Leaving area studies behind: the challenge of diasporic connections in the field of African studies

Abstract

In recent years, diaspora has become one of the key terms of social analysis in various fields. Emphasizing the multiple trajectories out of which present identities – inasmuch as political or economic realities – are forged, the concept forces us to reconsider the scope of classical area studies (and associated disciplinary boundaries) in radical terms. The article looks at the colonial foundations of African Studies as area studies and examines some ways by which to overcome enduring colonial epistemologies. The author suggests a theoretical framework in which Africa herself is considered as diasporic. Moreover, she calls for a critical perspective that will facilitate the comparative analysis of different diasporic discourses and practices.     

Zionist historiography and its critics: a case of mythtaken identity?

Since the 1980s, several Israeli scholars, who have come to be known as the 'new historians', have been engaged in the reappraisal of the events surrounding the Zionist state's foundation. They have been highly critical, at the same time, of mainstream Israeli historiography. In his book, Fabricating Israeli History, Karsh launches a vigorous counter-attack against the 'new historians', focusing on shlaim's discussion of Zionist-Transjordan relations during the 1948 war and on Morris's account of the factors that precipitated the flight, in that war, of two-thirds of the Palestinian Arab population. The article reviews the main findings of the 'new history' by referece to Karsh's critique. It identifies the principal points of divergence between the 'old' and 'new' interpretations and provides an assessment of their respective claims.     

Imperial Violence: the ‘Ethnic’ as a Component of the ‘Criminal’ Class in Victorian England

This article seeks to identify how, and in what ways, the debate over ethnic identity acquired saliency during the different phases of black settlement in England, especially against the backcloth of the socio-cultural processes and the economics of colonialism. It outlines how the ‘other’ was constituted in different discourses, policies, and practices, and how these constructions were appropriated by the criminal justice agencies. Critically, ethnic identity as subordinate and ‘inferior’ was produced by many of the same mechanisms as was developed with regard to the indigenous ‘criminal’ class in Victorian England. Societal reaction, through criminal and civil statutes, established the identity of the ethnic minorities of early nineteenth century England, not just as subordinate strata, but also by a more complex process, as a variant of the newly emergent ‘criminal’ class. It is argued that, caught in the hub of empire, the ‘ayahs’, the ‘lascars’ and the domestic servants (See R. Visram, The Ayahs, Lascars and The Princes (London: Pluto).) in England’s ports found themselves reconstructed as part of the ‘criminal’ class and subsequently subjected to disciplinary measures of social control and surveillance. The author argues with regard to the indigenous population, conceptions of the threat of the non-Western crystallised around the same popular images of ‘savagery’ and of moral degeneracy, a process reinforced in imperial fiction. A desire to ‘civilise’ and improve the peculiar habits of the non-Western followed directly from indigenous precedent.     

法属印度支那税收体制特征剖析

税收是法国在印度支那推行的殖民经济政策的重要组成部分。本文梳理了法国海军殖民地部的部分税务档案,认为法属印度支那的税收体制具有如下基本特征:税收名目多,税额重;在直接税征收上一直推行“集体纳税人”制和包税方式;在间接税征收上长期奉行以鸦片和盐酒专卖税为主的政策。这一具有浓厚殖民主义色彩的税收体制是法属印度支那畸形单一经济结构形成的主要原因之一。     

What’s unsettling about On Settling: discussing the settler colonial present

This article considers the current relevance of settler colonial tropes, narratives and idioms by discussing the opening section of On Settling (2012), a recently published book authored by respected political scientist Robert E. Goodin. While Goodin argues that ‘settling’ should be considered a ‘normatively defensible practice’, my critique focuses on his assumed link between ‘settling’ in general and settler colonialism in particular. The first section of this article follows the narrative of settlement that underpins Goodin’s book. The second section discusses this narrative’s inherently exclusionary character, a characteristic that undermines claims to universal normative validity; while the third section appraises the language that supports it. In the fourth, conclusive, section On Settling’s apology of settler colonialism is used as a starting point for an analysis of the settler colonial present in an ‘age of unsettlement’.     

