From Global Colonialism To Global Coloniality

Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2020

European colonialisms (circa. Late 1400) are complex, particularized, and changing political- economic-social-religious systems of domination. In the pursuit of capital accumulation and appropriation, Western European colonialisms generated and benefited from racialized and racist logics. Following the “formal” decolonization of much, but not all, of the colonized world—from Haiti in 1804, to Cameroon in 1960, to Papua New Guinea in 1975, to Timor-Leste in 2002—colonial structures, relations, and imaginaries often persisted in altered forms. Social scientists draw variously from political economy and historical materialism as well as postcolonial thought and cultural materialism within the broader field of colonial studies to both critique European colonialisms of the past and reveal the persistence(s) of colonial relations/structures in the present. Colonial “durabilities” and the “coloniality of being” continue to inform post-colonial political economies, social relations, and knowledge productions, creations, circulations, and contestations. The protraction of colonial domination(s) into the early 21st Century have given rise to reinvigorations of anti-colonial and postcolonial critique, including decolonial options and polygonal projects of decolonization. Widespread discontent regarding the persistence of “colonialism in the present” are manifested in the vocal and visible debates within early 21st Century universities around decolonizing knowledge, including struggles to decolonize the discipline of geography.

Political Geography, 2022

2009

Historical research on colonialist enterprises in different parts of the world is en vogue. One reason for this attention is a new search for the origins of today's globalising processes, of which colonialism is seen as one of the starting points. Having long been designed within the analytic framework of the nation state, historical research has recently suggested that solely national approaches are insufficient to analyse these potentially global relations and has consequently drawn its attention to the exchanges and interactions between colonial regimes, colonising and colonised societies and the common context of a colonial global order. This attention to global entanglements and the search for their early manifestations thus resulted in an adaptation of transnational approaches to the history of colonialism, approaches that try to overcome the nation state as the organising principle of historical narratives. 1 The methodological debate on how transnational histories of colonialisms should be written drew attention to comparisons, transfers and intertwinements between colonies and colonising powers. 2

Rethinking Colonialism, 2015

Colonialism involves the acquisition of full or partial control over another country, occupying it with settlers and exploiting it financially. The edited volume Rethinking Colonialism: Comparative Archaeological Approaches provides a series of essays that bring together spatially and temporally disparate narratives to examine colonialism and its impacts on communities in the past and present. The editors repeatedly emphasize two key components of colonialism: it is both highly variable and also an ongoing phenomenon. The latter of these points is at odds with the opinion of many, who view colonialism as a historical concept that plays no role in modern life. This narrow perspective fails to recognize that many of the colonized and their descendants still live with the effects of colonialism. Craig N. Cipolla and Katherine Howlett Hayes have brought together an edited volume that uses the lens of comparative colonialism to examine both its historical and modern responses. A comparative approach is useful for drawing together generalizable concepts including the imposition or resistance to colonial power, and also assessing if there are common outcomes. The crosscutting perspective allows for critical consideration of ideas and concepts associated with colonialism. It creates a space that indicates that there is much variety in the experiences of people on both sides of colonialism and these people and experiences are "variously gendered, racialized, aged, and occupied peoples of a multitude of faiths, desires, associations, and constraints" (Hayes and Cipolla 2015:1). In this review, several of the chapters are highlighted to indicate key ideas. The stated goals of the volume are to make use of critical comparative perspectives related to the processes of colonialism, and to examine the impact of those processes on contemporary communities. Hayes and Cipolla note the importance of considering that scalar tensions, such as "the specific versus the general, the historical versus the anthropological, and the broadly drawn perspective on human history versus the local and individual experiences, help identify common concepts and categories of colonialism, and that these tensions can also be used to deconstruct those" (Hayes and Cipolla:3). The editors call for and achieve a balanced approach that recognizes the variation amongst the experiences of both the colonizers and the colonized. Most of the works within the volume meet or make a serious effort to meet the goals put forth. Cipolla (Ch. 2), in his stand-alone chapter describes work related to the Brothertown Indians of New York and Wisconsin and the Eastern Pequot of Connecticut and the shift in architectural, material, and commemorative practices of these groups in response to

