Colonialism• Definition: political, social, economic,

and cultural domination of a territory and its peoples by a foreign power

• Context (1500s-1900s): – seeking sources of precious goods– empire-building, expansion of capitalism,

Industrial Revolution• Goals of colonizers– appropriation of land, labor, natural

resources …plantation economies– control of trade, taxation, state

monopolies– expansion of markets – new

infrastructure– mission civilisatrice – “civilizing mission”

Nations & States• Nations – group identity tied to

territory• States - defined territory (borders) –

often from colonial era• Monopoly on legitimate use of force

(armed forces)• Central government– Authoritarian? – Democratic?

• Administrative structures and units (states, republics, provinces)

• Management of resources– projects of “development”– issues of environment and

“conservation”

THE NATION-STATE

• This is obviously a hybrid word, linking the idea of the “nation” with the idea of “state”. While the former refers to what might loosely be termed “people”, that is, to a cultural entity often defined in terms of ethnicity, the latter refers to a set of institutions through which public authority is exercised within a particular territory….’

• (Robert Holton 1998)

COMMUNICATIONS STATE

• State: exercise of authority on a territory (sovereignity)

• Nation: cultural identity• Examples ?Communications are essential for running a

stateBenedict Anderson: communications create

the state‘Imagined communities’:‘[the state] is an imagined political

community... It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in their minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (Anderson 1983)

Nations & States, cont.

• Problems:–Mixing, splitting of ethnic groups

(e.g. Kurds)– Colonial era policies favoring one

group– How to manage ethnic diversity– Granting local autonomy– Policies of assimilation and

control• Production of conflict

Indigenous Peoples and the State

• Definition• descendants of earliest settlers• live in, but do not control gov’t of

the state• Marginalization, stigmatization • State policies and conflict

• intervention, control, takeover, resettlement, cultural modification

Indigenous Peoples, cont.

• Genocide/Ethnocide/Ecocide – New diseases, killings– Disruption of subsistence

economies and trade relations– Extraction of resources, damaging

ecosystem• Loss of political autonomy– Direct rule/indirect rule – new

power structures and categories– “Superiority” of Europeans – mental

colonialism

Indigenous Peoples, cont.• Cultural modification

– Language, schooling in dominant language

– Religious conversion

– Laws affecting gender & family

– Laws affecting customs

• ISSUE: clash between small-scale cultures and commercial cultures

• mobility

• extensive land use, questions of “productivity”

• communal property rights

• worldview

• Ethnocentrism: what is progress?