Sites of Global Hispanophonia

The current institutional attempts by the Cervantes Institute of Manila and the Spanish Royal Academy of Tel Aviv to revitalize Chavacano and Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), respectively, by assimilating them into Spanish pose a fundamental paradox: how can the official institutions of the Spanish language document, map, and characterize the subalternized speaking communities of the “Global Hispanophone” (Calderwood) while resisting the temptation to impose a neocolonial agenda on their cultural sovereignty?  (DeGraff; Deumert et al.) Drawing upon an understanding of languages as cultural and political artifacts, in this essay I will first discuss the “modern” colonial invention of Spanish as a North Atlantic universal (Trouillot 2002) and the subsequent development of the pan-Hispanic and Hispanophone linguistic ideologies in postcolonial times (Del Valle). My historiographical critique of “Global Spanish” from the peripheral perspectives of Ladino and Chavacano will expose both the discursive enthronization of Castilian into “(Global) Spanish” and the century-long pejoration of Ladino and Chavacano as processes motivated by ideological factors, rather than structural (morpho-syntactic) aspects. I will conclude that a genuinely decolonizing dynamic cannot accept any form of linguistic re-Hispanicization premised on the supposed unsuitability of Ladino and Chavacano for contemporary purposes. Rather, it can only materialize through the implementation of linguistic self-determination and self-organization, both of which are predicated on the self-respect and dignity of their community of speakers.

From mandarin to mendicant: violence and transgender bodies in urban Pakistan

Transgender bodies very effectively undermine social norms of gender binaries. We use a case study of transgender people in the twin cities of Rawalpindi/Islamabad in Pakistan to understand how social violence, middle class morality and relations to the state are embodied in transgender bodies. While in pre-colonial times the transgender people in South Asia were mandarins of the empire, during colonial and post-colonial times they have been reduced to the role of mendicants. We find that the research participants’ notions of a transgender identity are contradictory, in that they draw upon the idea of a feminine soul in a male body, but simultaneously they also consider it a constant process of becoming through deed. In urban Pakistan, it is through violent encounters with transgender bodies that toxic masculinities are relationally enacted. We argue, however, that transgender bodies also hold an emancipatory promise to bodies imprisoned in toxic masculinity.

Ujamaa in the Kilombero Valley: Msolwa and Signali Villages as Symbols of a National Project, ca. 1967 – 1990s

In central southern Tanzania, the Kilombero Valley is a potential economic zone. Villagers in this area have witnessed the changing landscape of development efforts from colonial to postcolonial times. Kilombero's development story is one of government initiatives as well as local people's processes shaped by environmental and policy factors. This study explains how development was conceived, implemented, and impacted the valley's production and land use systems. We indicate that distinct circumstances resulted in different outcomes when Ujamaa was implemented. The paper uses the cases of Msolwa and Signali to show how the two communities stood out as success stories amid a larger concern about Ujamaa's ineffectiveness not only in the valley, but also in Tanzania as a whole. This research examines the dynamics of development initiatives in Msolwa and Signali villages using archival and oral sources.

Mount Bromo Will Take Care of Us: Tenggerese Religious-Ecological Knowledge, Challenge of Modern Reason, and Disaster Mitigation in Postcolonial Times

Mount Bromo Will Take Care of Us: Tenggerese Religious-Ecological Knowledge, Challenge of Modern Reason, and Disaster Mitigation in Postcolonial Times

Jewish Morocco: A History from Pre-Islamic to Postcolonial Times, written by Emily Gottreich

Jewish Morocco: A History from Pre-Islamic to Postcolonial Times, written by Emily Gottreich

A Historical Appraisal of Ethics and Civilization in Malaysia from Pre-Colonial to Post-Colonial Era

This paper discusses the development of ethics and civilization with regards to Malaysia’s history from its pre-colonial to post-colonial times. This paper analyses the meaning of ethics in Ancient Greek and its relationship to civilization and how ethical framework has changed throughout particular civilizations. It also discusses how the religious ethical framework as well as local culture and customs in Malaysia were affected when Western modernity was introduced to this region. It is argued that both the Hindu-Buddhist period and the Muslim sultanates period have a similarity in their ethical framework in that both frameworks are informed by a belief in the divine, much like the Homeric period in Ancient Greece. On the discussion on the colonial period, this paper emphasizes and draws distinctions between the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British taking into consideration the main events that had happened in Europe between the Portuguese’ conquest of Malacca in 1511 and the British colonization in Malaya in 1824. Finally, this paper discusses on what this means to post-colonial Malaysia and the challenges it brings to the ethical discussion in Malaysia as well suggestions for possible meeting points to counter these challenges.