Search results for "decolonization"
showing 10 items of 14 documents
We Had to Feed the People: The Italian Lira and the Political Economy of Currency in British Eritrea, 1941–1950
2021
Following the occupation of Eritrea in 1941, British authorities in London promoted a currency policy aimed at replacing the Italian lira with a sterling-based currency basket. In May 1942, they opted for the enforcement of the East African shilling as the new legal tender. The lire, however, did not disappear overnight. Their circulation was tolerated—and, in some cases, even encouraged—by British authorities in Asmara, which exploited the small deal of autonomy they enjoyed from London to adapt the new monetary system to the needs of local governance. The case study is a useful lens to analyse the multiplicity of interests that shaped the political economy of currency of the United Kingdo…
Besançon at the decolonization time : the decolonization process studied a medium-sized French ciy from 1945 to the 1960s
2016
This doctoral thesis aims at assessing the impact of the decolonisation process on the population of Besançon. The study of an urban community involves taking an interest in various historiographical fields (such as the political and cultural history of both colonisation and decolonisation, as well as the Cold War). From a people's history perspective, our purpose is to grasp how people experienced decolonisation (how they understood, felt, thought, acted). This research covers the period from 1945 up to the 1960s. A two-angled approach has been applied, including comparisons on local and national levels and a thorough investigation of Besançon's social environment in and of itself. The div…
The Biopolitical Logics of Settler Colonialism and Disruptive Relationality
2016
This essay argues that the biopolitical logics of settler colonialism function according to a naturalization in Western thought of politics as a project of hierarchically ordering life in relation to the sphere of politics. Significantly, such a mode of thinking discredits socio-political orders that operate on the basis of a non-hierarchical place-based relationality of all life forms including the land. Through a reading of Foucault and Agamben in their use of Aristotle, I want to show how hierarchy as a principle of the political is already implemented in the premise they draw upon for analyzing the biopolitical. In the same way it remains unrecognized in their analysis of biopolitics, …
The Discursive Constitution of a World-Spanning Region and the Role of Empty Signifiers: The Case of Francophonia
2007
The cultural turn in political science, history, and political geography has opened new perspectives on the division of the world into geographic entities. Nation-states, regions, districts, etc., are no longer qualified as quasi-natural objects based upon intrinsic qualities but, rather, as contingent results of social or accordingly discursive processes. The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) defines Francophonia as an “geocultural space” (espace geoculturel) and an international community of more than 50 states. In this contribution, the concept of political communities as “imagined communities” and the advancements of discourse theory by Laclau and Mouffe are used in o…
A Geography of Coloniality: Re-narrating European Integration
2019
AbstractTurunen discusses how the “European significance” of the European Heritage Label (EHL) sites has been narrated through interconnections of European values and European integration. She argues that, in the context of the EHL, integration is intricately linked to the notion of spreading common values, which in turn is entangled with Eurocentrism. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the geography of coloniality: the underlying spatial structure that makes the coloniality of European cultural heritage and related hierarchies more visible. Ultimately, the chapter shows how the concept of coloniality enables us to analyse the ways Eurocentrism is also embedded in ideas about Europe…
A contested financial frontier: banking and empire building in Eritrea, c.1952–73
2021
AbstractThis article provides an account of the relationship between imperial Ethiopia and Eritrea in the realm of banking governance from the start of the federation to the last years of the imperial regime. It looks in particular at the relationship between the Ethiopian administrations and an Italian bank, Banco di Roma, which had its headquarters in Eritrea from 1948 to 1967 before moving to Addis Ababa. The struggle for control of the economic flows generated by the Italian bank is an index of the changes in centre–periphery linkages between Addis Ababa and the sub-regional centre of Asmara. Archival evidence highlights the multifaced nature of Ethiopian governance and the role perform…
The Anthropologist as Deviant Modernizer: Felipe Landa Jocano’s Journey Through the Cold War, the Social Sciences, Decolonization, and Nation Buildin…
2021
This chapter traces the transnational journey of Philippine anthropologist Felipe Landa Jocano from the 1950s to the 1970s. Jocano was part of a group of Philippine social scientists who earned their post-graduate degrees at the University of Chicago after the Philippines became independent from the US. One of the pre-eminent scholars in the Philippines, Jocano’s professional and intellectual journey unfolded against the backdrop of the Cold War and decolonization. Jocano received funding from US institutions that contributed to the Cold War, and he was committed to structural functionalism and modernization theory. Yet he developed a decolonized approach to modernization that questioned th…
Of Capital and Power Italian Late-Colonial Policies in Eritrea at the Onset of the Federation with Ethiopia
2021
Scholars of African history have often inquired into the relationship between government and business in the making of North-South relations after decolonization. The neo-colonial thesis maintained that the metropolitan governments undertook overt and covert actions to preserve the dominant position of their own multinational corporations in the newly independent African nations. Historians of British Africa have partially revisited this thesis, suggesting a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between political and economic actors. This article seeks to test these arguments in relation to the Italian case, looking at the early process of decolonization in Eritrea. In 1952, the fo…
Hooligans, Ultras and Vandals
2015
Football hooliganism in its modern sense is often said to have started in Great Britain in 1961, after a serious riot broke out during a match between Tottenham Hotspur and Sunderland; although crowd disorder was not unknown in other countries, this event is regarded as the birth date of the so-called ‘English disease’, which grew in seriousness and extent over the next few decades. The increasing professionalization and internationalization of English football during the 1950s generated a need for greater profits in football clubs that brought about a reorganization of stadiums (Taylor, 1971). Due to this reorganization, young working-class people were relocated at the ends of the stadiums…
Fanon, “Profeta del Terzo Mondo unitario”, e la “crisi” dell’antropologia
2018
The essay is inspired by the works of Frantz Fanon, Martinican psychiatrist and revolutionary man, prematurely disappeared in 1961, who became, in Italy too, between the years 1968 and 1970, an icon of the youth protest movement, of the anti-racist organizations and of the liberation movements. His short but intense life developed between a theoretic production (on the psychiatry of the colonised subject and on racism) and his personal political commitment for the liberation of colonized countries. He supported, and became its spokesman, the Algerian National Liberation Front during the Algerian War. The recent re-printing of some of his works and the large quantity of foreign articles publ…