Postcolonialism

An foundational introduction to current issues in postcolonial research on education and youth studies.

Disrupting Preconceptions : Postcolonialism and Education

This is a fine collection of papers, from some leading educational scholars. They argue that the contemporary corporatised policies of education such as international education limit the possibilities of transformative practice. They demonstrate how the local (the national) and the global (the imperial) are interconnected phenomena, acting upon one another to construct indigeneity and racialised identities, and even hybridation, in ways that engender inequalities, restrict human rights, and infridge on the democratic and civil rights of the colonised and the marginalised. At the same time, they point to the possibilities of resistance, conditions that provide pedagogic opportunities for the creation of counter-hegemonic ideas, expressions, practices and structures. This book is highly recommended.Fazal RizviProfessor in Educational Policy Studies,University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign, USA

Postcolonialism and islands: introduction

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‘A dance for all the outcasts’: Class and Postcolonialism in Brendan Behan’s An Giall and The Hostage

As Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi argue, ‘translation does not happen in a vacuum, but in a continuum; it is not an isolated act, it is part of an ongoing process of intercultural transfer’. In understanding Brendan Behan's most celebrated and controversial translation, of his spare Irish language play An Giall (1958) to its riotous English counterpart The Hostage (1958), understanding the problematic ‘intercultural transfer’ between British and Irish life in the 1950s is crucial. Comparisons between both works reveal significant changes that illuminate Behan's relationship with both nations and provide a sometimes oblique metacommentary regarding his most pressing political and personal anxieties. Yet for all their differences, the plays also share a common desire to transcend the divisions forged by the colonial experience through critical understandings of life on either side of the Irish Sea. In this essay, I argue that Behan's act of transculturation reveals a great deal more reflexivity and depth than many of his critics would allow, developing an iconoclastic dialogue between British and Irish mid-century life.

Postcolonialism and the politics of qualitative research in international business

This paper offers a re-configuration of international business research by subjecting it to a postcolonial critique. This critique sees international business research as exhibiting continuities with the colonial project in the way it appropriates the Other. Qualitative research in international business often reproduces a neopositivist separation of theory and method, which can marginalize discussion of the important ontological, epistemological and political issues inherent in any research process

The silence of the archives:postcolonialism and the practice of historical reconstruction from archival evidence

History as a discipline has been accused of being a-theoretical. For business historians working at business schools, however, the issue of methodology looms larger, as it is hard to make contributions to social science debates without explicating one’s disciplinary methodology. This paper seeks to outline an important aspect of historical methodology, which is data collection from archives. In this area, postcolonialism has made significant methodological contributions not just for non-Western history, as it has emphasized the importance of considering how archives were created, and how one can legitimately use them despite their limitations.

The silence of the archives : business history, Postcolonialism and archival ethnography

History as a discipline has been accused of being a-theoretical. Business historians working at business schools, however, need to better explicate their historical methodology, not theory, in order to communicate the value of archival research to social scientists, and to train future doctoral students outside history departments. This paper seeks to outline an important aspect of historical methodology, which is data collection from archives. In this area, postcolonialism and archival ethnography have made significant methodological contributions not just for non-Western history, as it has emphasized the importance of considering how archives were created, and how one can legitimately use them despite their limitations. I argue that these approaches offer new insights into the particularities of researching business archives.