Browsing by Subject "postcolonialism"

By exploring touristic practices around particular forms of West African dance and music cultures, this study discusses how structures of global inequality are enacted on a micro-level. The study aims to understand the social relations and subjectivities embedded in them in the context of dance and music workshops for tourists in southern Senegal. A focus on dance and music allows to ask, whether these artistic endeavors provide some progressive or transformational potentials often ascribed to them, whereas the perspective of tourism enables to simultaneously consider the social and material relations of production in the context. This study is an attempt to explore the maintenance of as well as ways of challenging the inequality producing ‘social structures’ by combining postcolonial perspectives, certain ideas from ANT tradition, and theorizations of affects and emotions as productive and hence, political. This study applies an ethnographic approach. The fieldwork was conducted in southern Senegal, in December 2016 and January 2017, on touristic dance and music workshops. The research material consists of 11 thematic interviews with workshop tourists, organizers, and artists, participatory observation, background interviews and document material. The researcher’s long-term participation in the field is also reflexively considered as a source of research material and a tool for analysis. The context was understood through relations of work and dependency, yet also alternative translations and subjectivities were enabled. The context’s social relations were also informed by a desire for the Other, intensive circulation of positive affects, and reproduction of stereotypes of Africa. Disruptive affects stemming from asymmetric power structures were dealt with techniques of individualization. The research shows how the context is profoundly entangled with asymmetric and historical relations of power and inequality, and that these relations are naturalized by certain techniques of concealment. Yet, the context retains enabling possibilities as well. The study shows how affects are productive in the context, suggesting that they firmly attach subjects to problematic structures. Though the complexity and ambivalence of the maintenance of inequality producing structures is a theoretical starting point, this study points to the endurance of these problematic structures by exploring their affective extents. The study adds to a body of research on cultural tourism and shows the importance of looking outside the traditional spheres of developmental and political action in order to understand the complexities of global inequality. The study also gestures that further attention should be given to the relevance and possibilities of such concepts as affects and emotions in the field of development studies, too.

Enlargement is the most important foreign policy tool of the European Union. Beyond changing the geographical borders of the Union, enlargement also concerns EU’s self-other relations, bringing to the fore the definitions of “European” space, values and norms. Recent, critical approaches to European and EU studies have called scholars to pay attention to the colonial roots of the EU, arguing that EU as an agent in the global arena and its neighbourhood cannot be understood outside or separate from colonial discourses. Drawing from this perspective as well as from the rich literature on the Europe’s historical relation to East and the current accession states in the Balkans, this thesis asks (how) is the EU’s enlargement policy postcolonial. To explore, understand and critically assess the normative assumptions that are embedded in enlargement policies, this thesis uses post-structuralist discourse theory (PDT) and the logics approach by Jason Glynos and David Howarth (2007) that offers a more specific application of the PDT in empirical analysis. The analysis approaches four most recent EU enlargement policy papers from three angles: what is taken as granted (social logic), what is challenged or institutionalized (political logic) and how the policies are argued for (fantasmatic logic). The analysis in this thesis brings the postcolonial theoretical concepts into the context of enlargement policies and demonstrates the diversity of the forms in which colonialist assumptions in enlargement policy can play out in practice. Enlargement and the EU’s relation to the Balkans emerges from the material as paradoxical and contradictory, producing ambivalence on the Western Balkan’s standing in relation to Europe through a discursive double move of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion.

Tutkielmassa analysoin ihmiskäsitystä ja sen rakentumista H.P. Lovecraftin (1890-1937) pienoisromaaneissa The Shadow over Innsmouth (1936) ja At the Mountains of Madness (1936). Analyysissä tutkin tekstien ihmishahmoja, erityisesti kertojia, sekä myös teksteissä esiintyviä hirviöitä ja ihmiskäsityksen rakentumista hirviöiden kautta. Tutkin tekstien ihmiskäsitystä posthumanistisesta ja postkolonialistisesta tutkimuksesta nostetun valistushumanismin ihmiskäsityksen kautta. Hyödynnän tutkimuksessani myös hirviötutkimuksen löydöksiä, joiden mukaan hirviöt toimivat kirjallisuudessa ja kulttuurissa ihmisen ja ei-ihmisen kategorioiden välisen rajanvedon välineinä. Väitän, että molemmat tekstit sekä rakentavat valistushumanistisen ihmiskäsityksen ihannoiman rationaalisen ihmishahmon että samanaikaisesti dekonstruoivat tätä ihmiskäsitystä. Lisäksi esitän, että molempien tekstien ihmiskäsitys näyttäytyy hierarkkisena ja joitakin ihmisryhmiä ulossulkevana, joskin hieman eri tavoin. The Shadow over Innsmouthissa hybridisten hirviöiden kautta rakentuva ihmiskäsitys asettaa valkoisuuden ihmisyyden normiksi ja sulkee rodullistetut ihmiset ihmisen kategorian ulkopuolelle. At the Mountains of Madnessissa taas painottuu luentani mukaan valistushumanistisen ihmiskäsityksen ihmiskeskeinen hierarkkisuus: rationaalinen valistusihminen asetetaan maailman keskipisteeksi, ja teksti pitää oikeutettuna, että valistusihminen dominoi ja hyväksikäyttää kaikkia muita elämänmuotoja.

