scholarly journals Colonial Normativity? Corruption in the Dutch–Indonesian Relationship in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

2021 ◽  
pp. 173-208
Author(s):  
Ronald Kroeze
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Common Base ◽  
Ethical Policy ◽  
Post Colonialism

AbstractKroeze takes the Dutch–Indonesian histories of colonial state formation as a common base to test several hypotheses that are informed by debates in the historiography of corruption and (post-)colonialism. One is that corruption is never a neutral objective term, and that when it is used in a colonial context it serves to set or challenge norms that underly colonial power structures. By invoking scandals and asking for reform, elites challenged existing norms in order to maintain exclusive power structures of (late) colonial state formation and economic exploitation. Kroeze also argues that cases of colonial corruption show how the metropole and colony were interlinked and influenced each other. Political changes in the metropole, such as the growing influence of more morally outspoken Protestant and Liberal politicians, as well as experiences of misuse in the colony, together caused the emergence of the Dutch equivalent of the civilising mission: the so-called “Ethical Policy”.

Design, power and colonisation: decolonial and anti-oppressive explorations on three approaches for Design for Sustainability

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas B. TORRETTA ◽  
Lizette REITSMA
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Design For Sustainability ◽  
The People ◽  
Reflexive Practice ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Design Power ◽  
Relational Issue

Our contemporary world is organized in a modern/colonial structure. As people, professions and practices engage in cross-country Design for Sustainability (DfS), projects have the potential of sustaining or changing modern/colonial power structures. In such project relations, good intentions in working for sustainability do not directly result in liberation from modern/colonial power structures. In this paper we introduce three approaches in DfS that deal with power relations. Using a Freirean (1970) decolonial perspective, we analyse these approaches to see how they can inform DfS towards being decolonial and anti-oppressive. We conclude that steering DfS to become decolonial or colonizing is a relational issue based on the interplay between the designers’ position in the modern/colonial structure, the design approach chosen, the place and the people involved in DfS. Hence, a continuous critical reflexive practice is needed in order to prevent DfS from becoming yet another colonial tool.

Kings versus Bandits: Anti-colonialism in a Bandit Narrative

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shail Mayaram
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Early Writing ◽  
Weak State ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Capitalist World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Specific Theme ◽  
Indirect Rule

AbstractDebate and controversy have bedevilled the subject of social banditry. The early writing on social banditry saw it as primitive rebellion, as prepolitical and antithetical to class consciousness. Another approach identified it with weak state formation. The literature on South Asia saw social banditry as absent having been eroded by the institutional structure of caste. This article examines and critiques some of these theses on banditry. It argues, firstly, that social banditry can be simultaneous with a phase of intensified state formation. The specific theme investigated here is the interaction of the king, peasant and bandit in an Indian kingdom under late colonialism. A window to this universe is opened up by a folk epic from the oral tradition of a community of Muslims called the Meos. Far from being prepolitical, banditry raises crucial questions with respect to authority and legitimacy. This narrative not only interrogates the legitimacy of kingship, it also challenges the authority of the colonial state. Secondly, the article challenges the argument of South Asian exceptionalism to banditry that is perhaps easier to refute. Thirdly, as this article demonstrates, banditry need not relate to a pre-industrial capitalist world. Our bandit narrative indicates the reverberations of industrialism and attendant exchange relations and institutions in the colony even though it belongs to an area of ‘indirect’ rule.

Personal Law and Citizenship in India's Transition to Independence

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELEANOR NEWBIGIN
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Liberal Citizenship ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Personal Law

AbstractStudies of the post-colonial state have often presented it as a structure that has fallen under the control of self-interested sections of the Indian elite. In terms of citizenship, the failure of the state to do more to realize the egalitarian promise of the Fundamental Rights, set out in the Constitution of 1950, has often been attributed to interference by these powerful elite. Tracing the interplay between debates about Hindu property rights and popular support or tolerance for the notion of individual, liberal citizenship, this paper argues that the principles espoused in the Fundamental Rights were never neutral abstractions but, long before independence, were firmly embedded in the material world of late-colonial political relations. Thus, in certain key regards, the citizen-subject of the Indian Constitution was not the individual, freed from ascriptive categories of gender or religious identity, but firmly tied to the power structures of the community governed by Hindu law.

