Books on the topic 'World - Post-Colonial Studies'

The concept of the literary canon is one of the most debated and controversial in the western intellectual tradition. This book offers ten contributions by Italian scholars of Anglo-American culture addressing the way in which the concept of the literary canon holds out against areas traditionally considered as external or extraneous to it. The essays range over different topics: the etymological analysis of the term "canon"; the relations between canon and performativity; paraliterature – a universe populated by non-hierarchic genres; the relations between post-colonial literature and the canon; postmodern biofiction; studies on translation and finally gay and lesbian literature. The book ends with a meditation on the innovations wrought on the Anglo-American canon by the virtual world of Internet and with a reading proposal originating from a different area of literary studies. Taken as a whole, the intention of the book is to pave the way to democratisation and pluralism in literary studies, going beyond the limitations set by the traditional scale of values of the "western canon". It proposes a frequentation of the geographical and cultural borderlines and hence of the areas of resistance that such borderlines pose to the dominant conceptual hierarchies within and around us, enabling us to glimpse an original future for literature and for western culture in a broader sense.

Postcolonial critique reveals the Eurocentrism of discourses and practices surrounding ‘development’. This volume opens up perspectives on combating global inequality beyond a Eurocentric world view. The authors analyse the colonial continuities of current development cooperation, explore decolonial strategies in research and practice, and outline alternatives in terms of post-development. Julia Schöneberg is a research assistant at the University of Kassel on the DFG project ‘Theorizing Post-Development. Towards a reinvention of development theory’. Aram Ziai is head of the Department of Development Policy and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel. With contributions by Frauke Banse, Anne-Katharina Wittmann, Albert Denk, Esther Kronsbein, Christine Klapeer, Julia Plessing, Meike Strehl, Julia Schöneberg, Gabriela Monteiro und Ruth Steuerwald, Fiona Faye, Jacqueline Krause and Joshua KwesiAikins.

Through a broad range of case studies spanning from imperial monuments to rural residences, Malayan Classicism puts forward a fundamentally new understanding of classical architecture in the Asian colonial context. Across Malaysia and Singapore, thousands of historic buildings are richly ornamented with motifs drawn from Ancient Greece and Rome - as plump volutes, lush acanthus leaves, and neat rows of dentils decorate mosques, palaces, government buildings and innumerable terraced shophouses. These classical details jostle with ideas drawn from other architectural traditions from across Asia in a style that is unique to the region. Presenting the first comprehensive account of what was, prior to World War II, Malaya’s most widespread architectural style, Malayan Classicism explores how the classical architecture of the British Empire was transmitted, translated, and transformed in the hands of local builders and architects. Addressing a critical gap in the scholarship, this book charts the metamorphosis of an imperial language of power into a local vernacular style, and provides a new way of reading classical architecture in a post-colonial context that will be applicable throughout the Global South.

The history of global Anglicanism is dominated by two master narratives. In the narrative of post-colonial studies, Anglican expansion is one aspect of the expansion of the British Empire. Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) reconfigured imperialism as cultural domination of the non-Western world, and the imposition of Western styles of religion. The contrasting narrative of mission studies focuses on the victory of the ‘indigenous’ over the ‘foreign’ in the spread of Christianity. Heavily influenced by the works of Lamin Sanneh, this narrative regards missionaries as detonators of indigenous Church growth. This chapter suggests a new narrative of global Anglicanism in which the antagonistic binary struggle between the ‘foreign’ and the ‘indigenous’ is replaced with a dialectical narrative of conflict and collaboration. Western and non-Western Christians cooperate in the ‘contact zone’ of mission and diocese to create a new global Anglicanism, one that is neither fully indigenous nor fully foreign, but new.

The 1947 Partition of British India remains the largest instance of forced migration in the recorded human history. Despite the passage of time, it is still widely seen as a process of singular distress and sorrow. Yet, for those in the subcontinent, the Partition also offers a process of self-exploration for subsequent generations. This book is the first collection of chapters related to the Partition studies wherein experts of various disciplines from the three major modern nation-states affected by this cataclysm—Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan—have closely collaborated to develop a nuanced assessment of the Partition as active in the present. The book casts a somber yet uplifting light on the enormous challenges the Partition imposed on societies struggling to emerge from generations of colonial rule into a post-war world depleted of resources and a future of uncertain prospects.

