Cultural Colonialism Research Articles

1- Disappearance of Traditional games by the imitation of Colonial Culture through the Historical parameters of Cultural Colonialism

History reflects the evolution of mankind in its many facts. Culture, economy, society and polity are so interwoven together that a change in one is reciprocated by changes in the others too. Under colonial rule, political transformation had a great impact on the social and cultural life of the Bengali. Folk games, which are reflections of the cultural life of Bengal, saw a major transformation during this time. The folk games, which flourished in rural Bengal for centuries, had to give way to the more ‘institutionalized’ games. In Calcutta, there was little scope for the folk games to flourish and develop, as the inhabitants of Calcutta both in its early phase and in the later phase were associated with the colonial administration and colonial trade. In Calcutta, when the Colonial games were making their mark on the life of the Calcuttans in more than one way, the folk-games were eclipsed and lost. Sport is an expression of the societal and cultural manifestation, it can be consider as the mirror of any given society at a particular time. If we are to consider the world of sports in Calcutta during the early twentieth century, it will reflect some realities about its economy, society and polity.

WOMEN'S ISSUES IN THE NATIONAL LIBERATION MOVEMENT OF MUSLIM COUNTRIES (ON THE EXAMPLE OF TUNISIA)

The main idea of the article is the specificity of the modernization of the Tunisian society, as well as its gender aspect, is largely due to the fact that this process, thanks to the efforts of the ruling elite, began before the establishment of the colonial regime. In the context of the existing Islamic tradition, the degree of engagement of women in the social or productive spheres was conditioned by social differentiation. After establishing the French protectorate, actively using the administrative apparatus, encouraging the growth of the non-Muslim population, the French pursued a policy of cultural colonialism, which led to the design of the ideological and political realities of Tunisia in two directions. Representatives of the first direction continued the traditions of pre-colonial reformism, substantiating the idea of self-sufficiency of Islam. Representatives of the second, not denying the cultural significance of Islam, considered the prospects of modernization with the absorption of European experience. Representatives of Islamic modernism argued that, reformed and adapted to the spirit of time, Islam became the ideological basis of social development, in particular the release of women, whose primary role was to play education. The most radical of them questioned the use of hijab, as a purely Islamic tradition. Without denying the traditions of Islam, they advocated assimilation of the achievements of European culture, science and public opinion. The ideal of a new Tunisian woman appeared in the context of the synthesis of Islamic and Western cultures. He called for the emancipation of women and the reform of family-marital relations, taking into account the socio-cultural traditions of the Tunisian society. Thus, most of the Tunisian intellectual elite was united in the view that women's education is a prerequisite for the modernization of society. However, some advocated for its purely Islamic nature, others did not deny the need for secular nature, in this case the French. The position of this kind undoubtedly created the preconditions for solving the issue of women's education. The process of socializing Tunisian women in the 1930s was manifested in the creation of women's community organizations. Members of such organizations, as a rule, were representatives of an enlightened and prosperous elite of Tunisian society, whose activities were initially charitable. Thesis, westernized Tunisian women, who were mostly educated in France, usually propagandised their own feminist ideas. However, their activities caused a sharp rejection, even among representatives of Islamic modernists. Until the second half of the 1950's, it was not a struggle for emancipation, and participation in the national liberation movement was a dominant factor in the social updating of a number of Tunisian women.

Food from Nowhere: Complicating Cultural Food Colonialism to Understand Matcha as Superfood

Food from Nowhere: Complicating Cultural Food Colonialism to Understand Matcha as Superfood

Hybridization in Mandailing Culture: An Overview of Willem Iskander's Text Si Bulus-Bulus Si Rumbuk-Rumbuk

