scholarly journals Colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of deep-time biodiversity

Author(s):  
Nussaïbah B. Raja ◽  
Emma M. Dunne ◽  
Aviwe Matiwane ◽  
Tasnuva Ming Khan ◽  
Paulina S. Nätscher ◽  
...  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nussaïbah B. Raja ◽  
Emma Dunne ◽  
Aviwe Matiwane ◽  
Tasnuva Ming Khan ◽  
Paulina Nätscher ◽  
...  

This document contains the plain language summaries for the study:Raja, N. B., Dunne, E. M., Matiwane, A., Khan, T. M., Nätscher, P. S., Ghilardi, A. M., and Chattopadhyay, D. (2021). Colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of deep-time biodiversity. EarthArxiv. https://doi.org/10.31223/X5802N


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nussaïbah B. Raja ◽  
Emma Dunne ◽  
Aviwe Matiwane ◽  
Tasnuva Ming Khan ◽  
Paulina Nätscher ◽  
...  

This document contains the references for the data sources used in the study:Raja, N. B., Dunne, E. M., Matiwane, A., Khan, T. M., Nätscher, P. S., Ghilardi, A. M., and Chattopadhyay, D. (2021). Colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of deep-time biodiversity.EarthArxiv. https://doi.org/10.31223/X5802N


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nussaïbah Raja ◽  
Emma Dunne ◽  
Aviwe Matiwane ◽  
Tasnuva Ming Khan ◽  
Paulina Nätscher ◽  
...  

Sampling variations in the fossil record distort estimates of past biodiversity. However, compilations of global fossil occurrences used in these analyses not only reflect the geological and spatial aspects of the fossil record, but also the historical collation of these data. Here, we demonstrate how the legacy of colonialism as well as socio-economic factors such as wealth, education and political stability impact research output in paleontology. Re- searchers in high or upper middle income countries contribute to 97% of fossil occurrence data, not only leading to spatial sampling biases but also generating a global power imbalance within the discipline. This work illustrates that our efforts to mitigate the effects of sampling biases to obtain a truly representative view of past biodiversity are not disconnected from the aim of diversifying our field.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Rice

Through the example of the Crown film Voices of Malaya (1948), this article examines interrelated postwar shifts in colonial history and British documentary cinema. Produced over three tumultuous years (1945–8) – in Malaya and England, with local film-makers and British documentarians – Voices of Malaya is a hybrid text torn between traditions of British documentary cinema and an emerging instructional, colonial cinema; between an international cinema for overseas audiences and a local cinema used within government campaigns and between an earlier ideal of empire and a rapidly changing, late liberal imperialism. The article challenges the traditional decline and fall narrative of the British documentary movement, as I examine the often overlooked ‘movement overseas’ of film-makers, practices and ideologies into the colonies after the war. In charting the emergence of the Malayan Film Unit, I examine the role of the British documentary movement in the formation of local postcolonial cinemas.


Somatechnics ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalindi Vora

This paper provides an analysis of how cultural notions of the body and kinship conveyed through Western medical technologies and practices in Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) bring together India's colonial history and its economic development through outsourcing, globalisation and instrumentalised notions of the reproductive body in transnational commercial surrogacy. Essential to this industry is the concept of the disembodied uterus that has arisen in scientific and medical practice, which allows for the logic of the ‘gestational carrier’ as a functional role in ART practices, and therefore in transnational medical fertility travel to India. Highlighting the instrumentalisation of the uterus as an alienable component of a body and subject – and therefore of women's bodies in surrogacy – helps elucidate some of the material and political stakes that accompany the growth of the fertility travel industry in India, where histories of privilege and difference converge. I conclude that the metaphors we use to structure our understanding of bodies and body parts impact how we imagine appropriate roles for people and their bodies in ways that are still deeply entangled with imperial histories of science, and these histories shape the contemporary disparities found in access to medical and legal protections among participants in transnational surrogacy arrangements.


