Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Tagged: Colonialism

Issues

Tracing Commodities, Capitalists, and Nomads Across the Russo-Persian Border: On the Uses of Space in and beyond the Central Asian Archives 

By Ruslana Bovhyria. In the spring break of 2024, a freshly baked history graduate and barely a year into my doctoral studies, I landed in Uzbekistan full of anticipation what the local repositories of knowledge would treat me to. I was in the earliest days of researching a book about empire and nomads in the southeastern Caspian watershed. The space, perched on the imperial edges of Russia and Iran and stitched together by alluvial rivers, mountain ridges, and dozens of transient communities, presented a rich geography in which to think comparatively about mobility, extraction, and materiality.

A aerial view of a jungle landscape, on the left lie lush green trees while on the right are brown, dead trees.

Conviviality and Inequality / Series

La Vida Simple (Simple Life): A Maroon Vision on Development

By Nataly Castillo Bennett. Global practices shaped by colonization and modernity have disrupted humanity’s intrinsic connection to nature, resulting in ecological and social crises. Rooted in the colonization of the Americas, colonial inhabitation imposed exploitative relationships with nature and marginalized communities, laying the foundation for the imperial mode of living. Superficial frameworks like green capitalism fail to address this crisis, perpetuating colonial ecocide. In contrast, Afro-Ecuadorian Maroon communities, through la vida simple – a philosophy grounded in African traditions and marronage – offer transformative insights for ecological sustainability and climate justice.

Conviviality and Inequality

The Porous and the Pure: An Artifactual History of Ties Between Asia, Europe, and Latin America

By Ajay Gandhi. This essay uses three kinds of artifacts to frame connections between Asia, Europe, and Latin America, between the 1500s and the present. These items – simultaneously tangible things and symbolic projections – plot a method and chronology of entanglement. The first are precious-metal decorations made in Goa, on India’s western coast, for Portuguese patrons. A second is a 17th-century painting of a young slave from India taken to the Netherlands. The third artifact is the spider’s web, and the Caribbean folk figure of the Anansi spider. Such artifacts can be read through purity and silence, as well as porosity and convergence. In this itinerary of artifacts, we begin with a social imaginary that is determined and untainted, and move to conditions that are fluid and open-ended.

Prisma Ukraïna / Rethinking East European Studies in Times of Upheaval

An Angry Ukrainian Syndrome: Stereotypes About War, Peace, and Injustice

By Olena Komar. In this article, the author aims to demonstrate that a set of prejudices exists in Western countries against Ukrainians, which she terms the “Angry Ukrainian Syndrome” (similar to the “North African Syndrome”). This is a set of biases that have emerged through the way Ukrainians communicate about the war and how they meet the stereotypical expectations of Westerners. Furthermore, these prejudices are colonial, stemming from an inability to see Ukrainians as independent people, distinct from Russians.

Prisma Ukraïna / Rethinking East European Studies in Times of Upheaval

Decolonizing Family Metaphors in the Context of the Russian-Ukrainian War and Beyond

By Illia Ilin. The recent history of Ukraine can be metaphorically described as a journey to break away from the abusive “triune Russian people” family and reconnect with the democratic “European peoples” family. This long process of decolonization has been ongoing for over 30 years and signifies the reclamation of Ukrainian territories, history, and identity by the Ukrainian people. This article will explore the family metaphors of (de)colonization of Russia and unified Europe in relation to Ukraine, and the potential for their expansion and decolonization.

EUTIM / Issues

The Russian “Civilizing Mission” and the Russian War against Ukraine: the 19th-Century Colonial Origins

By Elżbieta Kwiecińska. This article examines the colonial concept of the civilizing mission as a cultural transfer in East-Central Europe during the nineteenth century. The author outlines the nineteenth century colonial origins of the contemporary Russian justification of the war against Ukraine as a Russian “civilizing mission”.

MECAM / Reviews

“Les raisins de la domination. Une histoire sociale de l’alcool en Tunisie à l’époque du Protectorat (1881-1956)” – An Interview with Nessim Znaien

Nessim Znaien is a Junior Professor at the University of Marburg, currently holding the (Post)colonial Maghreb Chair. He conducts research on the history of material culture in the colonial and post-colonial Maghreb, in particular on the history of food and cereals and is the author of “Les raisins de la domination. Une histoire sociale de l’alcool en Tunisie à l’époque du Protectorat (1881-1956)”. A conversation with Diana Abbani.

Gender, Sexuality, and Knowledge in Neoliberal and Authoritarian Regimes

Gender Studies in Afghanistan or jender bazi: The Neoliberal University, Knowledge Production and Labour Under Military Occupation

By Paniz Musawi Natanzi. Following the military invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, private universities in Kabul became sites of marketisation and models for other cities in the country. In the process of neoliberal transformation, gender mainstreaming was a key cross-sectoral tool, intersecting foreign development and military policies, which included higher education. Funding for the development of university degree programmes and scholarships in gender studies came with conditions of adhering to an anti-social political and epistemological understanding of gender that builds on expanding “individualisation and financialisation”, while claiming to serve communities through entrepreneurialism. The hegemony of finance under neoliberal imperialism, the current manifestation of capitalism and process of empire-building, in sites of military and humanitarian-developmental intervention, reconfigured social, political, economic and epistemological structures also through the university. A critical analysis.