Mediating Nation-Building in Post-colonial Africa: Addressing the Security and Development Nexus on the Continent

2020 ◽  
pp. 947-961
Author(s):  
Nicasius Achu Check
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
Post Colonial

scholarly journals Recent (Re)Visions of Canlit: Partial Stock-Taking

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (s2) ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Rzepa
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Current State ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Building Project ◽  
Magazine Articles ◽  
Globalising World

Abstract This article approaches recent discussions on the state of contemporary CanLit as a body of literary texts, an academic field, and an institution. The discussion is informed primarily by a number of recent or relatively recent publications, such as Trans.CanLit. Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature (Kamboureli & Miki 2007), Refuse. CanLit in Ruins (McGregor, Rak & Wunker 2018), Luminous Ink: Writers on Writing in Canada (McWatt, Maharaj & Brand 2018), and the discussions and/or controversies some of those generated – expressed through newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly essays, but also through tweets, etc. The texts have been written as a response to the current state and – in some cases – scandals of CanLit. Many constitute attempts at starting or contributing to a discussion aimed at not only taking stock of, but also reinterpreting and re-defining the field and the institution in view of the challenges of the globalising world. Perhaps more importantly, they address also the challenges resulting from the rift between CanLit as implicated in the (post)colonial nation-building project and rigid institutional structures, perpetuating the silencings, erasures, and hierarchies resulting from such entanglements, and actual literary texts produced by an increasingly diversified group of writers working with a widening range of topics and genres, and creating often intimate, autobiographically inspired art with a sense of responsibility to marginalised communities. The article concludes with the example of Indigenous writing and the position some young Indigenous writers take in the current discussions.

1. Introduction to Africa and its politics

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Ian Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Political History ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Core ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Core Questions ◽  
The Impact

Africa is a continent of over a billion people, yet questions of underdevelopment, malgovernance, and a form of political life based upon patronage are characteristic of many African states. ‘Introduction to Africa and its politics’ explains that the core questions underpinning this VSI centre on how politics is typically practised on the continent; the nature of the state in Africa; and what accounts for Africa’s underdevelopment. This VSI aims to appraise sub-Saharan Africa’s recent political history, examining post-colonial political structures, the impact of colonialism, and the form and nature of post-colonial states. The type of politics practised in many African states continues to be hostile to genuine nation building and broad-based, sustainable development.

A Different Story in the Anthropocene: Brazil’s Post-Colonial Quest for Oil (1930–1975)*

2020 ◽  
Vol 249 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-211
Author(s):  
Antoine Acker
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Forests ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Oil Production ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Western Industrial Society ◽  
Founding Myth ◽  
Insatiable Appetite

Abstract This article aims to identify new historical causes for the making of the Anthropocene (the rise of humans to a geological force) by addressing Brazil’s transformation into an oil producer and an oil-dependent country between 1930 and 1975. This example allows an escape from the essentialist explanation of the Anthropocene as the result of humans’ insatiable appetite for consumption, commonly rooted in an analysis of Western industrial society, and to focus instead on the notion of freedom in a former colony. Indeed, in the context of nation-building and modernization debates, petroleum appeared to many Brazilians as an opportunity to emancipate the country from its peripheral role as global raw material provider. The rise of petroleum gave a post-colonial sense to the nation-founding myth of Brazil’s exceptional nature, which served as romantic background for a movement towards resource sovereignty embedded into a global anti-imperialist context. In Brazil specifically, oil production became an opportunity for a process of ecological transformation that promised to rid the country of colonial landscapes of exploitation, and even appeared as a solution for stopping the unsustainable destruction of tropical forests. Ultimately, these petro-ideals of emancipation, by positively linking nature and the nation, also hindered fully detecting the scope of the pollution problems that oil was generating. As argued in the article’s conclusion, this example should rekindle the discussion about the unintended link between freedom and geological change in the analysis of Anthropocene causalities.

The New Environment of Nation-Building

1975 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Jordan ◽  
John P. Renninger
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Bureaucratic Corruption ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Building Process

What is Africa doing wrong? Africans as well as others are increasingly asking this question. We are, in effect, invited to consider that there are, perhaps, negative as well as positive aspects to the nation-building process in post-colonial Africa. To the layman, indeed, the image of Africa has tended to accentuate the negative. The strife in the Congo during the early 1960s, the civil war in Nigeria, numerous military coups d'etat and political assassinations, bureaucratic corruption, disappointing progress in the economic field, and more recently famine and drought, all could lead to the conclusion that efforts at nationbuilding have been less than successful.

Rebuilding the Navel of the Earth: Buddhist pilgrimage and transnational religious networks

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID GEARY
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
North India ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
Regional Networks ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Religious Networks ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Building Project

AbstractCentral to the modern rebirth of Bodh Gaya as the place of Buddha's enlightenment is the growing influence of Buddhist missionaries and transnational religious networks on this pilgrimage landscape in North India. Although this process began in the late nineteenth century, it was not until after India's independence that Buddhism became an integral part of the nation-building project and a key site of post-colonial diplomacy with neighbouring Asian countries. Symbolic of these international and diplomatic ties are the increasing numbers of foreign Buddhist monasteries and temples that have acquired land around Bodh Gaya. This paper seeks to document the historical and transnational religious processes that support the growing globalization of Bodh Gaya and to survey the institutional means through which monasteries have elevated the Buddhist memory of the site. In tracing these different national and regional networks of Buddhism, I argue that there is an underlying tension between Buddhist culture anchored in the national polity and the forces of globalization and religious experience that seek to transcend it.

Inclusions and Exclusions of Tribal Narratives in the Indian Education Policies of India

2022 ◽  
pp. 207-227
Author(s):  
Lina Pegu
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
Indian Education ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Economic Support ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Economic Equity

The COVID-19 situation in India exposed the deep social and economic divide that exists within. Revealing these existing inequities and vulnerabilities, the pandemic situation critically questions what this divide means for the already marginalized communities in India. The founding fathers of the Indian Constitution foresaw the profound challenge of creating social, political, and economic equity with huge diversity. They saw education with development as a solution to create a just society. Therefore, the structures of reservation and economic support were built into the Constitution. However, these government policies of development and education were intensely geared towards integration as a nation-building exercise. Meanwhile, access to education is still provisional, subject to factors like lack of infrastructure, and that access is not always enough for emancipation. Through this chapter, the nation-building exercise will be critically examined in the light of diversity and the missing narratives of the consent of marginal citizens through the post-colonial lens.

Between Unity and Diversity: The Construction of the Indonesian Nation

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Meuleman
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
New Order ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
Role Of Religion

AbstractThis article studies the process of nation-building in Indonesia. Using a historical approach for the analysis of what is portrayed as a nonlinear, long-term process, it discusses relevant developments during the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial eras, with particular attention to the New Order and most recent periods. The analysis focuses on the complex relations between unity and diversity and highlights the multiplicity of frame-works within which inhabitants of the present Republic of Indonesia have constituted their identities, including national, transnational and subnational ones. Two questions that receive particular attention are the role of religion and the relations between the centre and various parts of the country. The article argues that various factors, including religion and ethnicity, have contributed to nation-building in specific circumstances, but have had contrary effects under other conditions. It also shows that progress and regression in nation-building has partially been the voluntary or involuntary effect of the tactical use governments and other political actors have made of manifold communal differences. It adds that the identity of Indonesian citizens becomes increasingly complex and trans- as well as subnational components increasingly important, but that this does not automatically imply the end of the nation-building process.

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