scholarly journals The Colonial Origins of the State in Southern Belize

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Wainwright
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
State Relations ◽  
British State

Recent research in Belizean historiography has improved our understanding of twentieth-century colonial state relations and the transition to the post-colonial authoritarian democratic state. Following a concise review of these works, I draw on archival documents to examine the origins of the British state in southern Belize. This analysis provides two principal findings. First, the earliest state institutions were founded at the behest of colonists from the defeated Confederate States to facilitate labor discipline over their workers. Once established, local state officials sought to learn about and gain influence over Indigenous communities. Second, the nascent colonial state was relatively authoritarian and inattentive to local accumulation and social needs. Thus from its inception, the state was organized around race and class relations.

Race, Entitlement, and Belonging: A Discursive Analysis of the Political Economy of Land in Zimbabwe

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-49
Author(s):  
Langton Makuwerere Dube
Keyword(s):  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Land Redistribution ◽  
Epistemic Violence ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
Ownership Of Land ◽  
Means Of Production

The access, control, and ownership of land and the means of production is an enduring frontier of conflict in post colonial settler states. Whilst racially tinged, colonialism created “structures of feeling” that sanctioned epistemic violence and created an economy of entitlement and belonging that sustained imperial designs. Zimbabwe’s independence meant the redistribution and proprietorship of land became a central leitmotif of cadastral politics. The article explores the interplay of the contested tropes of race, entitlement, and indigeneity as they informed the highly polarized land redistribution discourse. The discussion takes stock of the dominant narratives of post-colonial state predations, patronage, populism, and megalomania in contradistinction to the various ways in which whiteness and its prejudices and stereotypes nurtured some hubris of entitlement and belonging that retrogressively not only perpetuated colonial settler values and identities but also entrenched racial distance and indifference. The polarized contestations on land redistribution discourse coalesce around concepts such as restitution, indigeneity, nativity, patriotism, race, and class. Therefore while critiquing state excesses that have masked the honorable intentions of land redistribution, the article underscores the complex ways in which white Zimbabweans contributed to the enduring crisis by obdurately fixating their energies on colonial settler entitlements, values, and identities.

Chiefs, elders, and traditional authority

2020 ◽  
pp. 296-309
Author(s):  
Michelle Osborn
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Traditional Authority ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
State Bureaucracy ◽  
Provincial Administration ◽  
Ordinary Citizens ◽  
The Way

For over a century, Kenya’s chiefs have served as central figures in the formation and implementation of state bureaucracy. Inextricably linked with the colonial and post-colonial state, Kenya’s chiefs are not representative of traditional forms of authority in the way that elders may be said to be, but are rather an embodiment of the state’s bureaucratic apparatus. As a key component of Kenyan bureaucracy through their position in provincial administration, chiefs have played a central role in the implementation of policies, the provision of order, and mobilization of political support. They act as an integral link between the state and ordinary citizens. While chiefs have obtained their right to govern through the state, their power has nevertheless waxed and waned over the years, as they have had to continuously negotiate legitimacy within a pluralistic landscape of locally recognized authorities. This chapter discusses chiefs’ authority in Kenya and the change and continuity of historical processes, which have created, reinforced, and challenged their position and role.

The Fall and Rise of Church and State? Religious History, Politics and the State in Britain, 1961–2011

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 491-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Grimley
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
Christian Teaching ◽  
Personal Morality ◽  
State Relations ◽  
British State

In trying to trace the development of church-state relations in Britain since 1961, one encounters the difficulty that conceptions of both ‘church’ and ‘state’ have changed radically in the half-century since then. This is most obviously true of the state. The British state in 1961 was (outside Stormont-governed Northern Ireland) a unitary state governed from London. It still had colonies, and substantial overseas military commitments. One of its Houses of Parliament had until three years before been (a few bishops and law-lords apart) completely hereditary. The prime minister controlled all senior appointments in the established Church of England, and Parliament had the final say on its worship and doctrine. The criminal law still embodied Christian teaching on issues of personal morality.

Rethinking sovereignty with reference to history and anthropology

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Wachspress
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anthropological Literature

While legal practice and scholarship are driven by the use and understanding of complex legal terminology, there has been little effort to incorporate the humanistic scholarship of anthropologists and historians into theoretical or practical accounts of these words and their usages. This paper attempts to historicise and complicate a term that serves as a bridge or meeting point between the legal and the political; sovereignty has been conceptualised since the sixteenth century as both a framing device that produces unity within the state while establishing mutual equality within the interstate order, and as the capacity to make law without being subject to that law. Recent anthropological literature has challenged the personification implicit in political–theoretical definitions of sovereignty, arguing instead for a theory of sovereignty that can be applied to ‘complicated’, post-colonial contexts, where legal orders are plural or overlapping and the state is weak or non-existent. What such critiques cannot explain, however, is how the concept of the ‘sovereign state’ became so central to political discourse on a global scale. This paper draws upon legal historical case-studies concerned with the production of the colonial or post-colonial state or the deployment of ‘sovereignty’ as a justificatory concept in colonial settings. In doing so, this paper argues for understanding sovereignty both as a practice across time and space that organises legal institutions and as a justificatory strategy in the intellectual and social history of those institutions, an approach that allows scholars to draw upon the insights of political theorists, anthropologists and historians. While primarily intended to instigate a broader interdisciplinary conversation, this paper also suggests a preliminary conclusion: sovereignty has historically been deployed as a means of including that which cannot be considered the same, mediating the colonial tension between ‘otherness’ and legal homogeneity.

scholarly journals Post-Colonial State and Bureaucracy in Bangladesh: Theoretical Understanding

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 43-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanif Miah
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
State Administration ◽  
State Bureaucracy ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Personal Interests

Bureaucracy is the management apparatus of a state administration. Even in private sector, bureaucratic organization is very much essential for its smooth functioning and betterment. A legalized domination of bureaucracy only can ensure highest efficiency of an organization in a country. But the state bureaucracy of Bangladesh not developed legally from Pre-colonial period to post-colonial phase as well as an independent Bangladesh eventually. The state bureaucracy of Bangladesh is patrimonial in nature based on personal interests. The politicians and bureaucrats are interdependent in various manners for the fulfillment of their purpose illegally in Democratic Bangladesh. Simultaneously, the impact of militarism still exists in state bureaucracy of Bangladesh as it faced military rule in several times.