A concise overview of Spanish America during the colonial era (1492-1825), this study attempts a synthesis of Iberian and Latin American historical narratives within the context of world history. Spanish civilization was transferred to the Americas as Spain imposed its medieval Catholic culture upon the Americas successfully replacing the elite cultures of the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas. Iberian culture became indigenous by way of cross-culturalization, and Creole elites found independence inevitable once their way of life became defined by American circumstances. Truxillo places emphasis on the big picture through examination of broad developments such as the rise and fall of Pre-Columbian civilizations, Baroque culture in Latin America, and the role of the Enlightenment in Spanish American independence. He details the career of Tlacaelel, the conquest of Mexico, European rivalry in the New World, and the crisis of government in the post-independence period both in Spain and the New World. The study also discusses developments in the fields of cultural studies and World Systems in the context of the acculturation of indigenous peoples to Iberian norms and the evolution of the Seville-based system of trade. Further, it examines the process by which the Bourbon reforms alienated Spanish American elites and prepared the way for independence.

Which is the identity of a traveler who is constantly on the move between cultures and languages? What happens with stories when they are transmitted from one place to another, when they are retold, remade, translated and re-translated? What happens with the scholars themselves, when they try to grapple with the kaleidoscopic diversity of human expression in a constantly changing world? These and related questions are, if not given a definite answer, explored in the chapters of this anthology. Its overall topic, narratives that pass over national, language and ethnical borders include studies about transcultural novels, poetry, drama and the narratives of journalism. There is a broad geographic diversity, not only in the anthology as a whole, but also in each of the single contributions. This in turn demand a multitude of theoretical and methodological approaches, which cover a spectrum of concepts from such different sources as post-colonial studies, linguistics, religion, aesthetics, art and media studies, often going beyond the well-known Western frameworks. The works of authors like Miriam Toews, Yoko Tawada, Javier Moreno, Leila Abouela, Marguerite Duras, Kyoko Mori, Francesca Duranti, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, Rībi Hideo, and François Cheng are studied from a variety of perspectives. Other chapters deal with code-switching in West-african novels, border-crossing in the Japanese noh drama, translational anthologies of Italian literature, urban legends on the US-Mexico border, migration in German children's books, and war trauma in poetry. Most of the chapters are case studies, and may thus be of interest, not only for specialists, but also for the general reader.

This chapter deals with the question of innovation in Indian business from a historical perspective. After a brief survey of the literature, emphasizing how divided scholarly opinion was regarding the existence of forms of innovation in Indian business prior to the colonial era, the focus shifts to the British period. It is shown that Schumpeter’s definition of innovation equating it with technological innovation cannot be fruitfully applied to the Indian business scene. Two case studies are then proposed: Tata Iron & Steel, the largest Indian industrial firm, is shown to have been innovative in the specific context of India’s backward industrial scene, while the Sindwork merchants of Hyderabad are an instance of an Indian trading network which extended its range to the entire world. Concluding remarks interrogate post-Independence developments and stress the limits of the innovativeness of Indian business, prior to the recent liberal reforms.

This collection of case studies from around the world examines how struggles for equality unfold in policies, programs, and practices in educational settings in multilingual contexts. Using sociolinguistic, interactional and discourse analysis, Heller and Martin-Jones examine the complex ways in which dominant ideologies of education, pedagogy, language and identity intersect in a wide variety of educational settings. They focus in particular on how those ideologies are reproduced or challenged, and on the consequences of such processes for changing or maintaining social relations of difference and inequality. Written for policy-makers, educators, and anyone else interested in education and multilingualism, the book places questions of power at the center of thinking about language and education. This collection of case studies from around the world examines how struggles for equality unfold in policies, programs, and practices in educational settings in multilingual contexts. Using sociolinguistic, interactional and discourse analysis, Heller and Martin-Jones examine the complex ways in which dominant ideologies of education, pedagogy, language, and identity intersect in a wide variety of educational settings. They focus in particular on how those ideologies are reproduced or challenged, and on the consequences of such processes for changing or maintaining social relations of difference and inequality. Written for policy-makers, educators, and anyone else interested in education and multilingualism, the book places questions of power at the center of thinking about language and education. It invites us to link questions about minority language maintenance, individual multilingualism, immigrant language education, and the use of former colonial languages in post-colonial settings to the politics and economics of our globalizing age, and to look locally for the spaces for change and action that always present themselves.

