| Unit name | Geographies of Colonialism and Coloniality |
|---|---|
| Unit code | GEOG20024 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | I/5 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 4 (weeks 1-24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Jackson |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Units you must take before you take this one (pre-requisite units) |
GEOG10002 Geographical History, Thought and Practices and GEOG10003 Key Concepts in Human and Physical Geography |
| Units you must take alongside this one (co-requisite units) |
None. Students will find, however, that GEOG25110, GEOG20005, and/or GEOG20015 will be mutually beneficial to the learning on this unit. |
| Units you may not take alongside this one | |
| School/department | School of Geographical Sciences |
| Faculty | Faculty of Science |
Why is this unit important?
Colonialism matters. Whether it’s global environmental governance, or why racialised minorities experience higher rates of poverty and lower health outcomes, or why mainstream education curricula silence non-European ways of knowing and their stories, or how Western cultural institutions acquired all that loot, or how property dispossesses people from ancestral lands, or even, how and why people experience their bodies in particularly gendered ways, it is no exaggeration to say that colonialism and its legacies lie at the heart of global modernity. Some even argue that ‘as modern subjects we breath coloniality all the time and everyday.’
This unit will deepen and extend your critical appreciation for how colonialism is not a thing of the past; instead, it structures most contemporary geographies of modernity. From environment to education, art to science, law and capitalism, understanding colonialism and its structuring conditions lies at the heart of appreciating both the complexity of the world’s most pressing global challenges and our need to think, act, and live differently.
How does this unit fit into your programme of study?
This Year Two unit develops key themes in human and physical geography introduced in Year One. It will consolidate and deepen your analysis of the colonial roots underlying many of the economic, social, scientific, political, and cultural structures underpinning contemporary life and knowledge production. Topics will include: dispossession, property, commodification, racism, resource extraction, nation-state formation, development, cultural representation, gender, mapping, environmental conservation and governance, temporality, and scientific knowledge production. The unit will prepare you for Year Three study on such diverse topics as environmental extraction and conservation, environmental risk and policy, decolonising geographies, geography of food, geography of fashion, development, and contemporary global urbanisms.
An Overview of Content
The unit will deepen students’ appreciation of how modern colonialism and its legacies shape the contemporary world. It will examine the colonial roots of modernity, including: capitalist dispossession and accumulation; property; resource extraction; modern scientific knowledge production; nation state formation; colonial law; development; identity; gender politics; and, cultural representation. Crucial to appreciating how colonialism works historically and contemporaneously is the recognition that processes of knowledge production, politics, economy, and representation work together to naturalise their reproduction. Hence, the focus of the unit will be on the relations and interactions between the modern social, political, economic, and cultural processes which underpin colonial structures and their geographical reproduction.
The unit will provide students with a solid, wide-ranging, and critical grounding in the geographies of colonialism and coloniality in order that they will be able:
a) to comprehend many of the causal forces shaping contemporary geographical structures of global inequality, exclusion, violence, and environmental harm;
b) understand how contemporary forms of modern knowledge production emerge from and reproduce socially and environmentally unjust geographies of exclusion and erasure; and,
c) recognise ways of thinking otherwise about contemporary geographical life and its numerous global challenges.
How will students, personally, be different as a result of the unit?
Students will understand the generative roots of many of the world’s most pressing global challenges, appreciate their own personal complicities and standpoints with respect to these challenges, and apprehend ways and means of thinking and live differently to what coloniality bequeaths as modern.
Learning Outcomes
The unit will comprise a mix of learning modalities, from traditional lectures and active participation seminars, to flipped learning, to self-directed study, to practical observation, to creative application and independent research. The unit will take place across two terms (TB4), which enables students to build a sustained engagement with often challenging and difficult texts and ideas. Difficult and sometimes personally unsettling learning often requires time and reflection to allow ideas to percolate, shift, and change. A range of learning modalities, which have been tested and proven effective, will help to build confidence and facility with application and analysis. Seminars and writing support sessions, together with practicals, will act as formative learning spaces where ideas and arguments can be shared and discussed prior to summative assessment.
Tasks which help you learn and prepare you for summative tasks (formative):
One optional formative essay exercise (1,500 words) will be offered in TB1. Seminars and additional timetabled writing support sessions will be formative spaces for developing ideas, trialling arguments, and exploring possible topics.
Tasks which count towards your unit mark (summative):
The unit will be assessed by one summative essay (2,750 words, excluding bibliography, worth 60%) and one end of year written examination (3-hours, worth 40%). Both the essay and the examination will feature choice from a set of questions. The essay will require critical exposition of a key assigned concept and/or text and/or a creative, independent approach to a self-chosen text, object, image, song, policy, etc. The examination will require evidencing critical understanding of key arguments, concepts, texts, and debates addressed in content taught across the entire unit.
When assessment does not go to plan:
Alternative individual re-assessments will be assigned. They will not take a different form to the original assessments.
In the event COVID or other restrictions prevent in-person timed examinations, an on-line timed 3-hour examination will be assigned.
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. GEOG20024).
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.