Public Culture, 2002

Imperialism and colonialism insistently intrude upon political and cultural discussion despite the disappearance of imperialism from political language except as a term of critical approbation, and formal repudiation of colonialism as a legitimate or acceptable practice in world politics. Within the context of an international order based upon globally recognized norms of national sovereignty, the relationships these terms refer to seem much more problematic than they were in the heyday of a Euromodern order in the early twentieth century, when "empire" was born as a badge of honor, and colonial possessions were proudly displayed in world's fairs as signs of civilizational ascendancy. 1 As imperialism and colonialism were disavowed after 1945, the persistence of the inequalities they had shaped and the struggles of postcolonial states for development rendered them much more complicated as concepts than simple descriptions of domination and submission, Scholarship on imperialism and colonialism, especially the latter, has proliferated since the early 1950s, albeit with fluctuations in interest, as well as shifting pardigms. 2 The relationships suggested by those terms, and how we understand them, have been blurred further by economic and cultural globalization, which may account for the extensive interest in the subject the last two decades.

Historical research on colonialist enterprises in different parts of the world is en vogue. One reason for this attention is a new search for the origins of today's globalising processes, of which colonialism is seen as one of the starting points. Having long been designed within the analytic framework of the nation state, historical research has recently suggested that solely national approaches are insufficient to analyse these potentially global relations and has consequently drawn its attention to the exchanges and interactions between colonial regimes, colonising and colonised societies and the common context of a colonial global order. This attention to global entanglements and the search for their early manifestations thus resulted in an adaptation of transnational approaches to the history of colonialism, approaches that try to overcome the nation state as the organising principle of historical narratives. 1 The methodological debate on how transnational histories of colonialisms should be written drew attention to comparisons, transfers and intertwinements between colonies and colonising powers. 2

Over the last decade, discourses of globalization and postcoloniality have diminished the value of the concept of colonialism not only for the present but for our understanding of the past. The history of the last five hundred years has been reworked as a march toward globality, and the power relations that shaped global history have disappeared into localized contin-I am grateful to a number of friends and colleagues for taking the time to read and comment on this article. Their advice and encouragement were much appreciated, even when

A map can take one from Point A to Point B. Or it can depict where one “belongs” and where one does not. What does it mean to be “lost?” What’s on a map? How are maps useful? Are maps graphic depictions of something real? If not, then why do we use them? This course explores the meanings human beings have attached to “space” and “place” throughout the modern period, especially the ways in which spatial representations have been employed as forms of power in processes of colonization and decolonization. Much of the course focuses on the legacy of European colonialism in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It considers the effects of colonialism on the histories, geographies, and identities of “the colonized” and “the colonizer,” as well as those in between. The course commences with readings on colonial and postcolonial theory and then focuses on the spatial practices of colonial powers and the anti-colonial movements they spawned. It considers the spatial legacy of colonialism in formerly colonized territories to examine residual spatial practices of the colonial state and how postcolonial states have leveraged these practices for their own interests or established spatial practices of their own. In addition to these more local forces, the course considers the spatial legacy of global capitalism and how Cold War competition affected it. Finally, the course considers how societies have countered state spatial representations and other attempts to depict and control space and place, as well as the bodies and resources they contain. Overall, the student should come away from the course with an appreciation for the ways scholars have wrestled with the complexity and contingency of colonialism in spatial terms, along with its effects on the lives of the human beings living in colonial and postcolonial spaces. In short, taking this course should make the student more aware of the spatial discourses and practices in which power has been employed in the past and in the present.

The Humanitarian Leader, 2024

This article uses coloniality as an analytical framework to critique the concept of localisation. It argues that localisation is inadequate to respond to the asymmetrical power dynamic that it seeks to dislodge. Fundamentally, this is because localisation does not account for coloniality, which is the underlying logic of colonialism embedded within the humanitarian sector. Positionality and funding are two factors that enable organisations in the ‘Global North’ to remain powerful even through localisation, but this article goes further to interrogate how epistemic and methodological coloniality reinforces and maintains subordination of organisations in the ‘Global South.’ Ironically, localisation seeks to recognise knowledge and experience from the ‘local’, but largely, this knowledge and experience must be produced through the methods and systems of the ‘Global North’. This is self-defeating because institutions in the ‘Global North’ gatekeep methods and practices and perpetuate a capacity gap that prevents effective localisation.