Unit name | Postcolonial Matters |
---|---|
Unit code | GEOGM0028 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | M/7 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
Unit director | Dr. Jackson |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | School of Geographical Sciences |
Faculty | Faculty of Science |
This unit will explore the emerging need to re-think and extend the theoretical and empirical domains of postcolonial studies, and postcolonial geographies in particular. The need comes from three inter-related conceptual and empirical advances in the humanities and social sciences: decoloniality, political ontology, and post-humanism. Ecological, environmental, and technological questions – and pronouncements that we are, and are in, the Anthropocene – increasingly challenge the anthropocentric analyses that dominate the traditional attention of the social sciences and humanities. Human-centred orthodoxies in postcolonial analysis, whose focus has been on topics like identity, cultural hybridity, and political heterogeneity, are now also being asked to account for how human beings are entangled ontological aspects of wider relational and ecological processes. The criteria for making these relational and material claims about human entanglement also challenge constructionist and textual approaches still taken for granted in postcolonial studies. As a result, postcolonial theory, and postcolonial studies more generally, have struggled to respond effectively to new conceptual and empirical demands. Some authors have even argued that postcolonialism has either run its course, or has entered a contradictory period of decline. Despite this view, global genealogies of ongoing colonial violence, exclusion, and inequality continue to be more relevant than ever. It is clear we continue to need postcolonial critique, but in a form more responsive to contemporary theoretical demands about who we are, who are our ‘others’ (human and non-human), and how research may be done with them.
The unit will explore how postcolonial and decolonial geographies are renewing themselves to meet the theoretical and empirical demands of a more-than-human world. It will address the continued relevance of postcolonial and decolonial politics and ethics, but within the need for new analytical questions, methodologies, and representational strategies that draw from diverse interdisciplinary approaches, including: political ecology; indigenous studies; anthropology; material studies; agro-ecology; social movement studies; cultural and historical geography; and critical political economy.
Sites of empirical encounter will include research drawn from the Global South and Global North, urban and rural. Specific geographies could include sites in Central America (El Salvador and Guatemala), South America (Brazil, Peru, Bolivia), North America (Canada, USA, Greenland), South Asia (India), South East Asia (Indonesia), Australia, Aotearoa-New Zealand, the UK (Bristol, South West England, Wales), and, Western Asia (Israel/Palestine).
This unit will:
Enable students to engage critically with a wide range of theoretically and empirically-focused material
At the completion of this unit, students will able to:
The unit will be taught through a blended combination of online and, if possible, field work and in-person teaching, including
If this unit has a Resource List, you will normally find a link to it in the Blackboard area for the unit. Sometimes there will be a separate link for each weekly topic.
If you are unable to access a list through Blackboard, you can also find it via the Resource Lists homepage. Search for the list by the unit name or code (e.g. GEOGM0028).
How much time the unit requires
Each credit equates to 10 hours of total student input. For example a 20 credit unit will take you 200 hours
of study to complete. Your total learning time is made up of contact time, directed learning tasks,
independent learning and assessment activity.
See the Faculty workload statement relating to this unit for more information.
Assessment
The Board of Examiners will consider all cases where students have failed or not completed the assessments required for credit.
The Board considers each student's outcomes across all the units which contribute to each year's programme of study. If you have self-certificated your absence from an
assessment, you will normally be required to complete it the next time it runs (this is usually in the next assessment period).
The Board of Examiners will take into account any extenuating circumstances and operates
within the Regulations and Code of Practice for Taught Programmes.