Coloniality/Post-Coloniality

Citation:

Caretta, Martina Angela, Sofia Zaragocin, Bethani Turley, and Kamila Torres Orellana. 2020. “Women’s Organizing against Extractivism: Towards a Decolonial Multi-Sited Analysis.” Human Geography 13 (1): 49–59.

Authors: Martina Angela Caretta, Sofia Zaragocin, Bethani Turley, Kamila Torres Orellana

Abstract:

ENGLISH ABSTRACT:
In Anglophone geography, proposals have called for the decolonization of geographical knowledge production to be focused on tangible and material manifestations of how dialogue is initiated and mediated among different ontologies and epistemologies. We strive to respond to this call by empirically cutting across the American continent to highlight the embodied and transnational dimensions of natural resource extraction. Across the Americas, extractive industries’ water usage often brings corporations into prolonged conflicts with local communities, who mobilize to resist the initiation and/or expansion of extractive activities that they view as threatening to their health, way of life, and their families and communities’ territories. Through two case studies from West Virginia (WV), USA, and Cuenca, Ecuador, we propose an analytical framework capturing how women organize against the extractive industry as a result of embodied water pollution. We do this with the aim of decolonizing geographical knowledge production, as we propose a decolonial, multi-sited analytical approach, which serves to rethink the scale of effects of extractive industry. By showing how resource extraction affects women’s bodies and water while also effectively allowing us to compare and contrast embodied water relations in WV and Ecuador, we better understand how extractivism works across scales—the body, the environment, and transnationally. We contend that a multi-sited approach disrupts the North–South geographical discursive divide and furthers a decolonial geographical approach in making apparent the embodied production and lived experience of territory across various scales. In this piece, we promote debates on decoloniality within Anglophone geography by proposing that we must not only consider epistemologies and spatial ontologies outside the western canon, but engage with practices and theories occurring in different parts of the globe in a simultaneous fashion as well. We call on fellow geographers to do the same.

SPANISH ABSTRACT:
En la geografía anglófona, las propuestas han pedido que la descolonización de la producción de conocimiento geográfico se centre en manifestaciones tangibles y materiales de cómo se inicia y media el diálogo entre las diferentes ontologías y epistemologías. Nos esforzamos por responder a este llamado cortando empíricamente a través del continente americano para resaltar las dimensiones encarnadas y transnacionales de la extracción de recursos naturales. En todo el continente americano, el uso del agua de las industrias extractivas a menudo lleva a las empresas a conflictos prolongados con las comunidades locales, que se movilizan para resistir el inicio y / o la expansión de actividades extractivas que consideran amenazadoras para su salud, formas de vida y sus familias y los territorios de sus comunidades. A través de dos estudios de caso de West Virginia (WV), EE. UU. y Cuenca, Ecuador, proponemos un marco analítico que muestra cómo las mujeres se organizan contra la industria extractiva como resultado de la contaminación del agua. Hacemos esto con el objetivo de descolonizar la producción de conocimiento geográfico, ya que proponemos un enfoque analítico descolonial y de múltiples ubicaciones, que sirve para repensar la escala de efectos de la industria extractiva. Al mostrar cómo la extracción de recursos afecta los cuerpos y el agua de las mujeres y, al mismo tiempo, comparar y contrastar de manera efectiva las relaciones hídricas incorporadas en VM y Ecuador, comprendemos mejor cómo funciona el extractivismo en diferentes escalas: el cuerpo, el medio ambiente y transnacionalmente. Sostenemos que un enfoque de múltiples ubicaciones interrumpe la división discursiva geográfica Norte-Sur y promueve un enfoque geográfico descolonial al hacer evidente la producción encarnada y la experiencia vivida del territorio a varias escalas. En este artículo, promovemos debates sobre la descolonialidad dentro de la geografía anglófona al proponer que no solo debemos considerar las epistemologías y las ontologías espaciales fuera del canon occidental, sino también involucrarnos en prácticas y teorías que ocurren en diferentes partes del mundo de manera simultánea. Hacemos un llamado a otros geógrafos para que hagan lo mismo.

Keywords: Ecuador, extractivism, decoloniality, West Virginia, women, extractivismo, Mujeres, descolonialidad, Virginia Occidental

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Health, Infrastructure, Water & Sanitation Regions: Americas, North America, South America Countries: Ecuador, United States of America

Year: 2020

Citation:

Chabikwa, Rutendo. 2021. "Women, Peace and Security in Zimbabwe - The Case of Conflict in Non War Zones." Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies 4 (2).