This study examines identity issues in and among the Mandailing people, adapting Bhabha's argument that there is no stable identity, but that identity changes with every interaction in society. For this examination of identity, Bhabha's concept of hybridity has been adapted to investigate the mixture of identities among the Mandailing people.The hybridization in Mandailing is caused by several factors including: cultural contacts, Islamization, migration, and colonialism. The author uses a postcolonial review to see the process of hybrid formation in Mandailing through literary text written by a Mandailing writer, named Willem Iskander, entitled Si Bulus-Bulus Si Rumbuk-Rumbuk. The text consists of several poems and prose representing the identity of the Mandailing people in the colonial era. In order to realize the postcolonial, the author chooses a critical discourse analysis method for analyzing the data in the text. This critical analysis is able to unravel the colonial discourses that are metaphorically in the text. By combining with the postcolonial theory, especially proposed by Bhabha, this research results a finding, hybridization giving rise to the ambivalence of the Mandailing people. This ambivalence manifests in the social, cultural and political life of the people.

Indigenous Social Movements in the Americas

The present text serves as an introduction to RIAS Vol. 12, Spring–Summer № 1 /2019, dedicated to Indigenous social movements in the Americas. It outlines the major areas of interest of the Contributors, explaining ways in which the issue explores selected cases of Indigenous resistance to oppressive forms of environmental, socio-economic, linguistic, and cultural colonialism. Looking at both multi-tribal and single-tribal contexts, the authors look at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, the novels of Lakota/Anishinaabe writer Frances Washburn, the Two-Spirit movement in the U.S., and the Indigenous food sovereignty movement in the U.S. and Peru as sites of creative forms of decolonizing resistance, and analyze the material, discursive, and cultural strategies employed by the Indigenous activists, writers, and farmers involved.

REVIEW: A possible new path to Māori-Pākehā understanding

Listening to the People of the Land: Christianity, Colonisation & the Path to Redemption, edited by Susan Healy. Auckland: Pax Christi, Aotearoa New Zealand, 2019, with support from the New Zealand Dominican Sisters. 332 pages. ISBN 978-0-473-45957-4.Praying for Peace: A Selection of Prayers and Reflections, edited by Kevin McBride. Auckland: Pax Christi, Aotearoa New Zealand, in association with the Pacific Media Centre, 2018. 152 pages. ISBN 978-0-473-43798-5.THE STRENGTH of this series of essays in Listening to the People of the Land is the varying perspectives given on the brutal losses forced on Māori by white and Christian colonisation. In fact, if New Zealand was a truly just society, the teachings here would be a significant part of our school curriculum. Editor Susan Healy draws the outline in the first 95 pages. Her chapter raises the occasional quibble and sometimes seems to downplay how inextricably interwoven were the settler culture and the Christian church in 1800s New Zealand.

Bicultural encounter

ABSTRACTThis article discusses large group encounter in the context of biculturalism, a concept that is specific to the relationship and engagement between indigenous and settler cultures, especially, though not exclusively in countries such as Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States of America. It is written by five colleagues who work in the same tertiary educational institution, albeit in different roles. The discussion is framed in the context both of person-centered approaches to encounter and of group analytic approaches to large groups. It is illustrated with reference to a practice of community kōrero (speech, discussion, conversation), and a way of facilitating a group theory and practice paper (class), following which the last two parts of the article offer some critical reflections on the interface between culture, specifically in a bicultural context, and encounter.

Alfred Dampier's ‘Shakespearean Fridays’

Throughout the British Empire, visiting and immigrating professional actors ‘from the old country’ realized and reinforced for settler cultures a dominant imperial identity. In Australia, Alfred Dampier (1843–1908) and his company exploited the opportunities that this cultural milieu offered by staging austere, ‘reverential’, well-elocuted Shakespearean productions which raised their artistic status and asserted their respectability while enabling Dampier to offer as well, without censorship or public condemnation, dramatizations of sensational and controversial bushranger and convict narratives.

