Colonization, Decolonization and Postcolonialism: An Interdisciplinary Guide

"Anticolonialism is a broad term used to describe the various resistance movements directed against colonial and imperial powers. The ideas associated with anticolonialism—namely justice, equality, and self-determination—commingled with other ideologies such as nationalism and antiracism."

Colonialism, as distinguished from imperialism, is generally defined as the appropriation, occupation, and control of one territory by another.

" Colonialism is a system of domination and value based on the belief that the subjugated people are inferior to the colonizers. The development of the European colonial project since the 16th century coincided with the development of the concept of racism and ethnocentrism, as well as the theory of Social Darwinism. These concepts and theories were used to justify White European domination over non-White European populations."

Critical theory proceeds from the view of mankind as the creator of history and society; it seeks a society of free actors that transcends the tension between, and abolishes the opposition to, the individual's purposefulness, spontaneity, and rationality and the results of his or her labor.

"Although formal political independence inevitably brought with it the trappings of a new society—a new flag, currency, national airline, and so on—many observers question whether or not decolonization ended as simply as it appeared to end."

A common stereotype pertaining to globalization is that it is purely economic in nature. Yet such a view is overly narrow and ignores the multiple ways in which globalization operates as a political, cultural, and ideological force as well. For example, immigration clearly is a topic pertinent to globalization, with many so-called noneconomic dimensions associated with it. Equally, one could point to the globalization of education, disease, or terrorism. Some of the aspects of globalization that are resisted most vehemently in parts of the world are its cultural dimensions, including the globalization of fast food, dress, and cinema, all of which are bound up with people's worldviews and daily lives.

Local knowledge refers to people's knowledge of their own circumstances and lived experiences, whether those be community residents for whom public policies are being legislated or the legislators' staff members or the implementors of public policies (or any other setting).

"Postcolonialism refers both to a specific historical period or state of affairs—the aftermath of imperialism—and to an intellectual and political project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people subordinated under various forms of European imperialism."

A central feature of anticolonial and postcolonial thought is the recognition that colonization is a sophisticated and multileveled ideological process, which operates both externally and internally. In reality, colonization is not restricted to physical deprivation, legal inequality, economic exploitation, and classist, racist, and sexist unofficial or official assumptions. [It includes a psychological dimension wherein] the colonized become their own oppressor, in that they exert the colonizers' imaginary suppositions of inferiority upon their own self-esteem...the objectification and dehumanization of the colonized.

"Third-worldism...became the belief that the world would be emancipated by means of the liberation of the poor peoples through revolutionary transformation in the style of Cuba and Vietnam. Thus, whereas traditional Marxist philosophy contended that revolution was class-based and the hallmark of industrialized societies, third-worldism argued instead for socialist revolutions in the poor countries."