decolonisation in Africa since the latter generally implied that a compromise between the colonial power and the nationalist movement(s) is worked out in a constitutional conference which not only shaped the political system of the new post-colonial state, but also worked out the economic and financial obligations and arrangements of the new state vis-a-vis its previous colonial power. Frelimo's position that the Lusaka conference could only discuss the conditions of the transfer of power and not the content of the new power was accepted in the end by the Portuguese delegation. Furthermore, no agreements were made with respect to financial and economic ties as a carry-over from the colonial period. The concrete mechanism of the transfer of power was to take place through the immediate instalment of a transitional government in which Frelimo was the majority partner with Portuguese officials as the only remaining other partner. The immediate response to the agreements was the aborted attempt on the part of section of the settler population to seize power by means of Rhodesia-type unilateral declaration of independence. The period of the transitional government (up to independence in June 1975) and roughly the first two years after independence were characterised by the massive emigration of the settler population accompanied by an intense struggle waged by the colonial bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in an attempt to destabilise the economy as well as to export most of its capital (in whatever form). Hence economic sabotage in its various forms - destruction of equipment, and economic infrastructure; killing of cattle stock; large-scale dismissal of workers from productive enterprises and complete production standstills - were practised on a large scale all over the country. The export of capital also assumed enormous proportions and took various forms: the collapse of the (colonial) state apparatus and the fact that banks were privately owned meant that it was easy to arrange for acquiring foreign exchange to import goods without any imports subsequently materialising, or to export cashew, cotton, etc., without the foreign exchange ever returning to the national bank; furthermore, initially no control was organised over the export of personal belongings of returning settlers which led to massive buying in shops and depletion of stock of commodities; finally, the direct illegal exportation across the borders to South Africa and Rhodesia of trucks, tractors, equipment, cattle, etc., further depleted the available means of production in the country. With this context economic policy was dictated by the necessity to fight against the destabilisation of the economy propelled by the actions of the colonial bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie (as well as of skilled and admin-istrative workers). The legal weapon was a decree of February 1975 which specified that in proven cases of acts of sabotage (which included the massive dismissal of workers and deliberate production stoppages) the government could intervene by transferring the management of the enterprise to an appointed administrative council composed of workers and often members of the old management as well. The social force which concretised this policy were the dynamising groups - popular organisations of militants which were constituted at community level as well as in enterprises, public institutions and government administrations. The outcome of this intense struggle was a sharp production crisis which

2013 ◽  
pp. 191-196
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Exchange ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Force ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Petty Bourgeoisie ◽  
The Government ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
Settler Population

Radio Broadcasting in Colonial India

2019 ◽  
pp. 89-126
Author(s):  
Colin R. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Central Government ◽  
British Broadcasting Corporation ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Radio Broadcasting ◽  
Royal Charter ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Uk

This chapter discusses the preparations for World War II in relation to advances in radio broadcasting to the Indian public. Responsibility for radio broadcasting in British India became part of the portfolio of the Labour Bureau and thus one of the state’s apparatus surrounding the maintenance of colonial power. The arrangement in India was different from that of radio broadcasting in the UK during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s where the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had been created under Royal Charter with editorial independence from government and commercial interests. In contrast, the British Government of India, and several of Britain’s other colonial territories set up public communications departments that were attached to central government bureaus primarily because the notion of public service broadcasting sat awkwardly against colonial power structures.

Decolonizing Development Education and the Pursuit of Social Justice

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhana Sultana
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
International Development ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Development Education ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
Institutional Politics ◽  
Dominant Narratives

Decolonization has become a popular discourse in academia recently and there are many debates on what it could mean within various disciplines as well as more broadly across academia itself. The field of international development has seen sustained gestures towards decolonization for several years in theory and practice, but hegemonic notions of development continue to dominate. Development is a contested set of ideas and practices that are under critique in and outside of academia, yet the reproduction of colonial power structures and Eurocentric logics continues whereby the realities of the global majority are determined by few powerful institutions and a global elite. To decolonize development's material and discursive powers, scholars have argued for decolonizing development education towards one that is ideologically and epistemologically different from dominant narratives of development. I add to these conversations and posit that decolonized ideologies and epistemologies have to be accompanied by decolonized pedagogies and considerations of decolonization of institutions of higher education. I discuss the institutional and critical pedagogical dilemmas and challenges that exist, since epistemological, methodological, and pedagogical decolonizations are influenced by institutional politics of higher education that are simultaneously local and global. The paper engages with the concept of critical hope in the pursuit of social justice to explore possibilities of decolonizing development praxis and offers suggestions on possible pathways forward.

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