Postcolonial Politics and Theology seeks to reform and reimagine the field of political theology—uprooting it from the colonial soil—using the comparative lenses of postcolonial politics and theology to bring attention to the realities of the Global South. Kwok Pui-lan traces the history of the political impacts of Western theological development, especially developments in the U.S. context, and the need to shift these interlocking fields toward non-Western traditions in theory and practice. A special focus of the book is on the changing sociopolitical realities of American Empire and Sino-American competition, illustrated in Donald Trump's slogan of "Make America Great Again" and Xi Jinping’s hope for a “China Dream.” The shifting of U.S. and Asian relationships highlights the need to move our theological and political categories away from a vision of strongman domination and toward a postmodern, postcolonial, and transnational world, especially exemplified in the Asia Pacific context. Throughout, Kwok overturns the idea of centering one cultural framework and marginalizing others in favor of living into a multiplicity of deeply contextual theologies. She explores how these theologies are being developed in global, postcolonial contexts, through struggles for democracy and civil disobedience in Hong Kong, by efforts to reclaim selfhood and sexual identity from exploitative colonial desire, through the work of interreligious solidarity and peacebuilding, and in the practice of earth care in the face of ecological crisis.
This book uses a postcolonial lens to question development’s dominant cultural representations and institutional practices, investigating the possibilities for a transformatory postcolonial politics. Ilan Kapoor examines recent development policy initiatives in such areas as ‘governance,’ ‘human rights’ and ‘participation’ to better understand and contest the production of knowledge in development - its cultural assumptions, power implications, and hegemonic politics. The volume shows how development practitioners and westernized elites/intellectuals are often complicit in this neo-colonial knowledge production. Noble gestures such as giving foreign aid or promoting participation and democracy frequently mask their institutional biases and economic and geopolitical interests, while silencing the subaltern (marginalized groups), on whose behalf they purportedly work. In response, the book argues for a radical ethical and political self-reflexivity that is vigilant to our reproduction of neo-colonialisms and amenable to public contestation of development priorities. It also underlines subaltern political strategies that can (and do) lead to greater democratic dialogue.
In this ground-breaking study M.I. Franklin explores the form and substance of everyday life online from a critical postcolonial perspective. With Internet access and social media uses accelerating in the Global South, in-depth studies of just how non-western communities, at home and living abroad, actually use the Internet and web-based media are still relatively few. This book’s pioneering use of virtual ethnography and mixed method research in this study of a longstanding ‘media diaspora’ incorporates online participant-observation with offline fieldwork to explore how postcolonial diasporas from the south Pacific have been using the Internet since the early ways of the web. Through a critical reconsideration of the work of Michel de Certeau in light of postcolonial and feminist theories, the book provides insights into the practice of everyday life in a global and digital age by non-western participants online and offline. Critical of techno- and media-centric analyses of cyberspatial practices and power hierarchies, Franklin argues that a closer look at the content and communicative styles of these contemporary Pacific traversals suggest other Internet futures. These are visions of social media that can be more hospitable, culturally inclusive and economically equitable than those promulgated by both powerful commercial interests and state actors looking to take charge of the Internet ‘after Web 2.0’. The book will be of interest to students of international politics, media and communications, cultural studies, science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology interested in how successive waves of new media interact with shifting power relations at the intersection of politics, culture, and society.
In The Postcolonial Orient, Vasant Kaiwar presents a far-reaching analysis of the political, economic, and ideological cross-currents that have shaped and informed postcolonial studies preceding and following the 1989 moment of world history. The valences of the ‘post’ in postcolonialism are unfolded via some key historical-political postcolonial texts showing, inter alia, that they are replete with elements of Romantic Orientalism and the Oriental Renaissance. Kaiwar mobilises a critical body of classical and contemporary Marxism to demonstrate that far richer understandings of ‘Europe’ not to mention ‘colonialism’, ‘modernity’ and ‘difference’ are possible than with a postcolonialism captive to phenomenological-existentialism and post-structuralism, concluding that a narrative so enriched is indispensable for a transformative non-Eurocentric internationalism.