Author: Rutendo Chabikwa

Abstract:

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is the United Nation’s (UN) key policy instrument for addressing gender violence in conflict zones. However, the agenda has been preoccupied with “hot” conflicts, and its application and relevance to sustained, but “low level” conflict situations is poorly conceptualized. This research considers this issue through a case study of Zimbabwe since 2000. I make the case for broadening the understanding of conflict as found in the WPS agenda.

This paper addresses the question: ‘How does the case of Zimbabwe exemplify the need for a broader understanding of conflict within the WPS agenda as it applies to non-war settings?’

I first consider the nature of non-war zones, adopting a feminist international relations theory perspective, incorporating elements of postcolonial feminist theory and critical race theory. We then review Zimbabwe’s recent history and situate it as a country in non-war conflict zone. We situate Zimbabwe’s recent history clearly within the concept of non-war zones and discuss the nature of gender violence in this setting.

My analysis adds to the body of literature and research on non-war zones and argues for broadening the WPS agenda to encompass a broader understanding of conflict, specifically arguing for the centrality of gender-based violence in non-war situations, as exemplified in Zimbabwe’s recent history.

Keywords: WPS agenda, Zimbabwe, conflict

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Gender-Based Violence, Race, UN Security Council Resolutions on WPS, Violence Regions: Africa, Central Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2021

Citation:

Grace, Joshua. 2013. “Heroes of the Road: Race, Gender and the Politics of Mobility in Twentieth Century Tanzania.” Africa 83 (3): 403–25. 

Author: Joshua Grace

Abstract:

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Race Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Tanzania

Year: 2013

Citation:

Asher, Kiran. 2019. “The Brilliant, Monochromatic Red of Climate Leviathan.” Rethinking Marxism 32 (4): 442-50.

Author: Kiran Asher

Abstract:

Climate Leviathan argues that to address the climate crisis we must extend the critique of capitalism and that to imagine a just world we need radically open democracy. This reviewer shares the book’s deep anticapitalist politics and Gramscian critique of climate science, but its lack of engagement with feminist, anticolonial, and other critical theories and philosophies of difference undermines its theoretical and political possibilities. Yet the book must be widely and critically read, and its shortcomings must be supplemented to make a world with space for both the diversity of humankind and also for companion and other species.

Keywords: climate crisis, critical theory, feminism, planetary sovereignity, radical democracy

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Democracy / Democratization, Economies, Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms

Year: 2019

Citation:

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 2003. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Author: Chandra Talpade Mohanty

Annotation:

Summary:
Bringing together classic and new writings of the trailblazing feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism without Borders addresses some of the most pressing and complex issues facing contemporary feminism. Forging vital links between daily life and collective action and between theory and pedagogy, Mohanty has been at the vanguard of Third World and international feminist thought and activism for nearly two decades. This collection highlights the concerns running throughout her pioneering work: the politics of difference and solidarity, decolonizing and democratizing feminist practice, the crossing of borders, and the relation of feminist knowledge and scholarship to organizing and social movements. Mohanty offers here a sustained critique of globalization and urges a reorientation of transnational feminist practice toward anticapitalist struggles.

Feminism without Borders opens with Mohanty's influential critique of western feminism ("Under Western Eyes") and closes with a reconsideration of that piece based on her latest thinking regarding the ways that gender matters in the racial, class, and national formations of globalization. In between these essays, Mohanty meditates on the lives of women workers at different ends of the global assembly line (in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States); feminist writing on experience, identity, and community; dominant conceptions of multiculturalism and citizenship; and the corporatization of the North American academy. She considers the evolution of interdisciplinary programs like Women's Studies and Race and Ethnic Studies; pedagogies of accommodation and dissent; and transnational women's movements for grassroots ecological solutions and consumer, health, and reproductive rights. Mohanty's probing and provocative analyses of key concepts in feminist thought—"home," "sisterhood," "experience," "community"—lead the way toward a feminism without borders, a feminism fully engaged with the realities of a transnational world. (Summary from Duke University Press)

Topics: Citizenship, Class, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Feminisms, Gender, Race, Rights

Year: 2003

Citation:

Amanor-Wilks, Dede-Esi. 2009. “Land, Labour and Gendered Livelihoods in a 'Peasant' and a 'Settler' Economy”. Feminist Africa 12: 31-50.

