Latin America as a Multistate Region

This chapter discusses ongoing debates about the conceptual constructs used to approach Latin America. While recognizing it as a region of multiple nation-states, each with its own unique historical and political backgrounds, this opening chapter stresses the relevance of considering the entwined histories and transnational connections of the region. The process of state construction left a legacy of cross-border networks and a protracted involvement in the affairs of neighboring states. With porous borders and a series of diasporas, migrations, and relocations, all the while facing similar challenges of postcolonial development, Latin America experienced a profound spillover of people and ideas. Repeatedly, transnational dynamics operated within national contexts. Moreover, the region has long witnessed cross-border movements and struggles, prompting international agreements on issues of common concern, including human rights, working out regional mechanisms even before those principles reached a global scale. The chapter suggests that adding transnational analysis provides deeper understanding of the region’s political, cultural, and social dynamics.

Obafemi Awolowo’s Philosophy of Education and its Importance for Postcolonial Development in Africa

Needless but irrelevant attention has been given to the forms of educational curriculum and syllabuses that were given to African colonies by their administrators, as the most plausible route for the emergence of competent and upright minds that will occupy posterity to initiate and activate their development. There is hardly any part of Africa that is not a recipient of this unenviable colonial legacy. This is the case for Nigeria, a country that was a former colony of Britain. In 21st century Nigeria however, this admission no longer seems plausible perhaps owing to the upsurge in corruption, ethnicity, nepotism, lack of implementation of good policies, to name a few. Granted, these worrisome situations are not limited to Nigeria, they have served as the motivation for the emphasis to using indigenous ideals for pedagogy. The present research deduces its aim from this call, via the method of philosophical analysis to an aspect of Obafemi Awolowo’s philosophy which has been given minimal attention – his thoughts on education. Assuming the method of philosophical analysis, this study argues for the contemporary relevance of Awolowo’s pedagogy for Nigeria which could also be applicable in places that face challenges similar to Nigeria’s. It agrees with Awolowo that the intellectual enormity of the people is most important because when a person is educated, his mind and body would be developed and transformed; hence such a person would approach issues correctly, rightly and timely. These unfortunately are qualities that are on the downswing in recent times. The entire gauge of this research is therefore aimed at unpacking this philosophy with recommendations for application. It is the fervent conviction of this study that assuming Awolowo’s proposals, there are indigenous African legacies that may assist in charting the right course for the continent’s humans and educational developments.

Trimti: Siraiki Feminism and the Role of Women within Siraiki Literary Domain

This paper applies textual analysis and an ethnographic approach to explore the role of women within the Siraiki cultural and literary domain. The debate about Siraiki as an ethno linguistic identity is a postcolonial development in Pakistan. Siraiki language speakers identify themselves being distinct from any other ethnic group in Pakistan. Based on this claim they resist the hegemonic control of Punjabi-Mohajir over their resources, area and disregard towards their literary and cultural tradition. The demand for a new Siraiki province within the federation of Pakistan by bifurcating Punjab is an outcome of this lack of political recognition. We contend that due to social taboos and patriarchal pressures, these women are experiencing suppression that results in limited visibility within mainstream literary circles. The lack of both appreciation and mentorship for their creative outputs has resulted in the dearth of literature produced by Siraiki women writers. The objective of this study is to indicate how this oppression can result in an enactment of power through creative writing. In order to substantiate our argument, we rely on selected works by Iqbal Bano, Shabnam Awan and Mussarat Kalanchvi. In the process, we also attempt to theorize an indigenous manifestation of feminist intent of these Siraiki writers as Trimti

Colonialism and Victimization Narratives in the Context of Africa's Development

The chapter appraises the implications of victimization inherent in colonialism for the development of Africa. It analyses pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial (decolonization, neo-colonial, meta-colonial, globalization, and meta-decolonization) periods. It holds that post-independence development failure of Africa is rooted in its history of predatory colonialism. The vestiges of colonial norms, institutions, and society are the perpetual contraptions that made postcolonial development bottlenecks inevitable in Africa. It suggests that Africa must liberate itself from the violence of cognitive imperialism that impedes the emergence of truly African development values. It should discard the existing bourgeois decolonization and adopt the meta-decolonization option which this chapter proposes. This will truly Africanize a development agenda in Africa, by Africans and for Africa. Thus, Africa's abundant resources will promote a broad-base for her inclusion in the global development contest as a productive independent key player.

“The Paradise of the Latrine”: American Toilet-Building and the Continuities of Colonial and Postcolonial Development

The Sanitary Hamlet Program, a rural health project intended to serve counterinsurgency goals in wartime Vietnam, focused on ending open-air defecation and instructing Vietnamese in the correct use of latrines. This program belongs within a larger arc of American nation-building cum toilet-building at home and abroad in the twentieth century; American toilet-building shared common features and served common functions from the age of formal empire through the postcolonial era. Looking beyond the rhetoric of modernization to on-the-ground practices reveals how American approaches to international development after 1945 continued to be shaped by racialized perceptions of foreign peoples. But the project was not simply the product of an American neo-colonial impulse. It was also an expression of South Vietnamese leaders’ postcolonial worldview—one that similarly targeted unsanitary peasants for hygienic reform.

Gender Relations

This chapter explores the ways in which key social transformations need to be seen as gendered processes. First, it considers the impact of colonialism on gender relations among both indigenous populations subjugated by Europeans and Europeans themselves, which still shapes gender inequality in the postcolonial development era. Second, it examines the gendered nature of processes of industrialization, which rendered a separation between public and private spheres, and deindustrialization, which has seen a ‘feminization’ of now service-dominated economies. Third, it turns to gender relations in state-socialist societies, where women played a more public role in industrialization, but still took responsibility for domestic labour. The end of socialism, and processes of neoliberalization more broadly, have in turn radically impacted masculinities and femininities. Finally, women’s movements have been key in shaping access to the political rights and benefits associated with democracy and democratization, from the French Revolution to the expansion of the European Union.