Riders to the Sea between Regionalism and Universality: A Cultural Perspective

This study aims at discussing Riders to the Sea; it aims to investigate nationalism and cultural identity as two significant ways against the English cultural colonialism. Though many critics regard J.M. Synge as; and thus consider him as an example of regional dramatist because his works are related to the local Irish material. However; this study aims to correct this vision of Synge as only about Irish Celtic culture, but as an innovator of the Irish theatre and as a culturalist who shifted Irish theatre into a universal scope. Thus, though Synge's fame is due to his treatment of the "folk" drama; still, he finds in Ireland’s folk tales, myths, and traditional legends a rich source for universal interests. By tracing the reinforcement of the Irish setting and oral culture for a cultural function which aims at establishing the Irish identity and reviving its national heritage, the study argues that Synge's dramatic presentations were not only of regional or local value; but also of international and cultural significance. That is though J.M. Synge introduces his theme in a local Irish context, with a particular focus on peasants; he was able to transform the Irish theatre from the local context to universality.

Refusing (Mis)Recognition: Navigating Multiple Marginalization in the U.S. Two Spirit Movement

I focus on the discursive strategies within Two Spirit events and groups that center the definition of ‘Two Spirit’ first and foremost as an Indigenous identity by using both unifying/mass terms (Native American, glbtiq) and culturally & community specific terms (specific tribe names, Two Spirit). Rather than selecting a “right” term, such conversations highlight the constant, simultaneous positionings negotiated by Two Spirit people in their daily lives, and the tensions between recognizability and accuracy; communality and specificity; indigeneity and settler culture; and the burden multiply marginalized people carry in negotiating between all of those metaphorical and literal spaces. Drawing on Simpson’s (2014) concept of the politics of refusal, I demonstrate how Two Spirit individuals utilize available categories of identity, not as either/or binaries but rather as overlapping concepts— differentiated along micro- and macro- scales— to refuse attempts to both reduce the Two Spirit identity to one that is based either in gender or sexuality, and the appropriation of the identity and movement by non-Indigenous individuals and groups within broader national and global queer movements.

Yugoslavia: other modernities, other histories

ABSTRACTThe Non-Aligned Movement was a transnational political project, a coalition of small and middle-sized states, mostly former colonies and developing countries, from the global south or the Third World. It was formed in 1961 in Yugoslavia at the Belgrade summit. The NAM represented the first major disruption in the Cold World map, a quest for alternative political alliances, for “alternative mundialization.” Culture was accorded particular importance in the NAM, despite the fact that it never took center-stage at summits and conferences. However, NAM’s cultural politics strongly condemned cultural imperialism and epistemic colonialism. Western (European) cultural heritage was to be understood in terms of “juxtaposition”; this heritage would be interwoven with and into the living culture of the colonized, and would not simply be repeated under new (political) circumstances. Consequently art and culture in the NAM were largely about politics and history, or to put it differently, they were a way of staking a claim to history. It seems the movement was somehow aware of the fact that this was the only way it could enter the world’s (cultural) space on an equal footing. There existed a heterogeneous artistic production, a variety of cultural politics and extensive cultural networks which enriched the cultural landscape of the NAM and enabled discussions about the meaning of art outside the Western canon.

Absent Others: Asian-Australian Discontinuities in Michelle de Kretser’s The Lost Dog

This article relies on the tropes of trauma and gothic haunting to examine Michelle de Kretser’s The Lost Dog (2007), in which the protagonist’s discarded Indianness allegorically parallels Australia’s unwillingness to confront the ghosts of its past. As the novel and its critique of settler culture seem to suggest, the Australian nation should arguably develop alternative cultural paradigms that seek to accommodate both otherness and the most unwelcome aspects of its history, instead of repressing them.

The global imperialism project: lessons from television, movies and radio

Old and latest trends in discussions in the sphere of the role of mass communication in media and cultural imperialism have centred on cultural hegemony and cultural colonialism among other such lines of ideological debate. Some debates have also pointed to globalization as the only way to spread development across the world. Others see globalization as portending some dangers for the cultures of developing countries as they will end up being annihilated. Based on the premise that mass communication and mass media have led to cultural imperialism in the world, the essay uses the cases of music, television programming, television news and films to discuss how United States of America, especially, has dominated the cultures of other countries through the latter’s consumption of American cultural products. Pivoted on the cultural imperialism theoretical framework, the discussion moved a step further by looking at the concept of cultural/media imperialism as Americanization of both the media and the cultural landscapes of the world and no more a generalization of Western countries dominating the cultures of developing countries – this is because some of the Western countries themselves have become victims of this phenomenon of Americanization. It is now therefore the issue of Americanization of the cultures of the world. Keywords: hegemony, media, mass communication, imperialism, globalization

