Tag: Decolonisation

Developing an agenda for the decolonization of global health

By David McCoy, Anuj Kapilashrami, Ramya Kumar, Emma Rhule , Rajat Khosla

Colonialism, which involves the systemic domination of lands, markets, peoples, assets, cultures or political institutions to exploit, misappropriate and extract wealth and resources, affects health in many ways. In recent years, interest has grown in the decolonization of global health with a focus on correcting power imbalances between high-income and low-income countries and on challenging ideas and values of some wealthy countries that shape the practice of global health. The authors argue that decolonization of global health must also address the relationship between global health actors and contemporary forms of colonialism, in particular the current forms of corporate and financialized colonialism that operate through globalized systems of wealth extraction and profiteering. They present a three-part agenda for action that can be taken to decolonize global health. The first part relates to the power asymmetries that exist between global health actors from high-income and historically privileged countries and their counterparts in low-income and marginalized settings. The second part concerns the colonization of the structures and systems of global health governance itself. The third part addresses how colonialism occurs through the global health system. Addressing all forms of colonialism calls for a political and economic anticolonialism as well as social decolonization aimed at ensuring greater national, racial, cultural and knowledge diversity within the structures of global health.

Read the article here.

Imperial Theology, Colonization, Settler Colonialism, and the Struggle for Decolonization: A Review Essay

By Mehdi S. Shariati

This review essay introduces two books by Mitri Raheb which ground the contemporary predicament of Palestine in its historical and structural context. Raheb challenges the uncritical historical, theological, and ethnographic narratives regarding Palestine and its peoples. He delves into the history of Palestine showing it to be much older than the history of the Bible, and “Israel.” This version of history challenges the Eurocentric and deliberate misrepresentation and misreading of the bible by the traditional Christian theology, and variety of Christian and Jewish Zionists. As battleground between various empires for colonization, occupation, and control. Palestine as a multiethnic, multireligious, and multicultural land has survived the violence of competing empires and their theological constructs. The “Settler Colonial” design, however which began in the twentieth century with its own dehumanizing and demonizing language and analogies against the natives of Palestine is a refined version of the same script used by the Western colonial empires against Native Americans, and Africans, among other.

Read the essay here.

Decolonizing ‘the field’ in the anthropology of Central Asia: ‘Being there’ and ‘being here’

By Alima Bissenova

This chapter is written in the spirit of contributing to the decolonization of Central Asian anthropology. Drawing on an analysis of the works of the Russian orientalist, Aleksei Levshin (1798-1879), and his Kazakh critic, Chokan Valikhanov (1835-1865), it analyses historical practices of ‘entry into the field’, ‘being in the field’, and publication of the results, i.e., ‘descriptions and stories of the field’, in the West and Russia before the so-called ‘reflexive’ and ‘postcolonial turns’. It examines what Clifford Geertz terms the ‘gap between engaging others where they are and representing them where they are not,’ and discuss how this gap continues to inflect the anthropology of Central Asia today.

Read the full chapter here.

Decolonizing play: Rediscovering and revitalizing traditional play practices in post-colonial context

By Euis Kurniati and Sadick Akida Mwariko

This study examines the decolonization of play through the rediscovery and revitalization of traditional play practices in the post-colonial era. Through a comprehensive literature review, the research examines the historical suppression of indigenous play forms and their contemporary resurgence. The research highlights the cultural significance of these traditional practices, emphasizing their role in identity formation and social cohesion. Findings suggest that traditional play practices are integral to cultural heritage and offer substantial benefits when integrated into modern education, particularly in early childhood education frameworks. This study advocates for a paradigm shift towards a culturally responsive pedagogy that respects and incorporates indigenous knowledge. To achieve effective decolonization, educators, policymakers, and communities must collaborate in developing educational frameworks that honor and integrate diverse cultural traditions. This approach will not only preserve cultural heritage but also enhance educational equity and inclusivity. The revitalization of traditional play practices represents a significant step towards a more culturally aware and equitable educational environment, contributing to a richer and more inclusive early childhood education experience.

Read the full article here.

Decolonisation of Education Research, Policy-making, and Practice in Central Asia: The Case of Tajikistan

By Sarfaroz Niyozov and Stephen A. Bahry 

This chapter reviews the challenges facing educational research and knowledge production, in the independent post-Soviet Central Asia through examination of the case of Tajikistan. The chapter revisits issues discussed in Niyozov and Bahry (2006) on the need for research-based approaches to with these challenges, taking up Tlostanova’s (2015) challenge to see Central Asian educational history as repeated intellectual colonization, decolonization, and recolonization leading her to question whether Central Asians can think, or must simply accept policies and practices that travel from elsewhere. The authors respond by reviewing Tajikistan as representative in many aspects, if not all particulars, of the entire region. Part one of the review describes data sources, analyses, and our positionalities. Part two reviews decolonisation in comparative, international, and development education and in post-Soviet education. Part three describes education research and knowledge production types and their key features. Thereafter, the authors discuss additional challenges facing Tajikistan’s and the region’s knowledge production and link them to the possibilities of decolonisation discourse. The authors conclude by suggesting realistic steps the country’s scholars and their comparative international education colleagues may take to move toward developing both research capacity and decolonisation of knowledge pursuits in Tajikistan and Central Asia.

