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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political structure & processes > Colonization & independence
The Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO), that became the
Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in 1920 drew the Muslim elite into
its orbit and was a key site of a distinctively Muslim nationalism.
Located in New Dehli, the historic centre of Muslim rule, it was
home to many leading intellectuals and reformers in the years
leading up to Indian independence. During partition it was a hub of
pro-Pakistan activism. The graduates who came of age during the
anti-colonial struggle in India settled throughout the subcontinent
after the Partition. They carried with them the particular
experiences, values and histories that had defined their lives as
Aligarh students in a self-consciously Muslim environment,
surrounded by a non-Muslim majority. This new archive of oral
history narratives from seventy former AMU students reveals
histories of partition as yet unheard. In contrast to existing
studies, these stories lead across the boundaries of India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh. Partition in AMU is not defined by
international borders and migrations but by alienation from the
safety of familiar places. The book reframes Partition to draw
attention to the ways individuals experienced ongoing changes
associated with "partitioning"-the process through which familiar
spaces and places became strange and sometimes threatening-and they
highlight specific, never-before-studied sites of disturbance
distant from the borders.
Key book on the debates surrounding the knowledge economy and
decolonialization of African Studies, that brings the subject up to
date for the 21st century. Decolonization of knowledge has become a
major issue in African Studies in recent years, brought to the fore
by social movements such as #RhodesMustFall and #BlackLivesMatter.
This timely book explores the politics and disputed character of
knowledge production in colonial and postcolonial Uganda, where
efforts to generate forms of knowledge and solidarity that
transcend colonial epistemologies draw on long histories of
resistance and refusal. Bringing together scholars from Africa,
Europe and North America, the contributors in this volume analyse
how knowledge has been created, mobilized, and contested across a
wide range of Ugandan contexts. In so doing, they reveal how
Ugandans have built, disputed, and reimagined institutions of
authority and knowledge production in ways that disrupt the
colonial frames that continue to shape scholarly analyses and state
structures. From the politics of language and gender in Bakiga
naming practices to ways of knowing among the Acholi, the hampering
of critical scholarship by militarism and authoritarianism, and
debates over the names of streets, lakes, mountains, and other
public spaces, this book shows how scholars and a wide range of
Ugandan activists are reimagining the politics of knowledge in
Ugandan public life.
The field of environmental history emerged just decades ago but has
established itself as one of the most innovative and important new
approaches to history, one that bridges the human and natural
world, the humanities and the sciences. With the current trend
towards internationalizing history, environmental history is
perhaps the quintessential approach to studying subjects outside
the nation-state model, with pollution, global warming, and other
issues affecting the earth not stopping at national borders. With
25 essays, this Handbook is global in scope and innovative in
organization, looking at the field thematically through such
categories as climate, disease, oceans, the body, energy,
consumerism, and international relations.
Citizenship and Democratization in Southeast Asia redirects the
largely western-oriented study of citizenship to postcolonial
states. Providing various fascinating first-hand accounts of how
citizens interpret and realize the recognition of their property,
identity, security and welfare in the context of a weak rule of law
and clientelistic politics, this study highlights the importance of
studying citizenship for understanding democratization processes in
Southeast Asia. With case studies from Thailand, Indonesia, the
Philippines and Cambodia, this book provides a unique bottom-up
perspective on the character of public life in Southeast Asia.
Contributors are: Mary Austin, Laurens Bakker, Ward Berenschot,
Sheri Lynn Gibbings, Takeshi Ito, David Kloos, Merlyna Lim, Astrid
Noren-Nilsson, Oona Pardedes, Emma Porio, Apichat Satitniramai,
Wolfram Schaffer and Henk Schulte Nordholt.
Key book in Whiteness Studies that engages with the different ways
in which the last white minority in Africa to give way to majority
rule has adjusted to the arrival of democracy and the different
modes of transition from "settlers" to "citizens". How have whites
adjusted to, contributed to and detracted from democracy in South
Africa since 1994? Engaging with the literature on 'whiteness' and
the current trope that the democratic settlement has failed, this
book provides a study of how whites in the last bastion of 'white
minority rule' in Africa have adapted to the sweeping political
changes they have encountered. It examines the historical context
of white supremacy and minority rule, in the past, and the white
withdrawal from elsewhere on the African continent. Drawing on
focus groups held across the country, Southall explores the
difficult issue of 'memory', how whites seek to grapple with the
history of apartheid, and how this shapes their reactions to
political equality. He argues that whites cannot be regarded as a
homogeneous political grouping concluding that while the
overwhelming majority of white South Africans feared the coming of
democracy during the years of late apartheid, they recognised its
inevitability. Many of their fears were, in effect, to be
recognised by the Constitution, which embedded individual rights,
including those to property and private schooling, alongside the
important principle of proportionality of political representation.