A Phenomenological Study of Adaptability, Multiple Identities, and Acculturative Strengths as an Iranian Immigrant in Malaysia

Acculturation as a lived experience refers to cultural learning and adaptation in the context of continuous cross-cultural experience through the way acculturating individuals live in the real world. Retrospective phenomenological research and self-observation analysis in cross-cultural contexts may contribute to the field in various ways including theory development, counter narratives, and innovative interventions. The current phenomenological case study focuses on emergent acculturative strengths of adaptability and possible identities: 1) cultural colonialism; 2) climate of the new culture: 3) conscious and unconscious imitation: 4) freedom from social norms; 5) paradox of language competence; and 6) concept of marginality. Implications for new approaches to acculturation theory development and research are addressed.

Beyond futebol and language: what have we missed from not paying Brazilian constitutionalism its due attention? Reflections from Chile

This essay proposes a critical and comparative reflection focusing on the lack of ‘constitutional dialogue’ Chile has developed with Brazil – and vice versa. After proposing a couple of contentions to explain this lack of attention (cultural and constitutional colonialism, on the one hand, coupled with Brazil geopolitical power, on the other), it moves on to lament what this lack of attention has deprived Chile from. As it discusses the means to overcome the lack of legitimacy that affects Chile’s constitutional text, it calls attention to some of the reasons that may explain, and actually justify, the celebratory tone the Brazilian Constitution’s 30 th anniversary has acquired.

‘Raising high its thousand forked tongues’: Campfires, Bushfires, and Portable Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century Australia

This article explores the significance of the campfire to Australian settler culture in the nineteenth century. Considering the paradox that campfires could be both comforting and evoke terror, the piece considers how they provided a link between the northern and southern hemispheres. Drawing on a range of primary materials — many of which have been forgotten — the article addresses the thin boundary between warmth and tragedy that came to be associated with campfires. Furthermore, it examines connections between fire and the emergence of an Australian settler identity, along with the bush dweller’s role in changing the face of the wilderness and its fire ecology.

Shamanic striptease

Abstract This article explores a performance called Salvation: Shamanic Striptease. It considers how my co-creation of this spiritual–erotic work with white South African performer Daniel P. Cunningham1 has elaborated ‘shamanic striptease’ – an emergent practice through which he seeks to discover movement and vocalization (words and song) that yield deep significance for him (as performer) and for those who witness his performance. This is a process in which somatic and semiotic meaning are negotiated. Inspired by the vision of seminal Polish theatre practitioner Jerzy Grotowski (1933–99), shamanic striptease looks for what might be called naïve expression, that is, a close merging of intention and action that generates a dense performance open to multiple interpretations. Our working process opens up considerations of the relationships between performers’ and audiences’ experiences, the multivalence of identity and searches for the transcendental in a cosmopolitan context of London. Special consideration is given in this essay to how the identity politics of postcolonial white settler culture intersect with queer cisgender expressions of masculinity.

Deep Time and Disaster

Abstract In the late summer of 2009, a massive firestorm swept through more than one million acres of dense bush in the southeast corner of Australia, killing 173 people and leaving more than 7,000 homeless. In the aftermath of the disaster, commentators almost universally described the blaze as “unprecedented.” This essay examines that claim in the light of contextualizing environmental histories and finds that although such firestorms are rare, they are far from unprecedented; they are in fact a necessary part of the cycle of regeneration in certain types of eucalypt forest. The idea that a never-before-witnessed event is unprecedented calls into question the shallow temporal frames through which deep time environmental phenomena are understood in Australian settler culture and offers an insight into often unnoticed ways in which contemporary society struggles with the colonial legacy. This struggle sits next to the ambition of land management authorities to adopt traditional Indigenous mosaic-patterned cool-burning techniques as part of a fire mitigation strategy, without directly addressing the colonial history inscribed on the land they are commissioned to manage.