Read the article here.

Because its power remains naturalized: introducing the settler colonial determinants of health

By Bram Wispelwey, Osama Tanous, Yara Asi, Weeam Hammoudeh, and David Mills

Indigenous people suffer earlier death and more frequent and severe disease than their settler counterparts, a remarkably persistent reality over time, across settler colonized geographies, and despite their ongoing resistance to elimination. Although these health inequities are well-known, they have been impervious to comprehensive and convincing explication, let alone remediation. Settler colonial studies, a fast-growing multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field, is a promising candidate to rectify this impasse. Settler colonialism’s relationship to health inequity is at once obvious and incompletely described, a paradox arising from epistemic coloniality and perceived analytic challenges that we address here in three parts. First, in considering settler colonialism an enduring structure rather than a past event, and by wedding this fundamental insight to the ascendant structural paradigm for understanding health inequities, a picture emerges in which this system of power serves as a foundational and ongoing configuration determining social and political mechanisms that impose on human health. Second, because modern racialization has served to solidify and maintain the hierarchies of colonial relations, settler colonialism adds explanatory power to racism’s health impacts and potential amelioration by historicizing this process for differentially racialized groups. Finally, advances in structural racism methodologies and the work of a few visionary scholars have already begun to elucidate the possibilities for a body of literature linking settler colonialism and health, illuminating future research opportunities and pathways toward the decolonization required for health equity.

Read the article here.

In The Belly Of The River : Tribal Conflicts Over Development In The Narmada Valley

By Amita Baviskar

Why are adivasis fighting the Narmada dam and other development projects in India today? Are adivasis ‘ecologically noble savages’ living in harmony with nature? What is the tribal relationship with nature today? How do people, whose struggles are the subject of theories of liberation and social change, perceive their own situation? Do their present circumstances allow adivasis to formulate a critique of ‘development’?

In the Belly of the River addresses these questions through an account of the lives of Bhilala adivasis in the Narmada valley who are fighting against displacement by the Sardar Sarovar dam in western India. On the basis of intensive fieldwork and historical research, this study places the tribal community in the context of its experience of state domination. Combining aspects of adivasi kinship and religion with the political economy of resource use, the book highlights the contradictions inherent in tribal relationships with nature – contradictions that permeate adivasi consciousness as well as practices

Read the book here.

No Aging In India: Alzheimer’s, The Bad Family, and Other Modern Things.

By Lawrence Cohen

From the opening sequence, in which mid-nineteenth-century Indian fishermen hear the possibility of redemption in an old woman’s madness, No Aging in India captures the reader with its interplay of story and analysis. Drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic work, Lawrence Cohen links a detailed investigation of mind and body in old age in four neighborhoods of the Indian city of Varanasi (Banaras) with events and processes around India and around the world. This compelling exploration of senility—encompassing not only the aging body but also larger cultural anxieties—combines insights from medical anthropology, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies. Bridging literary genres as well as geographic spaces, Cohen responds to what he sees as the impoverishment of both North American and Indian gerontologies—the one mired in ambivalence toward demented old bodies, the other insistent on a dubious morality tale of modern families breaking up and abandoning their elderly. He shifts our attention irresistibly toward how old age comes to matter in the constitution of societies and their narratives of identity and history.

Read the book here.

Will global health survive its decolonisation?

By Seye Abimbola and Madhukar Pai

There are growing calls to decolonise global health. This process is only just beginning. But what would success look like? Will global health survive its decolonisation? This is a question that fills us with imagination. It is a question that makes us reflect on what Martin Luther King Jr saw when he said in 1968, in the last speech he gave before he was killed, that “I’ve been to the mountaintop…and I’ve seen the Promised Land.” If what he saw was an equal, inclusive, and diverse world without a hint of supremacy, then, that world is still elusive. Similarly, an equal, inclusive, just, and diverse global health architecture without a hint of supremacy is not global health as we know it today.

Read the article here.

Towards decolonising higher education: a case study from a UK university

By Nancy Tamimi, Hala Khalawi, Mariama A. Jallow, Omar Gabriel Torres Valencia and Emediong Jumbo

This article presents initiatives undertaken by the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine (GHSM) at King’s College London (KCL), exploring avenues to decolonise higher education institutions (HEI). In 2021, GHSM executed a gap analysis of undergraduate modules, a course on decolonising research methods taught by global scholars to 40 Global South and North university students who completed pre- and post-course surveys, and semi-structured interviews with 11 academics as well as a focus group with four students exploring decolonising HEI.

(1) Gap analysis revealed a tokenistic use of Black and minority ethnic and women authors across modules’ readings. (2) The post-course survey showed that 68% strongly agreed the course enhanced their decolonisation knowledge. (3) The interviews highlighted five themes around what is decolonisation, what decolonising the curriculum should look like, how can we transform HEI, and how can we decolonise research.

Decolonising HEI must be placed within a human rights framework. HEI should integrate anti-racism agendas, give prominence to indigenous and marginalised histories and ways of knowing, dismantle power asymmetries, and create a non-hierarchical educational environment, with students leading the decolonisation process.

Read the article here.

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