Institutional Subjects - Histories

Question 1

geography was born from imperial expansion and colonial control –> Geography Militant

Answer 1

RGS encouraged expeditions (Driver, 2001) e.g. MacKinder and the colonisation of Africa for resources

Question 2

Eurocentrism –> legitimised European knowledges and rejected/marginalised others

Answer 2

colonial control was produced through terra nullius, rejecting the relational dwelling of indigenous communities (Koot and Büscher, 2019) e.g. English in Australia (Burrow et al., 2018) –> wilderness as a means to erase indigenous ontology (Sundberg, 2014)

Question 3

Discipline of geography emerged as masculine

Answer 3

conduct imperial work as often places were explored and only ‘known’ about after Europeans mapped them, were then named after royalty e.g. Lake Victoria (Waiske, 2020)

Question 4

Settler colonaialism persists e.g. Indian Act and the legitimisation of indigenous people (Diagle, 2016)

Answer 4

provides them indigeneity (Blaser, 2014) but forces them into settler ontologies without the status of a citizen (Koot and Büscher, 2019)

Question 5

Empires acted as a paradoxical space for men

Answer 5

to escape the struggles of democracy, socialism and feminism (Kearns, 2009)

Question 6

In 1892 women entered the RGS (controversial as it was a thought of as a threat to the scientific status of the RGS)

Answer 6

1912 women were permitted to become fellows –> had a high enough education and have lived the colonial experience in regions like India (Bell and McEwan, 1996)

Question 7

Mary Kingsley used her position

Answer 7

to access the harram (Cresswell, 2014)

Question 8

Africans were placed at the bottom of a hierarchy –> knowledges were regarded as backward

Answer 8

as they supposedly lacked cognitive thinking

Question 9

Inappropriate western knowledges damaged crop production in south africa (Endfield and Nash, 2002; 2010)

Answer 9

environmental determinism –> used as a mechanism to seperate bodies (Mavroudi and Nagel, 2016).

Question 10

Modernity –> achievable through European linear development only –> from savage to capitalist (Quijano, 2007)

Answer 10

Eurocentrism and often used to disguise histories of enslavement and violence, often Europe would be presented as the saving light to the African dark (Driver, 2001)

Question 11

Geopolitics of knowledge (Radcliffe, 2020)

Answer 11

who is the dominant/ recognised authority to produce knowledges

Question 12

neo-colonialism reinforces western superiority

Answer 12

journal articles are predominantly produced by the GN

Question 13

Decolonisation ineffective

Answer 13

education systems reatain European knowledge systems (Radcliffe, 2017) e.g. coloniality (Quijano, 2007) and it is a form of colonial-modern epistemic privileging (Radcliffe, 2017)

Question 14

post-colonial emerged in the 1990s/ start of the 2000s (Hunt, 2017) –> identifying the western colonial elements embedded within the discipline

Answer 14

decolonial geographies aims to unwrap these elements from power structures and lead to the production of a pluriverse (Radcliffe, 2020)

Question 15

Decoloniality –> dismantling previous colonial epistemologies and ontologies

Answer 15

by challenging them (Maldonado-Torres, 2007) e.g. within the academic community (Sundberg, 2014) e.g. western academics misappropriating indigenous knowledges as their own (Todd, 2016) –> achieve a pluriverse (Oslender, 2019)

Question 16

Anthropocene was not a planetary scale cause

Answer 16

and was produced by western societies

Question 17

Civil knowledge –> conflicts persist but there are discussions on knowledge production

Answer 17

Convivial knowledge –> knowledges are situated on post-extractavist and post-capitalist societies

Question 18

Black geographies is an emerging field

Answer 18

producing new spaces and reamphasising the importance of people, places and spaces through shared memories, experiences of histories (Hawthrone & Heitz, 2018)

Question 19

Decolonising methodologies –> co-production of knowledge –> subaltern voices to access the mainstream –> walking/storytelling as a form of research (Sundberg, 2014)

Answer 19

more diverse actors within knowledge production –> need a total transformation of the canon (Radcliffe, 2017) not an add in (Daigle and Sunberg, 2017)

Question 20

post-colonial thought emerged in the 1990s/2000s (late)

Answer 20

a criticism of it on its focus on textual representation bred decolonial work over the last 5 years

Question 21

Black Geographies Symposium –> (Hawthrone & Heitz, 2018)

Answer 21

discussing the issues of systemic racism within the academic community and how this needs to be dismantled

Question 22

Liberatory Learning –> (Hawthrone & Heitz, 2018)

Answer 22

form of teaching which informs students of the systemic issues within societal structures, and provides them agency, while also recognising that internal beliefs and experiences will influence their educational development.