From Empire to Eurasia: Politics, Scholarship, and Ideology in Russian Eurasianism, 1920s–1930s by Sergey Glebov

Reviewed by: From Empire to Eurasia: Politics, Scholarship, and Ideology in Russian Eurasianism, 1920s–1930s by Sergey Glebov Stefan Wiederkehr (bio) Sergey Glebov, From Empire to Eurasia: Politics, Scholarship, and Ideology in Russian Eurasianism, 1920s–1930s (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2017). 237 pp. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-0-87580-750-8. Sergey Glebov offers the reader a brilliant account of one of the most fascinating intellectual movements in the Russian emigration. The Eurasian thinkers were young exiles who, at the beginning of the 1920s, argued that the former Russian Empire constituted a third continent – "Eurasia" – between Europe and Asia and that Western institutions such as parliamentarian democracy and capitalism were inadequate for this continent. Glebov analyzes Eurasianism based on more archival sources than anyone before and persuasively places the thinking of the Eurasianists in the struggles of modernity in late imperial Russia and Europe. He argues that Eurasianism was an "imperial phenomenon" not only in the sense of an ideology of restoring the empire but "the product of the imperial situation, of the unevenness and heterogeneity of the social and cultural space of imperial Russia, in which the conspicuous absence of bourgeois institutions coexisted with the rising critique of the philistine bourgeois order by [End Page 341] intellectuals, and the aristocratic and religious rejection of the universal aspirations of modernity combined with a critique of Eurocentrism and cultural colonialism" (P. 6). In contrast to earlier research, he stresses the heterogeneity of Eurasianism and the fact that the contradicting interpretations and ideas of its leaders overlapped only for a short time in the 1920s. It is this period of a basic consensus among various currents within Eurasianism that Glebov examines. The revival of Eurasianism in post-Soviet Russia is beyond the scope of his study. In the first chapter "Exiles from the Silver Age," Glebov sketches the biographies of the Eurasianists' leading troika and other important participants in the Eurasian movement. He stresses the backgrounds of Nikolai Sergeevich Trubetskoi (1890–1938), Petr Petrovich Suvchinskii (1892–1985), and Petr Nikolaevich Savitskii (1895–1968) in Russian Silver Age culture and the diversity of their origin. The Trubetskois belonged to the highest echelons of Moscow's aristocracy. At the same time, some of them were eminent philosophers with established academic positions and networks. Nikolai Trubetskoi's father, Sergei, was the first elected rector of Moscow University and instrumental in the liberal movement in the late Russian Empire. Suvchinskii's father was a successful businessman in the oil sector. The family of Russified Polish-Ukrainian nobles lived in St. Petersburg and had an estate near Kiev. Savitskii originated from the section of the Ukrainian gentry that was loyal to the imperial state and the Russian language. His father was active in the Zemstvo movement and became a member of the State Council in 1906. The three later Eurasianists had also opted for diverse educational and career paths. Trubetskoi published his first scholarly article in Etnograficheskoe obozrenie at the age of fifteen, studied linguistics in Moscow, and was well on the way to a brilliant academic career when the Bolsheviks took power. Suvchinskii was educated at the famous Tenishev School in St. Petersburg, took early music lessons with famous teachers, and in 1915 became the coeditor of one of Russia's leading music journals, which marked the beginning of his activity as a cultural entrepreneur. Savitskii studied economics with Petr Berngardovich Struve at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute. After graduating in 1916 he entered the diplomatic corps and became secretary to the Russian commercial mission in Norway. Therefore, the personal backgrounds of the three principal figures of Eurasianism may actually be more diverse than previous research suggested. They did, however, belong to the privileged rich and well-educated elite of the [End Page 342] Russian Empire, as did all the other key Eurasianists. What they also shared was the common experience of biographical rupture by the triple catastrophe of World War I, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Civil War, which eventually forced them into exile. That said, in the second chapter, "The Mongol-Bolshevik Revolution," Glebov argues that rather than autocracy, the Eurasianist generational rhetoric attacked the still weak bourgeois society and the radical...