Post-colonial state, and its political elites And its political approach, from ((1958 - 1968))

2019 ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Fawaz Hammad Mahmoud
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
British Occupation ◽  
The People ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Dominant Parties ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Military

The State of Iraq was formed in 1921 and described as a product of the British occupation state. This was in line with what was planned by the occupation government in all fields of intellectual, cultural and political. This resulted in the establishment of the "King of Iraq" of Arab origins, as well as contributed groups of tribal or economic influence to contribute to the establishment of the Iraqi state, where the Iraqi society was suffering from poverty and ignorance and disease under the Ottoman Empire, and others may see that the Iraqi state, which came under the umbrella Britain, after the First World War, may not differ in terms of dealing with the Iraqi society from the Ottoman administration, and may be a continuation of, and worse, and therefore there was concern, and fear of all steps of the government, even if it was positive, and increased military intervention through coups policy The state and its apparatus to calculate the dominant parties But it turned into a preoccupation with the minds of the people, the futility or futility of such coups, which are no more than conflicts between families, parties, and perhaps people, using the violence that the military led to express in the three coups which We gave it our attention in this study, which included, after this introduction, three investigations and a conclusion.

Travellers in Britain: a minority and the state

2004 ◽  
Vol 77 (198) ◽  
pp. 575-596
Author(s):  
Becky Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
The State ◽  
Motivating Factors ◽  
Welfare Provision ◽  
Important Target ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
State Relations ◽  
British State

Abstract This article explores the developing relations between Travellers and the British state in the context of the expansion of welfare provision. Using four case studies it highlights the key characteristics of Traveller-state relations: the lack of a unified response to Travellers by the state; how Travellers were simultaneously seen as an important target for welfare provision and less entitled to its benefits; and that settlement and assimilation were the motivating factors for schemes. It goes on to show that these trends were the result of three factors: the dominance of stereotypes surrounding Travellers; the structure of the state; and the agency of Travellers themselves.

Chiefdom

Focaal ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 2004 (43) ◽  
pp. 77-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Skalník
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Generic Term ◽  
Political Form ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Indirect Rule

This article addresses the question of the universality of chiefdom as a political form that displays surprising longevity as a viable alternative to the state. Data from research on Africa show that chiefdom is a suitable generic term for the political centralization, which comprises 'kingdoms'. A New Indirect Rule, based on a balance between the chiefdom-like structures and the post-colonial state, could be a truly democratic solution for the protracted crisis of modern statehood in areas where it was imposed on consesual communities. The chiefdom model should also be tested on data about face-to-face non-state politics in contemporary societies. The purpose of the article is to call for a new generation of research on politics liberated from the teleology of the state.

Being of ‘One Heart’: Power and Politics Among the Iraqw of Tanzania

Africa ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine A. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Northern Tanzania ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Central Notion ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Party State

AbstractThis article explores local understandings of and experience with democracy in an Iraqw community in northern Tanzania. At independence, President Julius Nyerere in his development of a one-party state, argued that democracy in this new nation state would be modelled on that which is found in indigenous, pre-colonial political systems. In the Iraqw homeland, pre-colonial ‘democracy’ was expressed in elders’ councils in which male elders made decisions on behalf of the rest of the community. Differences of opinion were voiced but eventually the group would come to one opinion to achieve the state of being of ‘one heart’ before decisions could be put into effect. While Nyerere claimed that this practice of democracy and achieving consensus would provide the model for the post-colonial state, in actuality the state drew more on colonial models characterised by top-down decision-making and autocratic governance. Overlaying both the pre-colonial and post-colonial political systems is an ideological emphasis on ‘unity'. This article explores how the central notion of unity is expressed and perceived among the Iraqw in Tanzania and how it forms the screen through which people view démocratisation.

scholarly journals Missionary Activity of Russian Orthodox Church in the Second Half of the XIX - Early XX Centuries (Vyatka province)

2020 ◽  
pp. 401-419
Author(s):  
E. N. Nemchaninova ◽  
M. Yu. Polovnikova
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Regional Approach ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations

The study is devoted to the analysis of the missionary activity of the Russian Orthodox Church in the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries in the context of the history of church-state relations of the period. An attempt is made to classify the key problems of missionary activity based on an analysis of its leading areas using a regional approach. Based on archival documents (primarily the reports of Vyatka bishops and governors), the main problems of the missionary activity of the Russian Orthodox Church in the vast Vyatka province, which is one of the largest in empire in terms of population are analyzed in the paper. The authors proceed from the position that the organization of missionary activity was an important element in ensuring the unity of the state in the period under review, and in this regard consolidated the interests of secular and spiritual authorities both at the central and regional levels. The range and content of the problems of missionary activity, according to the authors, were largely determined by the specifics of the national and confessional composition of the population of the region, the nature of its settlement, as well as unique models of church-state relations that developed at the local level.

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