Author(s):  
Daniel Berkowitz ◽  
Karen B. Clay

Although political and legal institutions are essential to any nation's economic development, the forces that have shaped these institutions are poorly understood. Drawing on rich evidence about the development of the American states from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, this book documents the mechanisms through which geographical and historical conditions—such as climate, access to water transportation, and early legal systems—impacted political and judicial institutions and economic growth. The book shows how a state's geography and climate influenced whether elites based their wealth in agriculture or trade. States with more occupationally diverse elites in 1860 had greater levels of political competition in their legislature from 1866 to 2000. The book also examines the effects of early legal systems. Because of their colonial history, thirteen states had an operational civil-law legal system prior to statehood. All of these states except Louisiana would later adopt common law. By the late eighteenth century, the two legal systems differed in their balances of power. In civil-law systems, judiciaries were subordinate to legislatures, whereas in common-law systems, the two were more equal. Former civil-law states and common-law states exhibit persistent differences in the structure of their courts, the retention of judges, and judicial budgets. Moreover, changes in court structures, retention procedures, and budgets occur under very different conditions in civil-law and common-law states. This book illustrates how initial geographical and historical conditions can determine the evolution of political and legal institutions and long-run growth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Catherine Cumming

This paper intervenes in orthodox under-standings of Aotearoa New Zealand’s colonial history to elucidate another history that is not widely recognised. This is a financial history of colonisation which, while implicit in existing accounts, is peripheral and often incidental to the central narrative. Undertaking to reread Aotearoa New Zealand’s early colonial history from 1839 to 1850, this paper seeks to render finance, financial instruments, and financial institutions explicit in their capacity as central agents of colonisation. In doing so, it offers a response to the relative inattention paid to finance as compared with the state in material practices of colonisation. The counter-history that this paper begins to elicit contains important lessons for counter-futures. For, beyond its implications for knowledge, the persistent and violent role of finance in the colonisation of Aotearoa has concrete implications for decolonial and anti-capitalist politics today.  


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Marcel Nono

A pillar of African emergence and an important issue of political debate that is central to regional integration, free movement is however not yet acquired in Central Africa. Yet a glance at the pre colonial history invites us to believe that Central Africa has been an area of free movement. The recognition of a right that cannot be realized only by an agreement leads to the Central African states pledging to work together in the context of regional integration by recognizing their citizens' right to full mobility. This contribution highlights the efforts, challenges and prospects of free movement in Central Africa by reference to the African Union framework, and asks if the legal and institutional framework of free movement in Central Africa has led to the emergence of a social policy supportive of free movement at the sub regional level. Spanish La libre circulación de personas es un pilar del África emergente, un tema importante en el debate político, un punto central de la integración regional, y sin embargo todavía intangible en África Central. No obstante, una mirada a la historia precolonial nos invita a pensar que África Central ha sido un espacio de libre circulación. El reconocimiento de un derecho que no puede realizarse sólo por un acuerdo, conduce a que los Estados de África Central se comprometan a trabajar juntos en el marco de la integración regional para reconocer el derecho de sus ciudadanos a la movilidad total. Esta contribución destaca los esfuerzos, desafíos y perspectivas de la libre circulación en África Central en referencia con el marco de la Unión Africana, y se pregunta si el marco legal e institucional de la libre circulación en África Central ha llevado a la aparición de una política social que apoye la libre circulación a nivel subregional. French Pilier de l'émergence de l'Afrique, enjeu des débats politiques et de l'intégration, la libre circulation n'est pas encore un acquis en Afrique Centrale. Pourtant, un regard porté sur l'histoire précoloniale nous invite à croire que l'Afrique centrale a été un espace de libre circulation. La reconnaissance d'un droit ne pouvant se faire que par l'objet d'un accord, les États d'Afrique Centrale se sont engagés dans le choix d'une histoire à réaliser ensemble dans le cadre de l'intégration, en consacrant dans des pactes communautaires la pleine mobilité de leurs ressortissants. Cette contribution met en évidence les efforts, défis et perspectives de la libre circulation en Afrique centrale par référence au cadre de l'Union africaine, et pose la question de savoir si le cadre juridique et institutionnel de la libre circulation en Afrique centrale a conduit à l'émergence d'une politique sociale en faveur de la libre circulation au niveau sous régional.


Author(s):  
Andrzej Marzec

The author analyzes Sven Agustijnen's Specters from the philosophical perspective. He tries to prove that the cinema of the Belgian director is haunted because it presents the reality as made out of traces, which disturb the traditional division into presence and absence. The author analyzes Augustijnen's film techniques and uses Jacques Derrida hauntology to show, how contemporary cinema tries to face the difficult and unfinished colonial history of Belgium (the genocide in Congo during the reign of the Belgian king Leopold II and the murder of the first prime minister of the independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba).


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