Postcolonialism and Environment Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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P os tcolonialism (also somet i mes known as postcolonial theory, or post-oriental theory) refers to the legacy of 19th century European colonial rule. The study of postcolonialism acknowledges that colonialism continues to affect former colonies many decades following their political independence. Postcolonial studies articulate the many and complicated histories through which colonialism is still being reproduced.

Contemporary academic inquiry on postcolonialism owes much to the work of Edward Said. His book Orientalism, one of postcolonialism theory’s seminal texts, investigates and articulates the means by which colonized peoples are constructed by colonizers. Specifically, Said describes the ways in which the Western world has wrongly depicted the Orient as a strange and exotic place. Said argues that postcolonialism can only be understood by acknowledging the means that reinforce and strengthen colonialism. Specifically, he demonstrates how European arts and literature have negatively represented the Orient as “Other.” The result is that the knowledge produced and consumed by Western societies reinforces the superiority of the West over other peoples and cultures.

Another important contribution to postcolonial scholarship is Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic. This work traces the movement of black people from their native countries to the Western world and how these people, often treated as commodities by the West, have fought to establish their own distinct cultural identities counter to colonizers’ dominant constructions of them. Through explorations of music and other art forms, Gilroy argues that this is a process that continues, subtly and not so subtly, to this day. Gilroy’s work demonstrates how black culture is not exclusively African, American, Caribbean, or European, but a complex and simultaneous mixture of them all, a Black Atlantic Culture.

After more than two decades of development, postcolonial research is now an interdisciplinary field involving scholars from English literature, history, sociology, human geography, anthropology, cultural studies, and more. Researchers tackle the problems of how the experience of colonization affects those who were colonized; how colonial powers continue to control; what remnants of colonial control remain in education, science, and technology; what forms of resistance were and are being used against colonial control; how colonial education influences the culture and identity of the colonized; how Western science changes knowledge systems in the world; the emergent forms of postcolonial identity after the departure of the colonizers; whether decolonization and a return to the precolonial past is possible or desirable; and how new forms of imperialism might be emerging and replacing colonization.

In recent years, a slight backlash has occurred with certain scholars and journalists beginning to challenge some of the assumptions in postcolonial studies, claiming that previously colonized peoples are not the powerless victims they have been made out to be. These commentators have emphasized the extent to which previously colonized countries have shaped, and continue to shape, their own destinies, sometimes through empire building of their own. Cynics would suggest, however, that the intention of these arguments is to lay a certain amount of blame on previously colonized countries for their current threats to the Western world (such as terrorism). Hence, for many, the backlash is nothing more than another form of dangerous colonial power.

Postcolonial studies have affected everyday language and led to the replacement of marginalizing terms such as third world. In academic study and many other engagements between former colonizers and colonies, people-particularly in the Western world-have become more aware of the need to think more carefully about the way in which they act and interact. This is a subtle, but nevertheless important, change.

The Environment

Postcolonial conditions impinge on the environment in a number of ways. First, postcolonial states often have a legacy of environmental management (e.g., forestry) rooted in colonial governance systems. These may be heavy-handed, out of step with local populations, or otherwise founded on the expropriative ways of colonial tradition. Game park management in Africa and Asia is evidence of such entrenched relations. Second, postcoloniality enforces a state of production and exchange relations in which dependency persists, and peripheral locations continue to exploit primary resources in service of core areas. The flow of value and externalized environmental costs is consistent with historical patterns, even in the early 21st century.

Third, and more subtly, postcolonialism can be seen in environmental knowledge relations, where ideas, systems, and paradigms are exported to postcolonial states where local knowledge traditions, training, and articulation of environmental issues and problems is silenced through the celebration and entrenchment of “expertise.”

This last problem, so emblematic of historical relationships between official and lay knowledge, has serious implications for land management, wildlife preservation, and pollution abatement where local traditions are lost amid enthusiasm for environmental modernization. However, postcolonial conditions can conversely engender dangerous romances about indigenous ecological knowledge and traditions. This way of thinking may lead to patriarchal relationships and symbolic participation, reinforcing colonial relationships while claiming concern for preserving traditional environmental knowledge and values-essentially separating East from West or North from South-with all that follows from such distinctions. For these reasons, understanding colonialism is crucial to understanding environmental conditions and problems around the world.

Bibliography:

Bill Ashcroft et al, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, 2nd (Routledge, 2002);
Briggs and J. Sharp, “Indigenous Knowledges and Development: A Postcolonial Caution,” Third World Quarterly (v.25/4, 2004);
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, 1992);
P. Robbins, “Research Is Theft: Rigorous Inquiry in a Postcolonial World,” in Valentine and S. Aitken, eds., Key Perspectives in Geography: Philosophies, People, Places, and Practices (SAGE Publications, 2006); Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage, 1979);
Wainwright, “The Geographies of Political Ecology: After Edward Said,” Environment and Planning A (v.37/6, 2005).