Children's Geographies; 02/01/2024
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Review: Decolonization and its discontents The World Today mhiggins.drupal 1 August 2022

Jenna Marshall on a lively if flawed argument to find a way forward in a debate that has descended ‘into acrimony’.

Against Decolonization: Taking African Agency Seriously
Olufemi Taiwo, Hurst, £14.99

Decolonization was once heralded as a moment of potential and possibility for the formerly imperial world to chart a new way forward no longer tied to the apparatus of empire.

It marked a period of transition to nation states – and an expansion of a rights-based international community that would dispense with the morally bankrupt regime of racism, dispossession and subjugation that characterized colonialism.  
 

The descent of the decolonization debate

Half a century later, the debate surrounding decolonization has descended into acrimony. Some factions cast the issue of decolonization as a sustained attack on British and western culture writ large; other disparate voices coalesce around related social justice issues such as inequality, climate change and education. 

Decolonization has become ubiquitous in the public domain – and its ubiquity is the problem. In Against Decolonization, Olufemi Taiwo renounces a concept he conceives as having been emptied of serious study and analytical purchase; one incapable of addressing the complexities of modern global politics and more importantly, Africa’s place in it. 

Although the book attacks the inexhaustible ways in which the ‘trope of decolonization’ has been deployed, Taiwo is less bothered by the purported failures of scholars he deems ‘decolonizers’ and focuses his attention instead on the political landscape of African countries, past and present. 

Central to the book’s argument are two distinct scholarly strands on decolonization. The first, legal focus, centres on the political and economic forces of state-building. The second essays an ‘ideology’ of decolonization that rests on ‘forcing an ex-colony to forswear on pain of being forever under the yoke of colonization any and every cultural, political, intellectual, social and linguistic artefact, idea, process, institution and practice that retains even the slightest whiff of the colonial past’. 

Whether one should characterize the latter as simply a field of study or a potential set of policy arrangements remains unclear – yet what is certain is that it is too nebulous, too elastic, too open-ended to offer any substantive model or mechanism to understand postcolonial Africa. 
 

Correcting Eurocentric narcissism

 The decolonization research agenda in Africa came to prominence during the Cold War period of national liberation struggles.

The intellectual project that followed centred on dismantling Eurocentrism as colonial subjugation through its promotion of the West as the crucible of legitimate and scientific knowledge. Since then, scholars have argued that decolonization itself has become compromised by its enduringly Eurocentric gaze at the expense of the agency of African thinkers, creatives and statesmen and women. 

Taiwo seeks to correct this narcissism – and the omissions left in its wake – by introducing lesser-known Africans and pan-African scholars and cultural figures. These voices, he hopes, will illuminate issues often ignored by ‘decolonizers’ and spark a ‘renewed interest in an appreciation of the many different ways in which African thinkers have responded to the colonial experience’.
 

The decolonization of language

Taiwo challenges the decolonization of language as an oversold promise.

Romanticizing an imagined, pristine African pre-colonial past, he says, ultimately leads to nativism and atavism. As a case in point, Taiwo highlights bureaucratic instances of ‘language policy planning’ to deploy African languages in places such as Niger, Mali, Cameroon, Senegal and Nigeria that were hindered by multilingualism, education and high rates of illiteracy.

The author goes on to confront the abstract language of decolonization, which, he says, allows western scholars to unproblematically engage with the concept without any serious consideration of their own complicity in upholding systems of exclusion. It entrenches their own institutional power within the academy, amplifies their perspectives at the expense of others, and limits the possibilities for understanding the problems of world politics with deleterious effects on policy.

It is a serious claim, but there are issues to be addressed: Taiwo assumes there is coherence among scholars of decolonization, which is not the case. 

When Taiwo approaches how to foster political systems that cater to the needs of their citizens he dismantles the binary of ‘West as modern’ v ‘Africa as traditional’. Chieftaincies as traditional African governance, he points out, were the product of colonial anthropology, not Africans themselves. From the Fanti Confederation of 1871 to the Egba United Government in what is now Nigeria, Taiwo demonstrates that there has been a sustained tradition towards demands for democratic values. 

As he concedes an intellectual neglect of African philosophers that underlies the design and operations of Africa’s political institutions, Taiwo’s initial dismissal of the significance of cultural decolonization deserves another look. How should political and economic drives toward self-determination be advanced in the absence of knowledge shaped and mediated through African lived experiences?

In this respect, the tale of two decolonizations – the legal alongside the ideological – suggest an unhelpful, if not false, binary.
 

The problem of reconciling modernity and colonialism

What resonates throughout the book is the idea that Europe cannot profess to hold an exclusive intellectual claim to modernity. Its universal aspirations are open to all of humanity, allowing those who have historically been marginalized to be worldmakers. 

