Fuzzy epistemology: Decolonizing the social sciences

This article first argues that the social sciences need to be decolonized, as the current epistemologies and research methodologies are too narrowly based on the European and North American experiences and hence unable to adequately capture non-European experiences and realities. I then argue that decolonizing dominant social science epistemology means freeing it from its Aristotelian foundation. The next step undertaken is to discuss five non-Western epistemologies from West Africa, China, Melanesia, India, and South America. Building on the work of Jimi Adesina (2002), I find that all five share a fuzzy perception of reality, allowing for statements that are non-exclusive, non-discrete, and hence fuzzy. I propose an operationalization of these fuzzy epistemologies by applying Charles Ragin's Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fscqa).     

‘Before they kill my spirit entirely’: insights into the lived experiences of American Indian Alaska Native faculty at research universities

American Indian and Alaska Natives (AIAN) comprise about 2% of the US population and 0.5% of the faculty in higher education. While scholars have documented the experiences of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty, the perspectives of AIAN faculty at elite universities are largely absent. Although AIAN faculty share many of the same barriers to success as URM colleagues, their unique status as Tribal peoples and their relationship to settler colonialism pose particular challenges and resistance strategies. Findings from a mixed methods study of 25 AIAN faculty at research universities, employing a decolonizing, survivance-oriented framework, examines their lived institutional experiences. The data yielded five themes regarding (1) institutional climate, (2) mentorship, (3) family–work balance, (4) cultural taxation and role stress, and (5) discrimination. The authors conclude that decolonization involves the repatriation of Indigenous epistemologies and Indigenous ‘place’ in the growth of science, research, and knowledge production, creating liberatory spaces within the academy.     

Review essay: on Mamdani’s mode of thought

This essay tracks the formation of a global intellectual, perhaps the only one, whose work moves across Africa, America and Asia. Mahmood Mamdani has been a central figure engaging in explaining the most controversial issues such as refugees, popular versus state nationalism, mass killings (Rowanda), settler versus native, colonial citizenship and its governed subject, September 11, the Dafur movement (and its self-indulgence), Imperial Human Rights, decolonizing university and knowledge production (the US as the first and never decololinzed), settler colonialism, etc. Fearless and thoroughly grounded, Mamdani’s mode of thought is to historicize the conditions of the existence of the problematics in question with a theorization emerging out of the analyses. As a whole, Mamdani’s political practices as educator and public intellectual and the body of brilliant work have been inspirational. The essay is written as an introduction to Decolonizing the World: A Mahmood Mamdani Reader, a collection of his selected work, to open the channel of interaction between Asia and Africa.     

他者之域：和解的希望——《耻》的后殖民解读

民族、身份认同以及主体与他者的关系问题是后殖民理论中所探讨的重要课题。从后殖民的角度解读了南非作家J.M.库切的小说《耻》。分析了后殖民时期南非白人主体地位衰落以及被边缘化、客体化,丧失身份认同感的状况;阐释了强暴所隐喻的深刻意蕴,即作为抵抗话语的强暴只是殖民压迫的复制,是殖民权力的颠倒;探讨了作品所揭示的后殖民时期非殖民化进程中宽容、和解、和谐共存的理念及其深远意义。     

自决权的历史形态与当代审视

自决权先后呈现出种族化、非殖化、集体人权三种历史形态。自决权从来就不具有一种既定的内涵与模式,它的产生、发展与演变与国际社会历史走向和现实基础密不可分。自决权也不应再局限于传统观念,而应该结合构建和谐世界的需要而有所更新。维护民族关系的正义性是自决权的主要诉由,自决权本质上是一种包含内外两个面相的集体人权。行使自决权可能导致分离,但分离需要遵守一定的前提条件。     

后殖民语境下异化与归化再思

后殖民主义翻译理论以权力差异为先导,彻底打破了传统翻译理论结构主义范式下语言和文化平等的乌托邦式的理论预设,把翻译研究纳入更广阔的社会、文化大背景之中,拓宽了翻译研究的视野和思路。     

Food,Memories, and Identities in Hong Kong

This article adopts a processual and relational approach to study food remembrance and investigates how different ways of appropriating food reveal the politics of identities in Hong Kong. It examines how food memories reveal relationships between the past and the present, reflect epochal transformation, and mark changing identities of various groups of people through new ways of appropriations. It takes the case study of pancai, a special banquet food for the villagers in the New Territories of Hong Kong, to examine the relationships between food and identities. This article investigates how pancai is remembered, popularized, and reinvented with different variations and embodies shifting meanings for the New Territories inhabitants as well as other Hong Kong people in changing socioeconomic and political environments. Pancai has been imbued with multiple layers of significance, involving linkages between local and national, emigration and Chineseness, urbanization and rural heritage, as well as decolonization and identity politics. As identities are by nature negotiable, situational, and fluidic, pancai's multiple layers of meanings correspond to different levels of identities—identities of the New Territories inhabitants, the rest of the Hong Kong people, and the mainland Chinese.     

‘A new world rising’: Albert Camus and the absurdity of neo-liberalism

This article investigates the writings of Albert Camus in light of neo-liberal governmentality. Camus, a pied noir born in Algeria, was a key figure in the debates regarding the trajectory of French colonial rule. While his absurdist sensibility denounced absolute conceptions of justice and history, his cosmopolitan humanism rejected the possibility of an independent Algerian nation-state. By examining his literary and political writings, this article sheds light on his conceptions of the individual, natural limits, and legitimate violence. In so doing, it identifies assumptions common to Camus’ notion of the absurd and neo-liberalism while also arguing that the current neo-liberal climate has shaped many of the recent discussions of his work.     

Disabling Africa: the power of depiction and the benefits of discomfort

Despite the fact that the vast majority of disabled people live in low and middle-income countries, the field of disability studies is dominated by research on disability in wealthy contexts. Although there are encouraging signs of this pattern changing, there are challenges to researchers about how to represent and think about disability in African contexts, and it is difficult not to reproduce unhelpful stereotypes. We use the example of an encounter we had with an expatriate Deaf South African to reflect on the complexities of representation facing people working on disability issues in Africa and what has been termed the Global South. We suggest that an appreciation of the productive value of discomfort about issues of representation may help move the field forward.     

First Nations,Métis and Inuit presence in the Newfoundland and Labrador curriculum

This article responds to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Canada’s 2015 call for the education of Canadians about ‘residential schools, treaties, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada.’ It is an analysis of the Canadian and world studies curricula and texts in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1 of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada. The analysis is based on academic research and consultations with First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples (FNMI) educators, educational administrators and knowledge holders. Although there is evidence of reform, as a whole the curriculum suffers from silences and lack of context, problematic placement and associations, the intrusion of settler perspectives, contradiction over judgement about issues related to FNMI peoples and inconsistency that undermine efforts at reform. This article provides guidance to curriculum designers, textbook writers, teachers and administrators participating in the decolonization of education in Canada.