Search results
21 – 30 of over 4000What is “postcolonial sociology”? While the study of postcoloniality has taken on the form of “postcolonial theory” in the humanities, sociology's approach to postcolonial issues…
Abstract
What is “postcolonial sociology”? While the study of postcoloniality has taken on the form of “postcolonial theory” in the humanities, sociology's approach to postcolonial issues has been comparably muted. This essay considers postcolonial theory in the humanities and its potential utility for reorienting sociological theory and research. After sketching the historical background and context of postcolonial studies, three broad areas of contribution to sociology are highlighted: reconsiderations of agency, the injunction to overcome analytic bifurcations, and a recognition of sociology's imperial standpoint.
West Papua is a non-self-governing territory without much prominence in international debates. While offering an overview of the province’s political, social and environmental…
Abstract
West Papua is a non-self-governing territory without much prominence in international debates. While offering an overview of the province’s political, social and environmental troubles, this chapter chiefly focuses on concrete issues in the field of education (such as its literacy and early school drop-out rates, inequality in opportunities and access to education, poor infrastructure or the low quality of teaching) through analysis of the educational resources that Indonesia, as administrator of the region, offers to West Papuans. In general, the control that Indonesia exerts over West Papua could be said to rely on the use of violence, repression, expropriation, depopulation, and even indiscriminate killings. Therefore, the chapter also encourages debate on the geopolitical status of West Papua by placing it within the framework of postcolonial studies and suggesting that the notions of necropolitics and necroeducation should be taken as a complementary perspective from which to approach its situation in the study of comparative and international education.
Details
Keywords
In Weberian scholarship, conventional wisdom views the corruption of the modern rational-legal bureaucratic state by local patrimonialisms as an endemic feature in non-Western…
Abstract
In Weberian scholarship, conventional wisdom views the corruption of the modern rational-legal bureaucratic state by local patrimonialisms as an endemic feature in non-Western postcolonial state formation. The resultant neopatrimonial state is often blamed for the social, political, and economic ills plaguing these societies. This essay challenges conventional wisdom and argues that neopatrimonialism is a process of hybrid state formation that has its origins in the cultural politics of colonial state building. This is achieved by drawing on a comparative study of British Malaya and the American Philippines, which offers contrastive trajectories of colonialism and state formation in Southeast Asia.
Because of the precariousness of state power due to local resistance and class conflicts, colonial state building involved the deepening of patron–client relations for political control and of rational-legal bureaucracy for social development. In the process, local political relations were marked and displaced as traditional patrimonialisms distinguished from the new modern center. Through native elite collaborators and paternal-populist discourses, new patron–client relations were institutionalized to connect the colonial state to the native periphery. However, colonial officials with different political beliefs and ethnographic world views in the center competed over native policy and generated cyclical crises between patron-clientelist excess and bureaucratic entrepreneurship.
Instead of the prevailing view that postcolonial states are condemned to their colonial design, and that authoritarian rule favors economic development, my study shows that non-Western state formation is non-linear and follows a cyclical pattern between predation and developmentalism, the excesses of which could be moderated.
Details
Keywords
This chapter examines the changing nature of colonialism through time and the rise of postcolonialism as a Western metaphorical conjuncture declaring the end of colonialism. This…
Abstract
This chapter examines the changing nature of colonialism through time and the rise of postcolonialism as a Western metaphorical conjuncture declaring the end of colonialism. This chapter also reviews and examines the effects of imperialism’s rise and rivalry on colonialism and coloniality.
Details
Keywords
Chapter 8 engages in a round table discussion with Montesquieu (Persian Letters), Fanon (Black Skins, White Masks, Dying Colonialism, and the Wretched of Earth), and Camus (The…
Abstract
Chapter 8 engages in a round table discussion with Montesquieu (Persian Letters), Fanon (Black Skins, White Masks, Dying Colonialism, and the Wretched of Earth), and Camus (The Stranger) posthumously. This chapter explores the inner psyche of the subalterns as they strive to reach decoloniality. This chapter offers suggestions for decolonizing praxis.
Details
Keywords
The issue of the existence and persistence of a labour aristocracy in advanced capitalist countries is connected with the emergence and persistence of an extremely unequal…
Abstract
The issue of the existence and persistence of a labour aristocracy in advanced capitalist countries is connected with the emergence and persistence of an extremely unequal international economic order. The emergence of that order is the direct result of capitalist colonialism. That colonialism helped garner and control resources for the pioneering capitalist countries, which also emerged as the top imperialist countries of the world. The colonial resources were used to support and augment the profits of the capitalist class, but after the immiserizing phase of industrialization had passed, they also helped increase the incomes of workers in the advanced capitalist countries. Workers’ struggles and the threat of such struggles in some phases of development of capitalism led to increases in their incomes. However, there are instances in which the ruling class in the USA and UK deliberately used the lure of private property or acquisition of colonies to try and get their support. Thus, the debate between Post and Cope can only be resolved by invoking the complexities of the patterns of exploitation and governance under actually existing capitalism.
Details
Keywords
This chapter provides an assessment of how the late Portuguese colonial state (especially in Angola and Mozambique) responded to widespread conflict and anticolonial pressures…
Abstract
This chapter provides an assessment of how the late Portuguese colonial state (especially in Angola and Mozambique) responded to widespread conflict and anticolonial pressures. Focusing on its structures, idioms, and strategies of social transformation and control-especially as they relate to the domains of development and security-my assessment of state response emphasizes the coming together of: coercive repertoires of rule; planned developmental strategies of political, economic and social change; and processes of engineering sociocultural difference. The late colonial state’s developmental and repressive facets are critically assessed through mobilizing theoretical perspectives and empirical analysis.
Details
Keywords
Averi R. Fegadel and Michael J. Lynch
The purpose of this study is to explore the genocidal impacts of uranium mining for Native Americans in the Northwest and Northern Plains, as well as their resistance to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the genocidal impacts of uranium mining for Native Americans in the Northwest and Northern Plains, as well as their resistance to historical and contemporary acts of colonialism.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a case study approach, this study gathered qualitative data from various government, tribal and news sources to investigate the extent of ecological violence experienced by Native Americans specific to uranium mining processes on Spokane Indian Reservation, Pine Ridge Reservation and Wind River Reservation.
Findings
Native Americans in the Northwest and Northern Plains are victimized by the capitalism-genocide involved in uranium production. The consequences of the uranium industry boom in the 1950s–1980s has left Native Americans with degraded lands, polluted water sources and a legacy of adverse health effects, including some of the highest rates of cancer.
Social implications
The work discussed in this paper offers possibilities for collaborating with Native Americans to develop more sustainable energy options for the USA to make the necessary shift away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
Originality/value
Prior research has addressed the genocidal impacts of uranium mining for Native Americans in the Southwest USA and claimed these actions were direct consequences of toxic colonialism, capitalistic agendas and the treadmill of production (Fegadel, 2023). Most uranium was recovered from ore deposits within the Colorado Plateau, and most abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) are located within the same region. Tribes residing in the Northwest and Northern Plains have, however, experienced similar plights as those in the Southwest, but these issues have not been widely examined.
Details