Heller and McElhinny reinterpret sociolinguistics for the twenty-first century with an original approach to the study of language that is situated in the political and economic contexts of colonialism and capitalism. In the process, they map out a critical history of how language serves, and has served, as a terrain for producing and reproducing social inequalities. The authors ask how, and by whom, ideas about language get unevenly shaped, offering new perspectives that will excite readers and incite further research for years to come.
Heller and McElhinny reinterpret sociolinguistics for the twenty-first-century with an original approach to the study of language that is situated in the political and economic contexts of colonialism and capitalism.
Providing an original approach to the study of language by linking it to the political and economic contexts of colonialism and capitalism, Heller and McElhinny reinterpret sociolinguistics for a twenty-first-century audience. They map out a critical history of how language serves as a terrain for producing and reproducing social inequalities. The book, organized chronologically, and beginning in the period of colonial expansion in the sixteenth century, covers the development of the modern nation state and then the fascist, communist, and universalist responses to the inequities such nations created. It then moves through the two World Wars and the Cold War that followed, as well as the shift to liberal democracy, the welfare state, and decolonization in the 1960s, ending with the contemporary period, characterized by a globalized economy and neoliberal politics since the 1980s. Throughout, the authors ask how ideas about language get shaped, and by whom, unevenly across sites and periods, offering new perspectives on how to think about language that will both excite and incite further research for years to come.
In Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism, Onar Ulas Ince combines an analysis of political economy with normative political theory to examine the formative impact of colonial economic relations on the historical development of liberal thought in Britain. Focusing on the centrality of liberal economic principles to Britain's self-image as a peaceful commercial society, Ince investigates some of the key historical moments in which these principles were thrown into question by the processes of forcible expropriation and exploitation that typified the British imperial economy as a whole.
Although the era of European colonialism has long passed, misgivings about the inequality of the encounters between European and non-European languages persist in many parts of the postcolonial world. This unfinished state of affairs, this lingering historical experience of being caught among unequal languages, is the subject of Rey Chow's book. A diverse group of personae, never before assembled in a similar manner, make their appearances in the various chapters: the young mulatto happening upon a photograph about skin color in a popular magazine; the man from Martinique hearing himself named "Negro" in public in France; call center agents in India trained to Americanize their accents while speaking with customers; the Algerian Jewish philosopher reflecting on his relation to the French language; African intellectuals debating the pros and cons of using English for purposes of creative writing; the translator acting by turns as a traitor and as a mourner in the course of cross-cultural exchange; Cantonese-speaking writers of Chinese contemplating the politics of food consumption; radio drama workers straddling the forms of traditional storytelling and mediatized sound broadcast. In these riveting scenes of speaking and writing imbricated with race, pigmentation, and class demarcations, Chow suggests, postcolonial languaging becomes, de facto, an order of biopolitics. The native speaker, the fulcrum figure often accorded a transcendent status, is realigned here as the repository of illusory linguistic origins and unities. By inserting British and post-British Hong Kong (the city where she grew up) into the languaging controversies that tend to be pursued in Francophone (and occasionally Anglophone) deliberations, and by sketching the fraught situations faced by those coping with the specifics of using Chinese while negotiating with English, Chow not only redefines the geopolitical boundaries of postcolonial inquiry but also demonstrates how such inquiry must articulate historical experience to the habits, practices, affects, and imaginaries based in sounds and scripts.
This is a new introductory text providing an up-to-date account of leading theories of development. The book includes a discussion of classical accounts of development, particularly that of Marx, but also considers current debates on the issue. Theories of imperialism, neo-imperialism, dependency, world systems theory and other conceptions are all given full and balanced consideration. A feature of the work is the connections drawn between theoretical interpretation and empirical application: in this respect, the author concentrates particularly upon drawing materials from the Latin American experiences. Readable, accurate and incisive, the book also provides an original standpoint upon problems of development. It will be of interest to students and professionals in sociology, political sciences and anthropology.
David Rudner's richly detailed ethnographic and historical analysis of a South Indian merchant-banking caste provides the first comprehensive analysis of the interdependence among Indian business practice, social organization, and religion. Exploring noncapitalist economic formations and the impact of colonial rule on indigenous commercial systems, Rudner argues that caste and commerce are inextricably linked through formal and informal institutions. The practices crucial to the formation and distribution of capital are also a part of this linkage. Rudner challenges the widely held assumptions that all castes are organized either by marriage alliance or status hierarchy and that caste structures are incompatible with the "rational" conduct of business. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.
In an innovative mix of history, anthropology, and post-colonial theory, Vicente L. Rafael examines the role of language in the religious conversion of the Tagalogs to Catholicism and their subsequent colonization during the early period (1580-1705) of Spanish rule in the Philippines. By tracing this history of communication between Spaniards and Tagalogs, Rafael maps the conditions that made possible both the emergence of a colonial regime and resistance to it. Originally published in 1988, this new paperback edition contains an updated preface that places the book in theoretical relation to other recent works in cultural studies and comparative colonialism.
This book attempts to capture the reconfiguration of the pre-modern power structure within colonialism, in the specific context of education and linguistic policies implemented by the colonial administration in Western India. The interrelationship existing between caste power, dominance, colonialism and their cultural implications has been a rather ignored subject in postcolonial theory; analysis of the interplay between primordial power structures like caste and colonial modernity has only recently been reflected in some post-colonial writings. Against this backdrop, the book offers a nuanced understanding of the collusive role that the indigenous elites played in working out new ways to preserve their privileges and dominance, which also strengthened the hold of the colonial regime without fully altering and disturbing the existing modes of dominance. The book attempts to dispel the theory that a thorough eradication of pre-capitalist relationships is a pre-requisite to the growth and advancement of modern capitalism. The Indian case points to the contrary. The colonial state could engender its capitalist motives without substantially altering the existing feudal, hierarchical socio-economic and political arrangements. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Marx, Gramsci, Althussar and Jotirao Phule, the volume attempts to delineate the relationship between language and power in colonial Western India.
This study explores the contemporary phenomenon of English as an international language, and sets out to analyze how and why the language has become so dominant. It examines the historical spread of the language, the role it plays in Third World countries, and the ideologies it transmits.