While a small minority of whites chose to emigrate, the large
majority had little choice but to adjust to the democratic
settlement which, on the whole, they have done - and in different
ways. It was only a small right wing which sought to actively
resist; others have sought to withdraw from democracy into social
enclaves; but others have embraced democracy actively, either
enthusiastically welcoming its freedoms or engaging with its
realities in defence of 'minority rights'. Whites may have been
reluctant to accept democracy, but democrats - of a sort - they
have become, and notwithstanding a significant racialisation of
politics in post-apartheid South Africa, they remain an important
segment of the "rainbow", although dangers lurk in the future
unless present inequalities of both race and class are challenged
head on. African Sun Media: South Africa
A Companion to Border Studies introduces an exciting and expanding
field of interdisciplinary research, through the writing of an
international array of scholars, from diverse perspectives that
include anthropology, development studies, geography, history,
political science and sociology. * Explores how nations and
cultural identities are being transformed by their dynamic,
shifting borders where mobility is sometimes facilitated, other
times impeded or prevented * Offers an array of international views
which together form an authoritative guide for students,
instructors and researchers * Reflects recent significant growth in
the importance of understanding the distinctive characteristics of
borders and frontiers, including cross-border cooperation, security
and controls, migration and population displacements, hybridity,
and transnationalism
In-depth account of the Marikana massacre, based on the voices of
the miners and their families themselves, from the build up to the
strike to attempts to hold the state to account and its lasting
significance. In August 2012 the South African police - at the
encouragement of mining capital, and with the support of the
political state - intervened to end a week-long strike at the
Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana, in South Africa's NorthWest
Province. On the afternoon of Thursday, 16 August, the police shot
and killed 34 men. Hundreds more were injured, some shot as they
fled. None posed a threat to any police officer. Recognised by many
as an event of international significance in stories of global
politics and labour relations, the perspectives of the miners has
however been almost missing from published accounts. This book, for
the first time, brings into focus the mens' lives - and deaths -
telling the stories of those who embarked on the strike, those who
were killed, and of the family members who have survived to fight
for the memories of their loved ones. It places the strike in the
context of South Africa's long history of racial and economic
exclusion, explaining how the miners came to be in Marikana, how
their lives were ordinarily lived, and the substance of their
complaints. It shows how the strike developed from an initial
gathering into a mass movement of more than 3,000 workers. It
discusses the violence of the strike and explores the political
context of the state's response, and the eagerness of the police to
collaborate in suppressing the strike. Recounting the events of the
massacre in unprecedented detail, the book sets out how each miner
died and everything we know about the police operation. Finally,
Brown traces the aftermath: the attempts of the families of the
deceased to identify and bury their dead, and then the state's
attempts to spin a narrative that placed all blame on the miners;
the subsequent Commission of Inquiry - and its failure to resolve
any real issues; and the solidarity politics that have emerged
since. Southern Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland
and Botswana): Jacana.
Decolonization and White Africans examines how African
decolonization affected white Africans in eight countries -
Algeria, Kenya, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia
(Zimbabwe), Angola, Mozambique, South West Africa (Namibia), and
South Africa - and discusses their varied responses to
decolonization, including resistance, acquiescence, negotiations,
and migration. It also examines the range of mechanisms used by the
global community to compel white Africans into submitting to
decolonization through such means as official pressure, diplomatic
negotiations, global activism, sanctions, and warfare. Until now,
books about African decolonization usually approached the topic
either from the perspective of the colonial powers or from an
anti-colonial black African perspective. As a result, white African
perspectives have been marginalized, downplayed, or presented
reductively. Decolonization and White Africans adds white African
perspectives to the story, thereby broadening our understanding of
the decolonization phenomenon.
In the Americas, both indigenous and postcolonial languages today
bear witness of massive changes that have taken place since the
colonial era. However, a unified approach to languages from
different colonial areas is still missing. The present volume
studies postcolonial varieties that emerged due to changing
linguistic and sociolinguistic conditions in different settings
across the Americas. The studies cover indigenous languages that
are undergoing lexical and grammatical change due to the presence
of colonial languages and the emergence of new dialects and creoles
due to contact. The contributions showcase the diversity of
approaches to tackle fundamental questions regarding the processes
triggered by language contact as well as the wide range of outcomes
contact has had in postcolonial settings. The volume adds to the
documentation of the linguistic properties of postcolonial language
varieties in a socio-historically informed framework. It explores
the complex dynamics of extra-linguistic factors that brought about
the processes of language change in them and contributes to a
better understanding of the determinant factors that lead to the
emergence and evolution of such codes.
