Postcolonial geographies

From Geography

The post colonial approach has become more important in geography over the past decades. Postcolonial geography can be typified as anti-colonial. Post-colonial geographies try to explore the impact of colonialism in the past and the present. The post-colonial geographies are not only about the past forms of colonialistic power, but also current colonialistic forms of power are analysed with the post-colonial perspective. 'Postcolonial critiques stress the need to destabilise what might be taken for granted and assumed in our cultures, traditions and contexts' (Gregory, 2000, p. 168).

As with cultural geography, the boundaries of what counts as postcolonialism are also fluid. There are obvious crosscurrents between cultural geography, postcolonial studies and other work on cultural identities, processes, practices, politics and social divisions (Nash, 2002). Postcolianism asks for a fluid approach, rather than fixed truths or meanings. Also modern forms of colonialism are critizised by the postcolonialists.

References:

Gregory, D. (2000). Decolonising Geography: Postcolonial Perspectives Chapter 5 in: Blunt, A. & Wills, J. (eds.) Dissident Geographies: An introduction to radical Ideas and Practice. Prentice Hall, London

Nash, C. (2002. Cultural geography: postcolonial cultural geographies. Progress in Human Geography 26,2 (2002) pp. 219–230

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