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1 – 10 of 423This chapter reviews postcolonialism praxis. Based on the examination of postcolonialism practices, this chapter details why postcolonialism offers nothing different than…
Abstract
This chapter reviews postcolonialism praxis. Based on the examination of postcolonialism practices, this chapter details why postcolonialism offers nothing different than colonialism despite administrative and bureaucratic changes when colonizers left the colonized territories physically.
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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.
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This paper seeks to interrogate the international business and management studies (IBMS) discourse via postcolonial theory. It demonstrates the value of applying postcolonial…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to interrogate the international business and management studies (IBMS) discourse via postcolonial theory. It demonstrates the value of applying postcolonial theory as a critical practice with respect to that substantive domain.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach is to draw on the critical and intellectual resources of postcolonial theory and apply them in an interrogation of IBMS.
Findings
The paper shows the value of applying postcolonial theory to open up the discourse of IBMS, which is revealed to deploy similar types of universalistic, essentialising and exoticising representations to colonial and neo‐colonial discourse. It is revealed to rely on functionalist orthodoxy, realist ontology and neo‐positivist epistemology. Furthermore, it masks its own power effects, fails to make explicit its research commitments, especially its political and ethical ones, and remains deeply unreflexive.
Originality/value
The use of postcolonial theory in relation to organisation studies is in its infancy with only a limited number of studies directly related to that critical practice. This paper, then, is a contribution to an important, but emergent arena of scholarship. The interrogation mounted here points to a radical reconfiguration of the field and indications as to where that might take us are made.
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Immigration-themed children’s literature can be an important resource in the classroom, especially because some U.S. immigrant groups, including French-Canadians, have received…
Abstract
Purpose
Immigration-themed children’s literature can be an important resource in the classroom, especially because some U.S. immigrant groups, including French-Canadians, have received limited curricular representation. Using the qualitative method of critical content analysis, this study aims to examine depictions of French-Canadian immigrants to the United States in contemporary children’s books.
Design/methodology/approach
Postcolonialism is employed as an analytical lens with special attention given to the ways immigrant characters are constructed as different from the dominant group (i.e., othering), how dominant group values are imposed on immigrant characters, and how immigrant characters resist othering and domination. Three books comprise the sample: “Charlotte Bakeman Has Her Say” by Mary Finger and illustrated by Kimberly Batti, “Other Bells for Us to Ring” by Robert Cormier, and “Red River Girl” by Norma Sommerdorf.
Findings
The findings reveal multiple instances in which French-Canadian immigrants are constructed as Other and few instances in which these characters resist this positioning, and these books reflect the real ways French-Canadians were perceived as subalterns during the mass migration from Québec to the United States between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Originality/value
This study is significant because it examines portrayals of a substantial immigrant group that has been overlooked in the immigration history curriculum. This sample of children’s books may be used to teach children the complexities of immigration history and provide a more nuanced understanding of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries.
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Mariana Ines Paludi and Jean Helms Mills
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the critical management literature through a fusion of Latin and North American lenses (one author is from Argentina and one from…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the critical management literature through a fusion of Latin and North American lenses (one author is from Argentina and one from Canada), to question the extant women in management literature, which is rooted in an epistemology that serves to construct the notion of a broad, universal set of expectations of the role of men, women and managers, in which other ethnic groups, in this case men and women from so-called Latin American countries, are taken for granted.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a critical sensemaking lens, the paper explores the narratives of female executives in Argentina to help us understand how these women make sense of their careers within a Latin American context and the implications and outcomes of this understanding. The paper's approach involves three interrelated elements – feminist poststructuralism, postcolonialism and critical sensemaking.
Findings
The narratives from the Argentinian executives reveals the tension between different cultures and idiosyncrasies among countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico; and that the way to navigate those differences entails understanding and learning about the other. These executive women from Argentina – las jefas – are heard mainly because they represent the managerial identity that multi-national corporations foster in any overseas branch.
Research limitations/implications
In terms of the data used in this study, the paper acknowledges that this is an exploratory study that allows us to access women's stories from a pre-existing source. The paper recognizes that the authors are limited by the texts that are secondary sources, and if the authors had been able to conduct the interviews themselves they might have asked different questions.
Practical implications
The findings of this research can help organizations to develop and implement a pluriversal and inclusive equity training programme through and awareness of the sensemaking of those involved.
Originality/value
The use of a critical framework on postcolonialism, feminism and postructuralism together with critical sensemaking to understand female executives from the South of America.
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Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee and Anshuman Prasad
The purpose of this paper is to present a short note on postcolonialism as a field of critical inquiry in the business management field, and enable the guest editors to introduce…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a short note on postcolonialism as a field of critical inquiry in the business management field, and enable the guest editors to introduce the contents of a special issue entitled “Critical reflections on management and organization: a postcolonial perspective”.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper states that postcolonial theory seeks to critique and analyze the complex and multifaceted dynamics of modern Western colonialism and to develop an in‐depth understanding of the ongoing significance of the colonial encounter for people's lives both in the West and the non‐West.
Findings
The paper finds that modern western colonialism – a phenomenon with a history of roughly 500 years and a geographical reach that at one point spanned approximately 90 percent of the entire earth – is an episode of particular significance in human history.
Originality/value
The paper shows that the special issue contents reflect different aspects of contemporary issues in postcolonialism. In terms of postcolonial geographies, the special issue papers cover regions as diverse as Africa, Australia, China, India, Jordan, Malaysia, Poland, and the UK.
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This chapter outlines the underpinning author’s perspective to explain the approach to decoloniality and untangle the current praxis and research method from coloniality. This…
Abstract
This chapter outlines the underpinning author’s perspective to explain the approach to decoloniality and untangle the current praxis and research method from coloniality. This chapter also describes the subsequent chapters’ structure, moving from colonialism and its roots to decoloniality in practice and research.
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This essay seeks to extend the original gambit of this forum, of thinking possible modes of postcolonial sociology, unto a more relational terrain. It takes as its point of…
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This essay seeks to extend the original gambit of this forum, of thinking possible modes of postcolonial sociology, unto a more relational terrain. It takes as its point of departure the vexed status of history in sociology and the hermeneutic suspicion of comparison in postcolonial theory. Any potential rapprochement between postcolonial theory and sociology must engage with the deeply incongruent status of history and comparison across these fields. I attempt to bridge this divide historically by revisiting an anti-imperial internationalist sociology forged in interwar colonial India. I seek thereby to show what Pierre Bourdieu called a “particular case of the possible” and to participate in ongoing efforts to “provincialize” sociology.
Brad S. Long and Albert J. Mills
The purpose of this paper is three‐fold: to extend the scope of postcolonial theory to organizational analysis; to extend the scope of organizational analysis to the study of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is three‐fold: to extend the scope of postcolonial theory to organizational analysis; to extend the scope of organizational analysis to the study of supranational organizations; and to examine the impact of postcolonial organizational thought on the conception and treatment of the Rwandan people.
Design/methodology/approach
Organizational (in)action, both prior to and during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, is subjected to postcolonial organizational analysis.
Findings
It is shown that so‐called global organizational relations are mediated by supranational organizations, such as the United Nations, whose organizational structuring and practices are rooted in imperialist and postcolonial thinking.
Research limitations/implications
It is recognised that the account of events presents an alternative but partial history of events in Rwanda.
Practical implications
The response to genocide in Rwanda by the global community represents a challenge to the promise of globalization, which posits that multinational organizational integration based on mutual interest is achievable.
Originality/value
The paper destablizes the notion of globalization and global cooperation by raising questions about the asymmetrical contexts in which supranational organizations operate.
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