Collection: Decolonization
As a taster of our publishing in Decolonization, we put together a collection of free articles, chapters and Open Access titles. If you are interested in trying out more content from our Global Social Challenges collections, ask your librarian to sign up for a free trial
Decolonization
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 20 items
There is a growing literature on the legacy of colonial social policies in sub-Saharan Africa. In the UN subregion Middle Africa, the colonial period is marked by concession economies. However, the francophone and especially the iberophone countries of this region are largely ignored in the literature. A literature-based historical sociology approach is used to answer two research questions to address this gap: What were the driving forces of social policies in concession economies? And what is their post-colonial legacy? Case studies of the concession economies of Angola, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and São Tomé e Príncipe have been made. They reveal three key drivers of social services and schemes in concession economies: the scarcity of labour, domestic pressure and international pressure. The social services and schemes provided varied. They were most extensive in company towns where at the end of the colonial period the social reproduction of the workforce was possible, less extensive in what could be termed company villages, smaller in the scattered plantations and forest camps, and too small to create a permanent workforce in one concession. However, in a context of population growth, labour was no longer scarce and lost its bargaining power. Governmental and especially international pressure supported the reversal of social services through privatisation and informalisation. The quality of these services and schemes generally declined after independence. Therefore, labour scarcity is a key condition for the provision of social services by concession companies.
In early 2022, over 30 years after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its first report on the challenges posed by climate change and four subsequent Assessment Reports later, the word ‘colonialism’ finally entered its official lexicon. The sixth report on ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’ references colonialism, not only as a historical driver of the climate crisis, but also as something that continues to exacerbate the vulnerabilities of communities to it (). As argues, this comes in the wake of long-standing arguments made by Indigenous groups and others on the frontline of climate change about the centrality of colonialism to comprehending and responding to the crisis. The last decade has also seen a significant increase in scholarly literature that draws explicit links between colonialism and climate change – much of which is referenced in the latest IPCC report. While formal acknowledgement of this relationship is long overdue, in this article we argue for caution and precision in the invocation of colonialism within these debates. Following classic article setting out why ‘decolonization is not a metaphor’, we argue relatedly that colonialism needs to be understood as more than a metaphor in climate change debates.
The introduction provides the reader with an overview of the rationale, structure and contents of the book, which is includes a foreword by Arturo Escobar, 15 central chapters, and an afterword by Davina Cooper. The introduction begins by outlining the origins and usefulness of prefigurative politics today and then highlights some of the recurring themes connecting the chapters, including: the relationship between prefigurative politics, state bodies and capitalism; the transformative mechanism of ‘erosion from within’, typical of prefiguration; the challenges of assessing prefigurative initiatives’ capacity to bring progressive social change; the critiques pointing at prefiguration’s exclusionary and insular character; and the need to decolonize the epistemological lenses through which scholars are studying prefigurative politics. Following a brief summary of the 15 chapters, the introduction closes by underlining the vibrancy and interdisciplinarity of this field of research, which is set to keep growing given the necessity to envision more just and sustainable futures.
This introductory chapter explains how the book draws on postcolonial and decoloniality studies to challenge exceptionalist narratives and Eurocentric epistemologies that underly the fields of refugee and forced migration studies. Scholarship from disciplines such as international relations, sociology, criminology, and political science often reveals a curious silence on the continuities of colonialism and historical legacies that inform contemporary refugee phenomena. Postcolonial and decolonial critiques, however, offer ways to move beyond certain dominating analytics of Western thinking and geographies about displacement – the nation-state, border control and humanitarianism. This chapter surveys several productive critiques from postcolonial scholarly engagement with the field of refugee and forced migration policy. Using postcolonial theoretical approaches, the volume as a whole interrogates how the control, securitization, policing and surveillance of mobility follows racialized and geopolitical patterns with colonial and historical roots. Contributors represent a variety of disciplines and employ a creative array of methodological and theoretical tools. Their work requires careful assemblage of social and political theory, historical archival research, and careful analysis to link those histories to the present. The Introduction ends with a brief synopsis of each of the book’s chapters.
The Spanish colonial past permeates the institutions of higher education, configuring the contents and forms of disciplinary knowledge production that constitute it, as is the case of social work. In this article, we visit different scenarios where colonial memories are disputed in the context of the commemorations of 12 October (also called ‘Hispanic Day’ or ‘Race Day’) in Barcelona. Although multiple articulations of anti-racist movements, such as those related to Black Lives Matter, question the material and semiotics that sustain structural racism, colonial cultural layers are still predominant in the Spanish state. Analysis shows how colonial logics nest in social work practice by: first, contributing to the definition of subject positions – such as ‘migrant’ – as problematic and needy of integration policies and intervention; and, second, making structural racism invisible through the avoidance of radical analysis and action regarding the cultural layers that sustain and perpetuate institutional racism.
Anti-Racism in Higher Education: An Action Guide for Change is a direct response to the calls to actions and progression in developing and practising anti-racism across the higher education sector. Higher education as a sector and universities play a significant role in advancing society, providing opportunities for people and communities to be liberated and successful through education. Universities hold an intrinsic role in local and national communities and play a significant role in bringing diverse talent to different areas of the United Kingdom. The conception of this book came through the collective action with racialised people of colour who continue to live through, witness, see, hear and be exposed to all forms of racism, from covert exclusion to barriers in career progression and through to the widening degree-awarding gap and cultures that prevent university staff and students from being successful and having the same opportunities as their White counterparts in higher education.
The continuing coronavirus pandemic has combined with other global crises to highlight some of the fundamental challenges of inequality that currently face us. They are global both in their current configuration and their historical constitution. Similarly, any solutions to the challenges represented will be global. The continuing relevance of the social sciences will rest on their ability adequately to conceptualise the global processes involved. It is only by acknowledging the significance of the ‘colonial global’ that it will be possible to understand and address the necessarily postcolonial present that is the context for issues of inequality in the present. This article argues for the need to consider our colonial past as the basis for thinking about contemporary configurations of the global. This is followed by an address of the implications of these arguments for how we understand citizenship and belonging in the present. What is needed is a ‘reparatory social science’ committed to undoing the inadequacies that have become lodged in our disciplines and working towards a project of repair and transformation for a world that works for all of us.
The Introduction provides readers with an overview of the significance and merits of political education. Drawing from a variety of different sources of revolutionary thought and emancipatory action, in particular the work of the anti-colonial revolutionary Frantz Fanon, the chapter casts light on the pressing need for education that is explicitly political, and prioritises the development of critical consciousness and collective action. It also introduces readers to the concept of liberal bystanding, and details the pitfalls of individualism, repercussions of falling in line with the status quo, and making the choice to refrain from engaging in solidarity and political struggle.
