The Post-Colonial State in the Era of Capitalist Globalization: Historical, Political and Theoretical Approaches to State Formation
... There exists ample literature on the colonial policies' impact on existing economies in Asia and Africa, the lingering 'racial capitalism' (the thinkers of this tradition claim that colonialism, slavery, and race are essential to understanding capitalism), and now neo-liberalism. 91 Aside from minor gaps, Ghosh has written a very evocative text, interspersing facts as stories, while communicating an urgent call to address the climate change crisis-now a planetary crisis. ...
... Nonetheless, it can be argued that the expansion of European power through colonisation created dynamics that ruptured customary tenure systems of indigenous and local peoples, and replaced these in most cases with a centralised state with the primary function of extracting wealth for use in Europe (during colonialism) and later for national elites and global partners (in the postcolonial context). There is a major body of literature on understanding postcolonial economies in the global system (see, for example, Ralston Saul 2005;Shivji 2009;Amin-Khan 2012). ...
... No obstante, se puede argumentar que la expansión del poder europeo a través de la colonización creó una dinámica que rompió los sistemas de tenencia consuetudinarios de los pueblos indígenas y locales, y los reemplazó, en la mayoría de los casos, con un Estado centralizado cuya función primaria era extraer riquezas para su uso en Europa (durante el colonialismo) y más tarde para las elites nacionales y los socios globales (en el contexto poscolonial). Hay una gran cantidad de literatura sobre la comprensión de las economías poscoloniales en el sistema global (véase, por ejemplo,Ralston Saul, 2005;Shivji, 2009;Amin-Khan, 2012).Al menos desde el siglo XVIII hasta el XX, la consolidación de Estados coloniales y metropolitanos generó una intensificación en el desplazamiento o modificación del patrón de custodia local. En Europa y en los territorios ocupados por esta, hubo una nueva administración estatal centralizada, la cual se convirtió en la norma mundial. ...
... dont la fonction principale ?tait l'exportation de la richesse vers l'Europe (pendant le colonialisme) et, plus tard, au profit des ?lites nationales et des partenaires mondiaux (dans un contexte postcolonial). De nombreux ouvrages traitent des ?conomies postcoloniales dans le syst?me mondial (voir, par exemple, Ralston Saul, 2005 ;Shivji, 2009 ;Amin Khan, 2012). ...
... Peripheral capitalist state is a country that is in the lowest tier of global capitalist system, and its "division of power." The main functions of a peripheral state are to serve as enclaves for the production of raw materials to meet the industrial and manufacturing needs of the developed or core states, and to provide enabling conditions for the accumulation of profits by metropolitanbased multinational corporations and other businesses (Alavi, 1972;Amin-Khan, 2012;Ziemann & Lanzendorfer, 1977). ...
Using a political economy approach, this study examines the nature, dynamics, and causes of the expansion of the Liberian public sector. The findings show that the major causes for the expansion of the Liberian public sector did not fit those provided by the literature—citizens’ demands for new services, and other issues that emerge from state-building. Instead, the politico-economic interests of the Liberian ruling class (both the internal and external wings) are the major causes for the increase in the size of the government. These interests include serving the interests of corporate capitalism, and the private accumulation of wealth.
Corruption is a major enduring feature of the political economies of the states in the Global South. It finds expression in various illegal and unethical practices, including bribery, extortion, embezzlement, and fraudulent procurement schemes, perpetrated particularly by public officials occupying various positions in the branches of government and the constituent agencies. Two of the major emergent issues are: (a) What are the major causes of corruption in the Global South? and (b) What are the modalities for addressing the scourge of corruption? The corpus of scholarly literature that has emerged to address these two interlocking questions has focused on the causal factors of corruption, such as elite pathologies and institutional weaknesses, and on legal and institutional reforms as major remedies. In this article, the major contention is that the extant scholarly literature has neglected the peripheral state as a major motor force for corruption in the Global South. This article examines the role of the peripheral state in the Global South in the perpetration of corruption and suggests its democratic reconstitution as the major panacea.