Engagements with the postcolonial world by International Relations scholars have grown significantly in recent years. The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Politics provides a solid reference point for understanding and analyzing global politics from a perspective sensitive to the multiple legacies of colonial and imperial rule. The Handbook introduces and develops cutting-edge analytical frameworks that draw on Black, decolonial, feminist, indigenous, Marxist and postcolonial thought as well as a multitude of intellectual traditions from across the globe. Alongside empirical issue areas that remain crucial to assessing the impact of European and Western colonialism on global politics, the book introduces new issue areas that have arisen due to the mutating structures of colonial and imperial rule. This vital resource is split into five thematic sections, each featuring a brief, orienting introduction: Points of departure Popular postcolonial imaginaries Struggles over the postcolonial state Struggles over land Alternative global imaginaries Providing both a consolidated understanding of the field as it is, and setting an expansive and dynamic research agenda for the future, this handbook is essential reading for students and scholars of International Relations alike.
Postcolonial Green brings together scholarship bridging ecocriticism and postcolonialism. Since its inception, ecocriticism has been accused of being inattentive to the complexities that colonialism poses for ideas of nature and environmentalism. Postcolonial discourse, on the other hand, has been so immersed in theoretical questions of nationalism and identity that it has been seen as ignoring environmental or ecological concerns. This collection demonstrates that ecocriticism and postcolonialism must be understood as parallel projects if not facets of the very same project--a struggle for global justice and sustainability. The essays in this collection span the globe, and cover such issues as international environmental policy, land and water rights, food production, poverty, women's rights, indigenous activism, and ecotourism. They consider all manner of texts, from oral tradition to literary fiction to web discourse. Contributors bring postcolonial theory to literary traditions, such as that of the United States, not typically seen in this light, and, conversely, bring ecocriticism to literary traditions, such as those of India and China, that have seen little ecological analysis. Postcolonial Green boasts a global geographical breadth, diversity of critical approach, and increasing relevance to the issues we face on a world stage. Contributors Neel Ahuja, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill * Pavel Cenkl, Sterling College * Sharae Deckard, University College Dublin * Ursula K. Heise, Stanford University * Jonathan Highfield, Rhode Island School of Design * Alex Hunt, West Texas A&M University * Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, Warwick University * Patrick D. Murphy, University of Central Florida * Bonnie Roos, West Texas A&M University * Caskey Russell, University of Wyoming * Rachel Stein, Siena College * Sabine Wilke, University of Washington * Laura Wright, Western Carolina University * Sheng-yen Yu, National Taipei University of Technology * Gang Yue, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill/Xiamen University
This book examines claims for recognition of cultural difference from immigrant and Indigenous minorities, highlighting the ways in which they intersect with ideas of national community. Busbridge argues that there is an important, albeit under-explored, relationship between nation and multicultural politics of recognition. Drawing on the Australian context, the book explores how nation features as a productive, if somewhat ambivalent, discursive resource in contemporary Muslim and Aboriginal struggles to be recognised. In demanding recognition, minorities enter into the business of ‘making the nation’ by positing alternative conceptions of national identity, culture and belonging that are more attentive to their differences and claims. This dynamic is engaged as an expression of ‘postcolonial citizenship’. Postcolonial citizenship is imagined in terms of the ways in which minority groups actualise multicultural realities through rewriting ideas of national community. It underlines the critical importance of revising the power relations that deem some groups ‘more national’ and others less so – and which, in Western multicultural societies, are typically tied to notions of the ‘West’ and its ‘others’. This book is an important conceptual, theoretical and political intervention that brings postcolonialism and multiculturalism into dialogue on the increasingly potent issues of nation and national identity. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, politics, postcolonial studies, culture, identity and nation.
This groundbreaking book makes sense of the complexities and dynamics of post-colonial politics, illustrating how post-colonial theory has marginalised a huge part of its constituency, namely Africa. Politics and Post-Colonial Theory traces how African identity has been constituted and reconstituted by examining issues such as: * negritude * the rise of nationalism * decolonisation. The book also questions how helpful post-colonial analysis can be in understanding the complexities which define institutions including: * the nation-state * civil society * human rights * citizenship. Politics and Post-colonial Theory bravely breaks down disciplinary boundaries. Its radical vision will be essential reading for all those engaged in Politics, post-colonial studies and African studies.