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Identity, ‘Britishness’, and Leaving the EU: What will decolonisation look like for the UK now?

by Vanessa Bradbury

I felt a deep sadness on the 31st of January 2020, as the UK left the EU. It was a sadness that seemed to run much deeper than the repetitive ‘what ifs’ of politics, policies and trade deals echoing through news channels. A sadness that seemed personal, and, as I was trying to understand and reflect on these emotions, brought me to question the ambiguity of identity, ‘Britishness’ and, ultimately, what this farewell will mean for the wider project of decolonisation.

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Indigenous Sovereignty and the Canadian Colonial State: Pipelines, Orcas and a Poem

by Budd L Hall

I live in Victoria, British Colombia on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples, the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ First Nations. Indigenous people have been living in British Colombia for at least 16,000 years.  It is the home of 52 different First Nations with about the same number of languages.  Continue reading “Indigenous Sovereignty and the Canadian Colonial State: Pipelines, Orcas and a Poem”

It’s all about “Post-” and “De-“: Some (Dis-)entanglements of Post- and Decolonialism and Postdevelopment

by Julia Schöneberg

Starting to read about critical perspectives towards “development” you will soon encounter post- and decolonial literature and arguments, popping up regularly as catchwords. Both are not homogenous streams of thought, but rather certain standpoints from which “development”, capitalism, Eurocentrism, Anthropocentrism and the ongoing legacies of colonialism are critiqued and contested.

Then, you may notice that likewise postdevelopment (PD) comes with a “post-“ prefix. How to make sense of all the “post” and “de”? How do they all connect?

You’re confused? Fret not and look no further, here’s a zine for you!

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CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: Views on the EU as a development actor in conversation with postdevelopment

We are calling on scholars of EU Studies, Development Studies, International Relations and related fields.

We would like to invite you to submit your abstracts for our panel session on “Views on the EU as a development actor in conversation with postdevelopment”, which will take place at the upcoming EADI ISS 2020 Conference in The Hague (29 June – 2 July 2020): https://www.eadi.org/gc/2020/

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Uncomfortable in white Skin: Research, (Self-)Reflexivity and Representation

by Fiona Faye

I felt uncomfortable when writing about other people after my last research stay in Benin. In qualitative research, you have so much material and then you need to decide what to take in, what to leave out. The picture is always incomplete because you only have a certain number of pages. How can you make comprehensible to the readers all you saw and experienced and everything people explained to you so patiently? Even worse, you have the power to choose and thereby to substantially shape what the readers will think about the persons or groups of people you are writing about. It’s this kind of power, which is probably impossible to avoid (is it?) when writing about somebody else, which makes me feel uncomfortable in my skin, especially as a white researcher in Benin.

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Development: a failed project

Read also in SPANISH

It’s time to abandon development and think about postdevelopment instead.

by Julia Schöneberg

“They talk to me about progress, about ‘achievements,’ diseases cured, improved standards of living. I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out. They throw facts at my head, statistics, mileages of roads, canals, and railroad tracks. […] I am talking about natural economies that have been disrupted – harmonious and viable economies adapted to the indigenous population – about food crops destroyed, malnutrition permanently introduced, agricultural development oriented solely toward the benefit of the metropolitan countries, about the looting of products, the looting of raw materials.”

– Aime Césaire (1950): ‘Discourse on Colonialism’

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As scholars from the Global South, we must resist being complicit

by Laura Loyola-Hernández

This intervention is written from someone who is from the Global South and working in a Global North institution, often encountering racism, xenophobia and “white fragility;” someone in between borders, juggling dos lenguas, two epistemologies and cultures.

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Reaching the least, the last, the lowest and the lost: Thoughts on Gandhi-ji and the spirit of Higher Education

by Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon

The words in the title of this blog are the formal goals of the Dayalbagh Educational Institute, a university founded by followers of the Radhaswami faith in the early 20th Century. We learned about the unique and inspiring work of the Dayalbagh University from Dr. Anand Mohan, the Registrar as part of this presentation during a two-day symposium on the implications of Ghandian thought to the issues facing Higher Education Institutions in the first quarter of the 21st Century.  The symposium was jointly organized and hosted by the UNESCO Chair for Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education in cooperation with the Association of Indian Universities, UNESCO New Delhi and the Asian Office of the International Development Research Centre September 18-20, 2019.

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Being a ‘hypocritic’ commonwealth scholar: On moments of colonial backlog and postcolonial fractures

by Vijitha Rajan

This short note is a reflection on how I felt fractured being a Commonwealth Scholar, between my colonial past and post-colonial present. In the discourse of international development, a Commonwealth scholarship is symbolised as a gesture of the lasting commitment of the United Kingdom towards Commonwealth citizens. Yet its lesser projected colonial and post-colonial undertones made my engagement with the ‘prestigious’ Commonwealth Scholarship more complex than a straightforward experience of meritocratic achievement.

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