Author: Dede-Esi Amanor-Wilks

Annotation:

“Africa historically has been land-abundant and labour-scarce. The situation in Africa contrasts with that in Asia, which has historically been labour-abundant and land-scarce. And it means that until relatively recently, land scarcity was not a major problem for African producers. In spite of this, we can surmise that access to land for women, or more crucially control over land, has been an issue for as long as patriarchy has existed. This is because labour applied to land creates capital; therefore land is a crucial source of power, whereas patriarchy is essentially the monopolisation of power by men. Yet there exists a perception that women in West Africa have more secure land rights than do women in East and Southern Africa. This article seeks explanations for this perception, from a framework of the peasant-settler dichotomy in Africa. While there is a growing literature on women’s land rights in Africa that makes no distinction between the former “peasant” and “settler” colonies, in African historiography generally, a major distinction has been drawn between them. We thus have separate literatures on “peasant” and “settler” economies of Africa that rarely speak to each other, and comparative African studies rarely cross the peasant-settler divide (Amanor-Wilks, 2006 and forthcoming). The main difference between “peasant” (or “peasant export”) and “settler” colonies is that in the former, land remained in the hands of African producers, who dominated local and export agricultural production. In the settler colonies by contrast, prime lands were expropriated to European settlers, who competed directly with Africans in both food and export production. Alongside the question of differential gender access to land across the peasant-settler divide, this article considers two sets of questions on which there is division in the literature on land tenure and gender justice. Is customary law harmful to women’s land rights or should it be codified to protect women’s land rights? Is access to land for women “negotiated”, or are access and control products more of social conflict? The hypothesis of this article is that the assumption that access is negotiated works best in conditions of relative land abundance and that in conditions of scarcity, it is social conflict that produces change.” (Amanor-Wilks 2009, 31-2).

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Land Tenure, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa

Year: 2009

Citation:

Lewis, Diana, Lewis Williams, and Rhys Jones. 2020. “A Radical Revision of the Public Health Response to Environmental Crisis in a Warming World: Contributions of Indigenous Knowledges and Indigenous Feminist Perspectives.” Canadian Journal of Public Health 111 (6): 897–900.

Authors: Diana Lewis, Lewis Williams, Rhys Jones

Abstract:

Keywords: public health, climate change, indigenous, competencies, feminist, santé publique, changement climatique, autochtones, compétences, féminisme

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Health, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems Regions: Americas, Oceania Countries: Canada, New Zealand

Year: 2020

Citation:

Gay-Antaki, Miriam. 2020. “Grounding Climate Governance through Women’s Stories in Oaxaca, Mexico.” Gender, Place & Culture. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2020.1789563.

Author: Miriam Gay-Antaki

Abstract:

Constructions of women in the Global South, as poor and rural, portray them as most vulnerable and passive to the effects of environmental degradation. This conception has been informing institutional responses to environmental change that incorporate a gender component. It is in this context that climate change interventions increasingly target women in the Global South, so it is important to evaluate their impact. This paper sets out to question why a gender agenda is being pushed alongside a climate agenda, what these projects look like in the communities and households where they are implemented, and the impacts of these projects on the lives of people that encounter them in Oaxaca, Mexico. Through reflexive storytelling, this paper aims to ground environmental governance around gender and climate change using feminist geography by calling attention to the everyday lives of people in Mexico involved in gender and climate change interventions. Using postcolonial insights and reflexive approaches, this paper highlights the agency of actors and fights against tendencies in climate and development work that homogenize gender, erasing the agency and autonomy of people outside of western spaces. Through reflexive research, I call attention to the ways that concepts operating in global contexts do not merely operate on ‘third world women’ but are imbricated in the performance of their every-day lives as they manage and negotiate global discourses around gender and climate change while transforming them so that they become meaningful to their every-day lives.

Keywords: feminist geography, gender and climate change, mexico, postcolonial perspectives, reflexivity

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Discourses, Governance Regions: Americas, North America Countries: Mexico

Year: 2020

Citation:

Kerr, Rachel Bezner. 2011. “Lost and Found Crops: Agrobiodiversity, Indigenous Knowledge, and a Feminist Political Ecology of Sorghum and Finger Millet in Northern Malawi.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104 (3): 577-93.