The idea that modernity and colonialism are irreconcilable is problematic. For instance, Taiwo argues that the curtailment of capitalism in Africa by restricting the growth of the middle classes while limiting competition between African capitalists and the metropole is the consequence of colonialism.

Yet the celebrated cultural anthropologist Sidney Mintz established an understanding that the matter for debate is not whether non-westerners were part of the modern system, but how and to what degree they were included and able to actualise its ideals. 

The emerging capitalist world economy needed non-western lands and labour, and so they were conscripted to this end. Recent abolitionist and black radical scholarship has built on this argument to maintain that capitalism not only requires inequality for it to function but that race – as a mechanism for producing ‘difference’ – enshrines it.

Acknowledging the unacknowledged

In the end, Taiwo communicates a palpable frustration at the state of academic discourses on contemporary Africa under the guise of emancipatory and radical scholarship. He offers an alternative approach whereby African students might rid themselves of a faddism that is ‘at best unsatisfactory’ and at worst produces ‘confusion, obscurantism, if not outright distortion and falsification’.

Yet out of this irritation, Taiwo’s greatest contribution in Against Decolonization might be to urge an acknowledgement of how and to what degree decolonization has become subdued and its political possibilities curtailed. He ultimately urges us to reconsider the purpose of the decolonization academic movement as an ethics to abide by rather than a social theory of the postcolonial world. 

This requires those ‘decolonizers’ on whose careers the term is built to adopt greater intellectual humility – to resist the posture of the anarchist radical scholar armed for the ‘good fight’. Instead, they should apply a scholarly curiosity to genuinely engage with those already on the battlefield, so to speak; those ‘doing the work’ in practice, but who have been unacknowledged until now.

Reflections at 100: Empire and decolonization Audio MVieira 1 November 2022

How did leading academics and policymakers think about and impact imperialism and decolonization from the 1920s to 1970s?

This episode of Reflections at 100, marking the centenary of International Affairs, looks at how empire and decolonization have been discussed in the journal.

Isabel and Krisztina speak to Meera Sabaratnam about how thinkers and policymakers from the 1920s to 1970s understood both empire and then decolonization. Meera highlights four tensions present within the discussions, and how these may impact the international order today.

Inderjeet Parmar delves deeper into the influence of Chatham House at the time and situates these discussions in the broader think-tank and global context.

Reflections at 100 is a mini-series accompanying the journal’s centenary Archive Collections. The collections bring together articles from our archive which speak to the past, present, and future of current affairs issues. In each podcast episode we speak to editors and contributors to the collection and explore what the research tells us about policymaking today. 

Explore the Archive Collection, free to access until mid-November 2022, including Meera’s introduction: 100 years of empire and decolonization.

International Affairs was started at Chatham House in 1922 to communicate research to members who could not attend in person. Over the past 100 years it has transformed into a journal that publishes academically rigorous and policy relevant research. It is published for Chatham House by Oxford University Press. Read the latest issue here. 

Six of nine nonnative boreal conifers in three genera (Abies, Larix, and Pinus) regenerated in 11 to 31 years after they were introduced to mainland Alaska. Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia Engel.) and the Siberian larches (Larix sibirica Ledeb. and L. sukaczewii N. Dyl.) were the most widely introduced species and will likely be the first nonnative conifers to naturalize. Siberian larch grew up to six times more stem volume than white spruce in the first 40 years on upland sites, but was susceptible to the larch sawfly and a blue stain pathogen carried by bark beetles. On productive sites, lodgepole pine appeared to grow more stem wood than white spruce for about 35 years after planting. Snowshoe hares and moose were the most serious pests of the nonnative conifers. Balsam fir (Abies balsamea (L.) Mill.) was the only species to regenerate in an established moss understory. Growth and age relationships were negative for all adequately sampled nonnative conifers and positive for native white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss). Data were insufficient to assess niche availability for commercial-use of productive nonnative conifers in mixed stands in Alaska. Survey results indicate that introduction and naturalization of noninvasive tree species may improve the diversity, stability, and productivity of managed forest ecosystems.

A composition of matter comprising: a combination of a phytate and a plurality of microorganisms comprising a Trichoderma virens fungus, a Bacillus amyloliquefaciens bacterium, and one or a plurality of mycorrhizae fungi that is placed in the vicinity of a plant root in a manner that allows the microorganisms in the composition of matter to colonize said plant root; and a method for increasing plant yield comprising: placing a combination of a phytate and a plurality of microorganisms comprising a Trichoderma virens fungus, a Bacillus amyloliquefaciens bacterium, and one or a plurality of mycorrhizae fungi in the vicinity of a plant root in a manner that allows the microorganisms in the composition of matter to colonize said plant root.

The invention includes novel devices and methods for inhibiting or preventing colonization of fluid flow networks by bacteria that have upstream surface motility. In certain aspects, the devices and methods of the invention prevent or minimize undesirable bacterial colonization of medical devices and/or treat or prevent bacterial infections.

