Lecture Notes

COLONIZATION AND DECOLONIZATION

* Colonialism

* Colonialism is the subjugation by physical and psychological force of one culture by another through military conquest of territory and caricaturing the relation between the two cultures

* Two forms: Colonies of settlement (indigenous people are eliminated) and Colonies of Rule (colonial administration reorganize existing cultures by imposing new inequalities to facilitate exploitation

* Examples of colonies of rule:

* British use of local landlords (zamindars) to rule parts of india

* Confiscation of personal and common land for cash cropping

* Depriving women of their customary resources

* Elevation of ethnoracial differences (privileging of one tribe/culture over another)

* Results of Colonialism

* Cultural Genocide/Marginalization of indigenous people

* Introduction of New Tensions around class, gender, race and casre that persist even into postcolonial period

* Extraction of labor, cultural treasures, and resources to enrich colonial power

* Development of ideologies justifying colonial rule (racism, backwardness vs modernity)

* Responses of colonial subjects:

* Death

* Submission

* Internalization of inferiority

* Everyday resistance

* Sporadic Uprisings

* Mass Political Mobilization

* (Revolution)

* Social Psychology of Colonialism

* Social psychology of colonialism was built around stereotypes that have shape perceptions and conflict for centuries

* For Europeans, non-European or colonial subjects were backward/trapped in their tradition

* Europe (and USA) had a powerful social-psychological advantage rooted in its missionary and military-industrial apparatus

* Advantage was read as cultural superiority

* Devaluing of other cultures was common in all historical accounts

* Europeans encountered indigenous cultures: observed that the...