Structural injustice and alienation: a reply to my critics

ABSTRACT

This author’s reply addresses critiques by Reinhard Wolf, Alasia Nuti, and Kimberly Hutchings of my 2017 book, Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics. First, I restate the normative and practical significance of focusing on challenges of structural injustice for resolving many serious and pressing problems in world politics, including climate change. Second, I begin to resolve some puzzles about the concept of alienation and its relationship to justice and reconciliation, by outlining two concepts of alienation, and distinguishing them from alienation as a cognitive-affective experience. Third, I clarify the limits and potential of decolonial political theory.     

Structural injustice and the legitimacy of the state-centric system

ABSTRACT

Catherine Lu’s seminal Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics is right to stress the enduring nature of some colonialist structural indignities. It is less clear, however, if structural injustices justify Lu’s demand for revolutionary changes of the global order. Before transforming the pluralist state-centric system, we need transparent criteria that help us agree on the severity of structural injustices. Considering Lu’s strong focus on the colonialist origins of contemporary injustices, one would also like to know if and how their historical background affects their present moral status. The essay concludes that, in a multicultural global society with diverse moral values, we should focus on tackling the most glaring injustices and on rectifying those where accountabilities are least controversial.     

罗马教廷、东北天主教会与伪满洲国

罗马教廷在对待伪满洲国的问题上采取了两手策略,一方面极力在外交和法理层面上回避与伪满洲国之间的关系问题,另一方面又在事实上承认了伪满洲国的存在。吉林教区主教高德惠作为罗马教廷的实际代表与伪满当局合作,协助当局推行殖民主义政策,其在本质上已经成为日本殖民主义者的帮凶。     

Resisting ‘progressive’ carceral expansion: lessons for abolitionists from anti-colonial resistance

This article documents a government-led strategy to more closely integrate policing with community-based ‘crime prevention’ programming in the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. These initiatives have targeted neighborhoods with large Indigenous populations. In this article I illustrate how community-level conflicts over responses to ‘crime’ are also sites of settler colonial conflict, and how settler colonial governance is reproduced and resisted through the governance of crime. Interviews with politicians, policy-makers, bureaucrats in the crime prevention branch of the provincial government, and directors and employees at community-based organizations suggest that the pursuit of the government strategy of integrated crime prevention and suppression has been more a project of attempting to ‘manage’ urban Indigenous people than serve their interests. As a contribution to abolitionist thought and theory, this article profiles sites of conflict between community police and community-based organizations over definitions of the ‘crime’ problem in city-center Winnipeg. These examples highlight a kinship between carceral abolitionist and decolonial politics.     

Postcards from the Raj

ABSTRACT

Patterson's article explores aspects of British identity as they relate to depictions of Britons and Indians on postcards during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He argues that these were not innocuous ‘comic’ pieces, as they were intended to be seen at the time, but rather were integrally linked to the justification of the Raj, since they emphasize the civilizing mission of empire and the ‘backwards’ nature of India. Nearly all aspects of imperial life, whether running the bungalow, dispensing justice or even travelling by train, required the British to maintain an imperial façade of control and an aura of invincibility. Part of this process required the British to depict Indians as incapable of self-rule, and the postcards depict the British as natural overlords of India, born ‘booted and spurred’ to rule, while Indians are portrayed ‘saddled and bridled’. Indians then, due to their ‘Oriental nature’, are portrayed as too lazy, too effeminate or too dishonest to run their own country effectively. Another theme that can be explicated through the postcards is that of masculinity. By constantly posing as a more masculine and worthy race, the British laid down an entire grid of civilization in which they could be the only legitimate rulers. This aspect of the White Man's Burden further bolstered and perpetuated the masculine authority of the Raj, and the postcards became a key component linking empire and metropole for the re-export of imperial ideology to Britain.