What is the State? What is the relationship between a State’s initial formation and such forces as globalization and privatization? What about the role of colonialism in State formation and the role of the post-colonial legacy in the way that the State works in contemporary times? How do such considerations affect the provision of education? These questions are central to this book, particularly as they apply to contexts where colonialism has formally ended. In addition to providing answers to these questions in chapters five through eight, we offer a framework for understanding education reform in post-colonial contexts. This framework synthesizes insights from global education policy studies, political economy perspectives, world systems theory, and post-colonial literature. At the same time, the framework presented in chapter eight not only makes a contribution by bringing together these different literatures—which often neglect each other—but also by suggesting that there is an “ethos of privatization” that lies at the heart of the post-colonial State and which drives the behavior of the post-colonial State apparatus. Moreover, this ethos is a natural consequence of the fact that the post-colonial State apparatus, in its current form, has been constructed upon the extractive logic and self-serving practices of colonialism and capitalism. The implications of this ethos for education reform and for the ways that the post-colonial State apparatus presently operates in the context of the global governance of education and the economy are discussed. Ultimately, however, the book concludes with a call to move beyond a post-colonial approach to the State. For while critiques rooted in a post-colonial perspective help to illuminate the way the State works, they do not help to think beyond it. The book thus ends with reflections on the necessity of moving to a decolonial lens.
But what about the first half of the book? What is addressed in chapters two through four? There, we present the case of Honduras, that is, the research that prompted us to go down the path of State theory in the first place. As explained below, we did not initially set out to address the kinds of issues mentioned above. The goal was much more modest: To map out and to explain the various kinds of privatization that are affecting the education system in Honduras—and to do so by drawing on a global governance approach (described below) that is more typical of research in the field of comparative and international education. However, we found that this approach had both virtues and shortcomings. While it enabled us to identify and to unpack the dynamics of education reform, including dynamics between the “global” and the “local” in recent decades, its scope and focus did not enable us to bring into view the deeper foundations upon which those dynamics play out; nor did it help us to see the ways that those foundations continue to have relevance for how the State acts as it intersects with privatization and globalization.
The present book, thus, is structured in the following way. Chapters two and three focus specifically on the ways that privatization has manifested in the provision of education and in the making of education policy in Honduras in contemporary times. Chapter four then begins the process of questioning the political-economic foundations upon which those forms of privatization have been based, in order to make sense of the observed privatization trends. At this point, and recognizing the limits of framework from which our work originally departed, chapters five and six then turn to a discussion of the ways that State theory has been drawn upon in research on education. Here, we are primarily attentive to literature that has drawn upon macro-sociology, global education policy studies, political economy approaches, and world systems theory. While chapter six concludes with a brief discussion of the post-colonial lens, this discussion is extended in chapter seven, which takes this lens as its central focus. Chapter eight then synthesizes the core insights of chapters five through seven and, in so doing, offers our framework for understanding education reform in post-colonial contexts. This framework is then applied, also in chapter eight, to the case of Honduras by bringing previous insights, from chapters two through four, into conversation with the colonial and capitalist origins of the Honduran State. Finally, the last chapter reflects on the limitations of the concepts that are commonly employed to characterize privatization, in addition to introducing and discussing the decolonial perspective as a way forward.
In what follows, this chapter situates the need for the present book in relation to the field of comparative and international education. It then characterizes different dimensions of globalization and different forms of educational privatization that have been conceptualized and used to guide research in this field. Lastly, it delineates the tenets of the analytic framework that guided the work presented in chapters two through four. For details on the informational basis of chapters two and three, see the methodological appendix.
Despite the high politicisation of the ecological crisis, political strategies to deal with it fail to tackle the root cause of the crisis but intend to ecologically modernise capitalism. This is an entry point for critical (Global) Political Economy. First, to understand the hegemonic character of ecologically destructive social relations, GPE should focus not only on political and economic structures, but also on their anchoring in people’s everyday lives. Second, critical scholarship should examine the global political economy of social-ecological transformations in capitalist centres which go hand in hand with a deepening of neo-colonial resource extractivism in countries of the global South, even in its ‘green’ version. The concept of an imperial mode of living aims to make sense of the hegemonic character of unsustainability rooted in everyday practices. Moreover, it connects the everyday life of people in the global North to overarching social and international structures and thus reveals the global socio-ecological preconditions of the prevailing patterns of production and consumption as well as the mechanisms that render their destructive effects invisible to those who benefit from them. Some contours of a ‘solidary mode of living’ and some preliminary conclusions for future research in critical GPE are drawn.
This chapter revisits the contributions to theorizing the State made by macro-sociological approaches, global education policy studies, political economy perspectives, and world systems approach, and highlights the aspects of these that are relevant for making sense of contemporary education reform in post-colonial settings. Most importantly, in order to extend the post-colonial perspective, the chapter engages with the work of scholars who have taken a post-colonial approach to the State, first addressing the notion of the ‘post-colonial condition’—i.e., that condition resulting from the intersection of colonialism, global capitalism, and State formation—and, second, the phenomenon of the ‘transnational State’ as the contemporary result of such dynamics. In order to ground the abstract discussion of the transnational State in a tangible example and also to provide background context to the case of Honduras, the chapter finishes with a discussion of the emergence of the transnational State in Central America.