The international crime of “crimes against humanity” has become integral to contemporary political and legal discourse. However, the conceptual core of the term—an act offending against all of mankind—runs deep in the history of international political thought. In an original excavation of this history, The Humanity of Universal Crime examines theoretical mobilizations of the idea of “universal crime” in colonial and post-colonial contexts. The book demonstrates the overlooked centrality of humanity and criminality to political liberalism’s historical engagement with world politics, thereby breaking with the exhaustively studied status of individual rights in liberal thought. It is argued that invocations of universal crime project humanity as a normatively integrated yet minimally inclusive and hierarchically structured subject. Such visions of humanity have in turn underwritten justifications of foreign rule and outsider intervention based on claims to an injury universally suffered by all mankind. The study foregrounds the political productivity of the notion of universal crime that entails distinct figures, relationships, and forms of authority and agency. The book traces this argument through European political theorists’ deployments of universal crime in assessing the legitimacy of colonial rule and foreign intervention in non-European societies. Analyzing John Locke’s notion of universal crime in the context of English colonialism, the concept’s retooled circulation during the nineteenth century, and contemporary cosmopolitanism’s reliance on crimes against humanity, it identifies an “inclusionary Eurocentrism” that subtends the authorizing and coercive dimensions of universal crime. Unlike much-studied “exclusionary Eurocentrist” thinking, “inclusionary Eurocentrist” arguments have historically extended an unequal, repressive “recognition via liability” to non-European peoples.

This book addresses key aspects of the post- and decolonial analysis of childhood, such as the scope and limitations of Eurocentric concepts of childhood and the impact of social inequality aggravated by capitalist globalization on children's life prospects. In this context, it discusses the specific modes of agency emerging in children of the Global South. It reconstructs the way in which the colonialization process and the ideologies that supported it have used the metaphor of childhood, and investigates the extent to which they are reproduced in processes of colonizing childhoods. The book presents some colonial and postcolonial policy approaches to modelling childhood in different regions of the world, and asks how, within the postcolonial constellation, children's rights are to be understood and how to deal with them to overcome postcolonial paternalism. Particularly, it discusses various forms of paternalism and asks how they can be overcome in the field of rights-based children’s protection and participation and how child-led movements in the Global South can be understood as a form of citizenship from below. The book explains theoretical and conceptional reflections by case studies from Africa, Latin America and Asia. Finally, the book portrays efforts directed against the invisibilization, marginalization and social exclusion of childhoods and the recuperation of a dignified life of children.

