Institutional Subjects - Histories Flashcards
geography was born from imperial expansion and colonial control –> Geography Militant
RGS encouraged expeditions (Driver, 2001) e.g. MacKinder and the colonisation of Africa for resources
Eurocentrism –> legitimised European knowledges and rejected/marginalised others
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)
Discipline of geography emerged as masculine
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)
Settler colonaialism persists e.g. Indian Act and the legitimisation of indigenous people (Diagle, 2016)
provides them indigeneity (Blaser, 2014) but forces them into settler ontologies without the status of a citizen (Koot and Büscher, 2019)
Empires acted as a paradoxical space for men
to escape the struggles of democracy, socialism and feminism (Kearns, 2009)
In 1892 women entered the RGS (controversial as it was a thought of as a threat to the scientific status of the RGS)
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)
Mary Kingsley used her position
to access the harram (Cresswell, 2014)
Africans were placed at the bottom of a hierarchy –> knowledges were regarded as backward
as they supposedly lacked cognitive thinking
Inappropriate western knowledges damaged crop production in south africa (Endfield and Nash, 2002; 2010)
environmental determinism –> used as a mechanism to seperate bodies (Mavroudi and Nagel, 2016).
Modernity –> achievable through European linear development only –> from savage to capitalist (Quijano, 2007)
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)
Geopolitics of knowledge (Radcliffe, 2020)
who is the dominant/ recognised authority to produce knowledges
neo-colonialism reinforces western superiority
journal articles are predominantly produced by the GN
Decolonisation ineffective
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)
post-colonial emerged in the 1990s/ start of the 2000s (Hunt, 2017) –> identifying the western colonial elements embedded within the discipline
decolonial geographies aims to unwrap these elements from power structures and lead to the production of a pluriverse (Radcliffe, 2020)
Decoloniality –> dismantling previous colonial epistemologies and ontologies
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)
Anthropocene was not a planetary scale cause
and was produced by western societies
Civil knowledge –> conflicts persist but there are discussions on knowledge production
Convivial knowledge –> knowledges are situated on post-extractavist and post-capitalist societies
Black geographies is an emerging field
producing new spaces and reamphasising the importance of people, places and spaces through shared memories, experiences of histories (Hawthrone & Heitz, 2018)
Decolonising methodologies –> co-production of knowledge –> subaltern voices to access the mainstream –> walking/storytelling as a form of research (Sundberg, 2014)
more diverse actors within knowledge production –> need a total transformation of the canon (Radcliffe, 2017) not an add in (Daigle and Sunberg, 2017)
post-colonial thought emerged in the 1990s/2000s (late)
a criticism of it on its focus on textual representation bred decolonial work over the last 5 years
Black Geographies Symposium –> (Hawthrone & Heitz, 2018)
discussing the issues of systemic racism within the academic community and how this needs to be dismantled
Liberatory Learning –> (Hawthrone & Heitz, 2018)
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.
post-coloniality as a definition needs to be reexamined
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)
USA –> post-colonial or neo-imperial
MF and World Bank as tools –> North America is ethnically cleansed relative to the South (Sidaway, 2000)
Eurocentrism reinforces nature/society dualism –> humanistic research reinforces this by placing the human as the centre of knowledge production
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)
Decolonisation
“the process in which the ontological violence permitted through Eurocentrism is exposed and dismantled, in both academia and daily lives.” (Sundberg, 2014)
Walking as a form of knowledge production > interact with the landscape and share narratives and stories
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).
Ecuador -> pluriverse-based political system –> passed a Constitutional Declaration -> all ontologies would be recognised (Radcliffe, 2020) –> plurinationalism (Postero, 2017)
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).
Coloniality underpins capitalism (Quijano, 2007)
led to the categorisations of bodies upon which hierarchies of employment built e.g. slaves and serfs being African.
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
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)
Colonisation did not stop at land, but extended to women’s bodies
“the black female body was viewed as a naturally submissive, sexually available, public, reproductive technology.” (McKittrick, 2006: 44).
Exploration presented as a fictional story –> topic is made playful
downplaying the impacts and seriousness of the impacts of exploration (Driver, 2001)
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)
–> 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)
criticisms of post-colonial
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)
criticisms of decolonial theory
if coloniality exists embedded within structures it is possible to decolonise without a societal transformation? –> arguments suggest not