Author: Rachel Bezner Kerr

Abstract:

ENGLISH ABSTRACT:
This article tells the story of two indigenous, drought-tolerant grains, finger millet and sorghum, once grown in northern Malawi. Sorghum essentially disappeared from the landscape, replaced by maize. Finger millet persisted, despite being discouraged by colonial and postcolonial governments, but is now in decline. This case study of these two crops in northern Malawi uses data from in-depth interviews, focus groups, archival documents, and observations. I suggest that sorghum almost disappeared due to a combination of maize promotion, male migration, and pest problems. An upsurge of tobacco production, in part due to neoliberal policies, combined with gender dynamics that favor maize are reducing finger millet production. Drawing on theories of feminist political ecology, resilience, and indigenous knowledge, I argue that agrobiodiversity and related indigenous knowledge are situated in material and gendered practices. Efforts to improve social resilience in these vulnerable regions need to pay attention to processes and the intersectionality of gender, class, and other subjectivities at different scales that produce particular agricultural practices and knowledge in a given place.

SPANISH ABSTRACT:
Este artículo relata la historia de dos granos indígenas adaptados a la sequía, el millo (mijo) perla y el sorgo, que tradicionalmente han sido cultivados en la parte norte de Malawi. El sorgo esencialmente desapareció del paisaje, remplazado por el maíz. El millo perla persistió, pese a que su cultivo fue desestimulado por los gobiernos colonial y poscolonial, pero ahora está en declive. El estudio de caso sobre estas dos cosechas en el norte de aquel país utiliza datos generados en entrevistas a profundidad, grupos focales, documentos de archivo y observaciones de campo. Pienso que el sorgo casi desapareció debido a las campañas de promoción del maíz, combinadas con otros factores como la migración de varones y problemas de plagas. En lo que se refiere al millo perla, su producción se ha reducido por la competencia de la reactivación de cultivos de tabaco, debida en parte a políticas neoliberales, combinado todo esto con dinámicas de género que favorecen el cultivo del maíz. A partir de teorías de ecología política feminista, resiliencia y conocimiento indígena, arguyo que la agro-biodiversidad y el conocimiento indígena pertinente son factores situacionales en las prácticas de materialidad y género. Los esfuerzos para mejorar la resiliencia social en estas regiones vulnerables deben poner atención sobre los procesos y la interseccionalidad de género, clase y otras subjetividades, a diferentes escalas, que producen prácticas agrícolas particulares y conocimiento en un lugar dado.

Keywords: feminist political ecology, gender, indigenous knowledge, Malawi, resilience, ecología política feminista, conocimiento indígena, resiliencia

Topics: Agriculture, Class, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Economies, Feminisms, Feminist Political Ecology, Gender, Indigenous, Indigenous Knowledge Systems Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Malawi

Year: 2011

Citation:

Power, Chelsea. 2020. “Multispecies Ecofeminism: Ecofeminist Flourishing of the Twenty-First Century.” PhD diss., University of Victoria.

Author: Chelsea Power

Abstract:

Ecofeminism has had a nonlinear developmental path. Although it was celebrated as a potentially revolutionary project in the 1970s, by the time climate change and environmental crises had worked their way into mainstream discourse ecofeminism had become practically unheard of. The purpose of this thesis is to reflect on the failure of early ecofeminism and to explore ecofeminism’s potential as a transformative project of the twenty-first century. This thesis is motivated by my own personal experience of ecofeminism as transformative and also by what I would call a recent resurgence of interest in ecofeminism by young students, budding feminists, and fledgling environmentalists that understand the climate and environmental crises as fundamentally linked to the oppressions of colonial capitalist-patriarchy. Recounting the origin, history, and marginalization of the project of ecofeminism, I explore the rift between materialist and spiritual/cultural approaches to argue that the effectiveness of ecofeminism is dependent upon a collaborative recovery from the damages done by extensive anti-essentialism critiques. The onto-epistemology of our current paradigm— defined by neoliberal capitalism and colonial patriarchy—limits response to the environmental crises of our times to that of incremental policy change that is more symbolic than substantive. I argue that, in order to escape the chains of the neoliberal/capitalist/patriarchal subject that are cast upon us by these predatory onto-epistemologies, we must envisage ways to be human otherwise; in reciprocal relationships with more-than-human nature. As a prefigurative project that centres the more-than-human yet maintains a comprehensive intersectional anti-oppressive framework, a contemporary ‘multispecies ecofeminism’ can endow us with this potentiality. In our times of immense ecological degradation and ‘point-of-no-return’ deadlines, ecofeminism is a needed ‘third story’ that resonates as revolutionary with young scholars of the twenty-first century.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Environment, Climate Change, Feminisms, Ecofeminism, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy

Year: 2020