This volume explores the role contemporary art plays within conversations around war and imperialism, bringing together chapters from leading international contemporary artists, theorists and curators, alongside the voices of contemporary war artists through original edited interviews. What exactly is contemporary war art in the West today? The Politics of Artists in War Zones considers the place of contemporary war art in the 2020s, a whole generation after 9/11 and long past the ‘War on Terror’. It addresses newly-emerged contexts in which war is found: not only sites of contemporary conflicts such as Ukraine, Yemen and Syria, but everywhere in western culture, from social media to ‘culture’ wars. With interviews from official war artists working in the UK, the US and Australia, such as eX de Medici (Australia) and David Cotterrell (UK), as well as those working in post-colonial contexts, such as Baptist Coelho (India), the editors reflect on contemporary processes of memorialisation, the impact of British colonising in Australia and India, and its relation to historical conflicts. It focuses on three overlapping themes: firstly, the role of memory and amnesia in colonial contexts; secondly, the complex role of ‘official’ war art; and thirdly, questions of testimony and knowing in relation to alleged war crimes, torture and genocide. Richly illustrated, and featuring three substantial interview chapters, The Politics of Artists in War Zones is a hands-on exploration of the complexities and challenges faced by war artists that contextualises the tensions between the contemporary art world and the portrayal of war. It is essential reading for researchers of fine art, curatorial studies, museum studies, conflict studies and photojournalism. What exactly is contemporary war art today? Edited by Kit Messham-Muir, Uroš Čvoro and Monika Lukowska-Appel, Art in Conflict: The Politics of Artists in War Zones brings together chapters from leading international contemporary artists, theorists and curators, plus the voices of contemporary war artists through original edited interviews. Art in Conflict focuses on three overlapping themes dominating current western war art: firstly, the role of memory and amnesia in colonial contexts; secondly, the complex role of ‘official’ war art, a subgenre of contemporary war art peculiar to Australia, Canada and the UK, each with a century-long evolving tradition of official war art; and thirdly, questions of testimony and knowing in relation to alleged war crimes, torture and genocide. A strong undercurrent throughout Art in Conflict is western colonialism and military intervention, both historically and within living memory. This is particularly relevant to the Anglophone world, currently subject to the overdue widescale critique of violent Western colonising and re-colonising. Many chapters and interviews address the impact of British colonising in Australia, India and its relation to historical conflicts, and more recent expeditionary ventures with the US’s War on Terror. Art in Conflict includes chapters from leading contemporary artists, theorists and curators, Ana Carden-Coyne, Charles Green, Anthea Gunn and Laura Webster, Paul Lowe, Lisa Slade, Kit Messham-Muir and Uroš Čvoro, who discuss the war art of Tony Albert, Khadim Ali, John Akomfrah, Derek Eland, Lana Čmajčanin, Indigenous Australian Aṉangu artists, Gertrude Kearns, Mladen Miljanović, Michael Zavros and others. Uniquely, this book features three substantial interview chapters drawn from hours of conversation with some of the world’s leading contemporary practitioners and experts, including Abdul Abdullah, Alana Hunt, eX de Medici, (Australia), David Cotterrell, Andrew Sneddon (UK), Baptist Coelho (India), Todd Stone (US), Karen Bailey and Phillip Cheung (Canada), as well as eminent war historian Prof Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck, London).

This edited collection takes a primary focus on security issues in Oceania, but here the word security is expanded to include such topics as domestic Indonesian and Philippine instability, environmental degradation, the work of international crime syndicates, the generic problem of post-colonial state failure, and the always overhanging concern with China—in short all of the significant troubles roiling Island Asia today. Using this expanded notion of security and stability, the volume pulls in new anxieties about global warming, which may submerge half of the South Pacific microstates within the next 30 years, and pollution, which covers Indonesia nad Malaysia in thick smoke now visible from space, as well as traversing the more traditional security and economic issues. Vaughn and his contributors describe a 7,000-mile swath of wobbly island states ranging from the world's fourth most populous country to tiny bogus sovereignties in thrall to globalized criminals-through which more than $1 trillion worth of goods move each year. An important resource for scholars, students, researchers, and policy makers involved with Oceania and Asian studies as well as contemporary geo-political concerns.

Exploring one of the least studied genocides in post-conquest South America, Robins calls into question many of the central assumptions currently held by genocide scholars. Victims of genocide usually lack the organization and weaponry to battle their enemies. During the 1780-1782 Great Rebellion in Peru and Upper Peru (now Bolivia), however, the Indian revolutionaries faced the better-organized and armed loyalist army. Whereas genocidal policies are usually characterized by centralized leadership, the Great Rebellion was highly fragmented and confederational in nature, undercutting the widely-held assumption that only the State is capable of committing genocide. The Rebellion is one of the rare cases when the victims of genocide emerged victorious. Focusing on the events occurring in the region south of La Paz, Robins examines how a native millennial movement evolved into an Indian-led attempt at genocide, dealing an unprecedented challenge to Spanish rule in the Americas. In the eyes of the rebels, this revolt fulfilled prophecies of an inevitable, divinely assisted, and long-awaited return of native rule. Just like at the dawn of the colonial period, this new era was to be born of pachacuti, or cataclysm. But this time the Spanish interlopers and their culture would be targeted for destruction.