Writing Water, Writing Life: Silko as Environmental Activist

Writing Water, Writing LifeSilko as Environmental Activist Christina Boyles (bio) As concerns regarding the earth’s water resources continue to grow, Indigenous communities are often thrust to the forefront of these conflicts. Protests at Standing Rock and the Tar Sands have highlighted the challenges they face when trying to access clean water. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Indigenous peoples are some of the hardest hit by government and corporate entities seeking to privatize water for profit. One of the communities most affected by water politics are the Indigenous peoples of Arizona and New Mexico, whose water supply is being drained, polluted, and rerouted due to corporate and government interests. The work of Leslie Marmon Silko, who is a member of the Laguna Pueblo of New Mexico, is mired in the concerns of her community, particularly issues of water scarcity. While Silko discusses the role of water in Native American communities in the Southwest in each of her works, those written post-1990—Almanac of the Dead, Sacred Water, Gardens in the Dunes, and Oceanstory—examine it in the greatest depth. These texts highlight the tension between imperial interests and Indigenous knowledge, focusing specifically on issues of water scarcity to demonstrate the need for an environmental ethos grounded in Indigenous practices. Since water allocation cannot be separated from either environmental or racial factors, Silko’s texts critique (eco)colonialism’s relationship to Native American communities and their water supply. In Almanac of the Dead, Silko discusses how large quantities of water are both used and contaminated by uranium mining, an act that has the greatest impact on the nearby Native American reservations. In Sacred Water, Silko presents a solution to water scarcity and contamination by advocating for sustainable irrigation, farming, and gardening practices. In Gardens in the Dunes, Silko addresses issues of population growth and landscaping [End Page 10] in the American Southwest, noting that current trends are detrimental to the water supply. Her most recent publication, an e-novella entitled Oceanstory, completes her discussion of water by drawing connections between colonialism and environmental degradation. Silko’s work directly challenges the settler logics inherent in the environmental movement for its investment in the narrative of Indigenous erasure. By focusing on the preservation of “pristine” landscapes—many of which are stolen Indigenous lands now operating under the guise of natural parks—environmentalists fail to address the ways in which climate change poses the greatest threat for marginalized groups, especially Native communities in the Southwest. Silko notes that “[t]hose who claim to love and protect the Mother Earth have to love all of her, even the places that are no longer pristine” (Yellow Woman 95). One way for activists to do this is by acknowledging the environmental conditions in many Native communities. Cultural studies scholar Andrea Smith notes that “ecofeminist thinkers do not adequately discuss the material conditions in which Indian people live, how these conditions affect non-Indians, and what strategies we can employ to stop the genocide of Indian people and end the destructive forms of resource development on Indian land” (30). In her work on Almanac of the Dead, Bridget O’Meara argues that “[a]n environmental movement that does not consistently and consciously foreground the relationship between the degradation of ecosystems and the violence against labor within gendered, racialized, and sexualized discourses and practices of capitalism merely serves and strengthens capital’s interests in (neo)colonial and (neo)imperial projects” (71). Silko provides an ethical approach to environmentalism in her novels both by highlighting the harm created by settler culture and by demonstrating the ways in which Indigenous knowledge promotes healthier ways of being for both people and the ecosystem. T. V. Reed terms Silko’s approach “decolonial environmental justice cultural studies” to emphasize the ways it challenges imperialist logics of economics, race, and the environment. Reed’s assessment provides a powerful foundation for many key components of Silko’s philosophy; this piece builds upon it by noting the interplay between Indigenous knowledge and decolonial projects. Decolonial environmental projects, often aligned with the “environmental justice” movement, address the needs of individuals “from an assortment of racial and social class backgrounds; they [End Page 11] are African, Latino, Asian, Native, and...