“We can’t even talk about decolonizing our medicine until we talk about decolonizing our food.”  –Rupa Marya On this edition of The Secret Ingredient hosts Raj Patel, Tom Philpott and Rebecca McInroy talk with Dr. Rupa Marya. Marya teaches and practices medicine in San Francisco, she is also the lead singer with Rupa and The...

Invitation Only Research Event

Event participants

Professor Philippe Sands QC, Professor of Law, UCL 
Richard Burt, Managing Partner, McLarty Associates
Chair: Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, Director, US and Americas Programme; Dean, Queen Elizabeth II Academy, Chatham House

(Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History) What makes our species unique compared to other hominins? High profile genetic, fossil and material culture discoveries present scientists working in the Late Pleistocene with an ever-more complex picture of interactions between early hominin populations. One distinctive characteristic of Homo sapiens, however, appears to be its global distribution. Exploring how Homo sapiens colonized most of the world's continents in a relatively short period could reveal the exceptional capacities of humans relative to other hominins.

Invitation Only Research Event

Event participants

Professor Philippe Sands QC, Professor of Law, UCL 
Richard Burt, Managing Partner, McLarty Associates
Chair: Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, Director, US and Americas Programme; Dean, Queen Elizabeth II Academy, Chatham House

Invitation Only Research Event

Event participants

Professor Philippe Sands QC, Professor of Law, UCL 
Richard Burt, Managing Partner, McLarty Associates
Chair: Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, Director, US and Americas Programme; Dean, Queen Elizabeth II Academy, Chatham House

Invitation Only Research Event

Event participants

Professor Philippe Sands QC, Professor of Law, UCL 
Richard Burt, Managing Partner, McLarty Associates
Chair: Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, Director, US and Americas Programme; Dean, Queen Elizabeth II Academy, Chatham House

Award-winning children's book explores big questions about colonization and identity.

Staphylococcus aureus is a leading cause of infections in infants. Staphylococcal colonization is a known risk factor for infection, but whether maternal colonization plays a role in subsequent colonization in the infant is unclear.

This prospective study found that infants born to women colonized with S aureus either during their third trimester of pregnancy or at the time of delivery are more likely to harbor S aureus than are those born to noncolonized women. (Read the full article)

ABSTRACT

The luminous marine Gram-negative bacterium Vibrio (Aliivibrio) fischeri is the natural light organ symbiont of several squid species, including the Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, and the Japanese bobtail squid, Euprymna morsei. Work with E. scolopes has shown how the bacteria establish their niche in the light organ of the newly hatched host. Two types of V. fischeri strains have been distinguished based upon their behavior in cocolonization competition assays in juvenile E. scolopes, i.e., (i) niche-sharing or (ii) niche-dominant behavior. This study aimed to determine whether these behaviors are observed with other V. fischeri strains or whether they are specific to those isolated from E. scolopes light organs. Cocolonization competition assays between V. fischeri strains isolated from the congeneric squid E. morsei or from other marine animals revealed the same sharing or dominant behaviors. In addition, whole-genome sequencing of these strains showed that the dominant behavior is polyphyletic and not associated with the presence or absence of a single gene or genes. Comparative genomics of 44 squid light organ isolates from around the globe led to the identification of symbiosis-specific candidates in the genomes of these strains. Colonization assays using genetic derivatives with deletions of these candidates established the importance of two such genes in colonization. This study has allowed us to expand the concept of distinct colonization behaviors to strains isolated from a number of squid and fish hosts.

IMPORTANCE There is an increasing recognition of the importance of strain differences in the ecology of a symbiotic bacterial species and, in particular, how these differences underlie crucial interactions with their host. Nevertheless, little is known about the genetic bases for these differences, how they manifest themselves in specific behaviors, and their distribution among symbionts of different host species. In this study, we sequenced the genomes of Vibrio fischeri isolated from the tissues of squids and fishes and applied comparative genomics approaches to look for patterns between symbiont lineages and host colonization behavior. In addition, we identified the only two genes that were exclusively present in all V. fischeri strains isolated from the light organs of sepiolid squid species. Mutational studies of these genes indicated that they both played a role in colonization of the squid light organ, emphasizing the value of applying a comparative genomics approach in the study of symbioses.

Demay, Aline, author

Lester, Alan, author

Online Resource

Interview with Christina Vandenbroucke-Grauls, MD, PhD, author of Evaluation of the Association Between Gastric Acid Suppression and Risk of Intestinal Colonization With Multidrug-Resistant Microorganisms: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis, and Todd Campbell Lee, MD MPH, author of Deprescribing Proton Pump Inhibitors: Overcoming Resistance

Parco, Socorro Z., author

Rotch Library - DT295.D85 2009

Rotch Library - DT295.C455 2016

Rotch Library - PN849.A355 H37 2016