This thesis is a contribution to the discussion on gendered representations of Global South subjects in development NGOs’ communication in the West, and the imaginaries of development they create and maintain. Empirically, it focuses on the context of Finland and particularly, on Finnish NGO fundraising campaigns that concentrate on girls’ and women’s rights in the Global South. The changes in the Finnish political field within which NGOs operate gives contextual relevance to studying NGOs’ private fundraising in Finland. In 2016, the Finnish government cut public funding for development NGOs by 43 %, which forced many organisations to rethink their funding channels. NGOs have since reported increase in competition for donors, which has contributed to the NGO fundraising ‘markets’ increasingly functioning with a capitalistic market logic. Public discussions on development and distant human rights issues thus get increasingly reduced to advertisement appeals, as NGOs must to ‘sell’ the rights-holders’ deservingness of donations. At the same time, the Finnish spectator-donors’ imaginary power in ‘making a change’ is reinforced. This trend is not compatible with NGOs’ other important societal mission, which is the global education of Finnish citizens. A study conducted in 2015 shows that Finnish people’s knowledge on development in the Global South is extremely pessimistic. From a postcolonial perspective on knowledge production and power, this thesis challenges the ‘ends justify means’ argument by questioning whether pessimistic and colonial imaginaries should be the price to pay for fight against inequality – and ultimately, are these means productive for global equality. The empirical example campaigns for this thesis were Uncut by the International Solidarity Foundation, Maternity Wear for a 12-year-old by Plan International Finland, and Women’s Bank Walk by the Finn Church Aid –administered Women’s Bank. The ethnographic research consisted of 10 NGO and expert interviews, 8 short interviews with participants and volunteers in a campaign event, document analysis, discussions, participant observation, and online data collection. The data was analysed using qualitative and visual discourse analysis tools, against the theoretical framework of relevant postcolonial, post-humanitarian, feminist, and de-colonial theories. The main findings of the research are that although NGOs consciously strive for the ‘respectful representation’ of women and girls in the Global South, the capitalist marketing framework used in fundraising communication is not productive for challenging the underpinning colonial discourse. Rather, by a rhetorical logic of empowerment, the power relations are denied – which only reinforces subordination, albeit disguises it better. However, there are significant differences between NGOs on how their power in representation and knowledge production is understood and reflected upon.

This Master’s thesis examines the modes of nature’s resistance to colonialism in E. M. Forster’s 1924 novel A Passage to India. The theoretical background for the analysis consists of discussion and definition of the nature of “nature”, and the inevitability of the postcolonial inflection to ecocriticism when examining nature in a work of literature set in colonial context. The analysis locates colonialism in the British characters of the novel, as they are either part of the colonial apparatus in British India or have personal connections to the aforementioned type of characters, thus oftentimes nature’s resistance to colonialism is directly exemplified by what it “does” against the characters. Nature resists the characters’ various efforts to get a hold of India, realized through desire to identify and catalogue various aspects of it, to have a specific aesthetic experience of it, or through actually being involved in the colonial apparatus. The resistance is realized through two modes: elusiveness and hostility. Various aspects of India’s nature in the novel elude the characters’ attempts to attain definitive knowledge or certain aesthetic experience of them, denying them the power of knowledge. On the other hand, the instances of nature’s hostility, which is sometimes real and sometimes perceived by the characters as such, functions to repel the colonizers from India, or at least to weaken their hold on it. Overall, nature in A Passage to India is a powerful “other” that compliments the native Indians’ struggle against the British Raj.

This research examines how social work lecturers and fourth-year students reflect on the journey towards becoming a social worker in the Zambian context, and how the challenges the students face can be understood. Through a case study approach, the research aims to capture the becoming that occurs during the years of education, before the students graduate and enter the field as professionals. The 'becoming' is approached as a process of identity formation, influenced by interconnected external and interior dimensions. The research examines the challenges that the students and lecturers face, both within the training but also in society at large. The concept of becoming is used as a key tool when trying to capture the transition from student to professional. Since the process of becoming is considered to be connected to time, change and transition, the informants have been asked to reflect on the past, the present and the future. The informants discuss their career choice, the training provided at the institution and the professions current status within the Zambian society. The research framework has a postcolonial approach and constitutes of Margaret Archer's theory on reflexivity and Henry Giroux's thoughts on the crisis of higher education. Due to the lack of previous research within this topic, the importance of both contextualising the research, as well as addressing the professions Western roots is emphasised. The study argues that the impacts of colonialism has to be considered when trying to understand and connect the prevailing rhetoric and practices of social work in general. The question of whether the western theories and methods really are applicable in the Zambian context is raised. The concept of indigenous social work and the struggle to localise the profession is discussed in relation to the idea of a standardised, universal and international profession. The empirical phase of the research was carried out in Lusaka in June and July 2017. Eight semi-structured individual interviews with lecturers in social work and one group interview with five fourth-year social work students were conducted at the University of Zambia. A questionnaire completed by 34 fourth-year students in social work was used as a third source of data. The data has been analysed through a thematic approach. The themes were abstracted mainly through a qualitative thematic content analysis, however a quantitative content analysis was also used on the questionnaire to provide the study with an overview of the educational context. The analysis starts with examining how the university training shapes the students’ processes of becoming professional social workers. The lack of teaching resources and the hierarchy within the institution are discussed topics. Further on the analysis examines the informants’ thoughts on the future, both for the graduating students as well as for the profession. One of the main themes that run through the findings is the profession's lack of recognition and resources, which affects the students and practitioners in many ways. The lack of a clear policy for social services as well as the absence of institutional guidance are also challenges that affect the Zambian welfare system and the people working within it. According to the study, these challenges have resulted in a struggle for the profession to form a collective identity and maintain a certain level of professionalism. Another common thread is the need for contextualisation of the profession, meaning redesigning the profession and the education to better fit the local context and decrease the western influences. To conclude, the biggest challenges for both the social work profession in Zambia as well as for the graduating students were said to be the lack of recognition, resources, regulation and local academic knowledge. This study maps out these challenges and how they are positioned in relation to each other.