How should failed states in Africa be understood? Catherine Scott
here critically engages with the concept of state failure and
provides an historical reinterpretation. She shows that, although
the concept emerged in the context of the post-Cold War new world
order, the phenomenon has been attendant throughout (and even
before) the development of the Westphalian state system.
Contemporary failed states, however, differ from their historical
counterparts in one fundamental respect: they fail within their
existing borders and continue to be recognised as something that
they are not. This peculiarity derives from international norms
instituted in the era of decolonisation, which resulted in the
inviolability of state borders and the supposed universality of
statehood. Scott argues that contemporary failed states are, in
fact, failed post-colonies. Thus understood, state failure is less
the failure of existing states and more the failed rooting and
institutionalisation of imported and reified models of Western
statehood. Drawing on insights from the histories of Uganda and
Burundi, from pre-colonial polity formation to the present day, she
explores why and how there have been failures to create effective
and legitimate national states within the bounds of inherited
colonial jurisdictions on much of the African continent.
This book is a history of the three Guianas, now known as Guyana,
Suriname, and French Guiana. Though histories of each of the
countries exist, this is the first work in a century to consider
the three countries as a group, and thus the first to present the
history of all three as a comparative and overarching study.
Special emphasis has been given to the story of how each colony was
administered by Britain, the Netherlands, and France respectively,
and how these differing colonial administrative policies have given
rise to three vastly different cultures. Because the geographical
area of the Guianas is relatively small, the indigenous population
at the time of contact was relatively uniform across the area, and
the external pressures on the three colonies over their histories
exhibited significant similarities, the book presents the Guianas
as an ideal laboratory in which to study the effects of imperialism
and cultural assimilation practices. The book also briefly
considers the present political and cultural status of the three
polities and makes some projections about their possible futures.
In all, the book presents a complete history from prehistory until
the present day covering the entirety of the Guianas region,
relating a colorful history from a little-studied corner of the
world.
Explores the impact of Jesuit missions on the development of
Christianity in postcolonial French Africa, which found itself at
the centre of major shifts and struggles within global Christianity
and world politics. At a time when most African countries were
moving towards independence, the Vatican was speeding up the
Church's indigenization agenda in an effort to secure its survival
in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, at the same time, African nationalism
was on the rise and, following the collapse of its colonial empire,
France was attempting to reassert its influence in Africa. This
book shows how the Vatican, French Jesuits, the rising Cameroonian
indigenous clergy and leadership, and the first Cameroonian Jesuits
competed for the Catholic evangelization of French Africa during
the mid-20th century. In the mission field, they also competed with
different Protestant groups, with whom they shared acommon aim: to
convert African traditional religionists and different groups of
African Muslims to Christ, while containing the spread of
anti-religious ideologies such as Communism. Tracing the rapid
expansion of Christianity in Central and Western French Africa
during the second half of the twentieth century, the author shows
in this book how this competition for faith helped both build the
church in French West Africa and Africanize the church alongside
missionary Christianity in postcolonial Africa. He also explores
the African reaction to this diverse and competing global agenda of
Christianization, especially after Chad and Cameroon came together
as part of a single Jesuit jurisdiction in 1973, and the way in
which, despite differing interpretations of Catholicity which
generated internal conflicts, Western Jesuits focus on popular
masses and the poor, was able to contain the spread of Islam,
counter the Chad's persecution of Christians during the Cultural
Revolution (1973-1975) and secure the survival of Christianity as a
missionary movement in which Western missionaries worked alongside
a rising African clergy and leadership. JEAN LUC ENYEGUE, SJ is the
Director of the Jesuit Historical Institute in Africa, Nairobi. He
also lectures on church history at Hekima University College,
Catholic University of Eastern Africa.
Phenomena such as the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, or the
surge of political populism show that the current phase of
accelerated globalization is over. New concepts are needed in order
to respond to this exhaustion of the global project: the volume
scrutinizes these responses in the aesthetic realm and under a
"post-global" banner, while incorporating alternative, non-Western
epistemologies and literatures of the post-colonial Global South.
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