Question 23

post-coloniality as a definition needs to be reexamined

Answer 23

reproduction of the self and other –> simplification of identity –> failure to recognise different levels of colonial control had different impacts on countries e.g. breaker settler colonial states like Australia or post-colonial regions like post-soviet states (Sidaway, 2000)

Question 24

USA –> post-colonial or neo-imperial

Answer 24

MF and World Bank as tools –> North America is ethnically cleansed relative to the South (Sidaway, 2000)

Question 25

Eurocentrism reinforces nature/society dualism –> humanistic research reinforces this by placing the human as the centre of knowledge production

Answer 25

post-humanistic research –> do not place humans as the central point and encourages non-human actors to contribute to the discussion –> though a lot of the ideas are similar to indigenous knowledges –> though no self and therefore no positionality can be considered (Sundberg, 2014)

Question 26

Decolonisation

Answer 26

“the process in which the ontological violence permitted through Eurocentrism is exposed and dismantled, in both academia and daily lives.” (Sundberg, 2014)

Question 27

Walking as a form of knowledge production > interact with the landscape and share narratives and stories

Answer 27

e.g. Zapatista movement –> empowered through walking when revealing their experiences of their treatment in Mexico –> provides them with a platform to share their experiences (Sundberg, 2014) –> decolonial methods rely on participatory action research (de Leeuw & Hunt, 2018) –> period of silence for ‘homework’ to be done –> consideration for reflexivity and deeping the way knowledge is universalised (Spivak, 1990).

Question 28

Ecuador -> pluriverse-based political system –> passed a Constitutional Declaration -> all ontologies would be recognised (Radcliffe, 2020) –> plurinationalism (Postero, 2017)

Answer 28

allows indigenous communities to remain + self-determination –> does not force them into Eurocentric ideals –> views people heterogeneously instead of through categorisations –> though there is still neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism embedded within the country e.g. government criminalising resistance to extraction-based activities across indigenous land (Radcliffe, 2020).

Question 29

Coloniality underpins capitalism (Quijano, 2007)

Answer 29

led to the categorisations of bodies upon which hierarchies of employment built e.g. slaves and serfs being African.

Question 30

Black Geographies –> Linda Brent –> hid in an attic to escape plantation slavery –> mentally she felt free in a paradoxical space she produced –> imagined space of the future –> despite being trapped

Answer 30

the reverse was the case on the plantation –> Dr. Flint treated her horribly and placed heavy constrictions on the slaves/ held them against their will (McKittrick, 2006)

Question 31

Colonisation did not stop at land, but extended to women’s bodies

Answer 31

“the black female body was viewed as a naturally submissive, sexually available, public, reproductive technology.” (McKittrick, 2006: 44).

Question 32

Exploration presented as a fictional story –> topic is made playful

Answer 32

downplaying the impacts and seriousness of the impacts of exploration (Driver, 2001)

Question 33

Post-colonial work –> needs to be resituated as there is too much of an emphasis on emphasising constructions e.g. GN vs GS –> simplifies these regions to their past identity (Radcliffe, 2005)

Answer 33

–> often this is the blame for socio-economic problems. E.g. Bell conducted research in South Africa –> poverty was not caused by state conflict but by state inefficiencies (2002)

Question 34

criticisms of post-colonial

Answer 34

suggests that colonialism does not persist
methodology needs to adapt to be effective within contemporary society
not applicable to all regions and therefore does not focus on them e.g. Middle East
It has a focus on uncovering colonial legacies than on actual struggles and revolution-based movements against these legacies (Niazi, 2021)

Question 35

criticisms of decolonial theory

Answer 35

if coloniality exists embedded within structures it is possible to decolonise without a societal transformation? –> arguments suggest not