This chapter addresses contemporary education reform dynamics and initiatives in Honduras, with a focus on the ways in which different non-State actors have become increasingly involved in education policy formulation and implementation. To this end, the chapter (a) describes the widely recognized role that international development organizations have had in the region since the 1980s; (b) presents the key aspects that have characterized education policymaking and the activity of international organizations in Honduras during the 1980s-2000s—especially in relation to advancing a “modernization” and “decentralization” agenda; and (c) analyzes how education policymaking has functioned more recently in the country, subject to the growing influence and formal involvement of corporations and philanthropic organizations. In addressing these issues, the chapter is attentive to the political-economic forces that have shaped the region and the country in the period and whose long-lasting effects continue to underpin education reform dynamics.
This chapter delineates the initial research objective of this book—i.e., to identify and analyze contemporary education privatization in Honduras in the context of globalization—and anticipates some of the questions, concerns, and conceptual challenges that the authors encountered in the process, specifically those arising from conducting research on education reform in a post-colonial context. In this regard, this chapter stresses the need, in comparative and international education, for a deeper engagement with State theory in order to understand the dynamics and legacy of State formation that ultimately underpin contemporary education reform dynamics and, in particular, education privatization processes in post-colonial contexts. Beyond these issues, this chapter also (a) presents a framework for studying the privatization of education in the context of globalization, and (b) lays out the general political economy theoretical lens through which this book initially looks at the ways in which domestic and international private actors and privatization trends have influenced education policy—and the education sector overall—in Honduras.
With few exceptions, research in education, including research in education policy development and implementation, has tended not to engage with theories of the State. This has particularly been the case in the field of comparative and international education, where the State is often referred to, but simultaneously taken for granted as if it were an inert, constant, ahistorical structure relegated to a background that does not deserve serious consideration. This chapter discusses a few exceptions to this general rule and, in so doing, attempts to characterize some of the ways in which the State has been approached in education research, both directly and indirectly. In particular, this chapter draws attention to examples from a) macro-sociological approaches focusing on the development of educational systems, and b) the field of global education policy studies. The chapter lays out the merits and limitations of each approach and advocates for a broader theorization of the State that is attentive to the ways that the origins and evolution of the State intersects with globalization and the nature of post-colonial contexts.
The previous chapter presented and discussed a comprehensive framework for analyzing education reform dynamics from a post-colonial perspective in the context of globalization. The purpose of this final chapter is to go beyond that framework, that is, to come full circle, by returning to and extending points initially made in the introductory chapter. This chapter addresses two points in particular—first, the need to reflect on the limitations of the concepts that are commonly employed to characterize privatization, and, second, the need to further explore decolonial perspectives as a promising way forward. In order to situate our commentary on these two points, this chapter first summarizes what this book has tried to accomplish with regard to the development of the post-colonial framework featured in chapter eight, and then moves on to raising a series of questions and directions highlighting some of the many possible connections across the State, privatization, globalization, colonial logics, and education as suggestions for continued and future inquiry and action.
The article gives a general overview over different approaches to research ethics, discussing their respective potentials and shortfalls, while highlighting the varying relevance of different dimensions of research ethics when analysing the state from different perspectives. After an overview of the political and theoretical context of research ethics, three major approaches to ethics in general are discussed and their implications for research ethics in particular is explained. Next, issues of concrete research situations are presented as well as ways of practically negotiating the ‘complex mess’ that such situations imply. From the positional reflexivity that is a common demand for such negotiation, a broadening of the scope of research ethics to more general theoretical and political considerations is argued for. Such considerations are entangled not only in activist research, but generally in any research project. The conclusion shows how, while the different approaches presented in the text contradict each other in some terms, they also can complement each other or simply can help answer different questions. In order to arrive at a more comprehensive approach to research ethics as called for above, the standard, narrower accounts of research ethics need to be amended and adapted. Crucially, a dialogue among different dimensions and perspectives must help navigate the contradicting realities of concrete research contexts.
This chapter gives a general and theoretical introduction to materialist perspectives on the peripheral or post-colonial state. It first introduces a categorical distinction between interest-oriented and form-analytical materialist approaches and elaborates the ontological difference of both alongside the work of Nicos Poulantzas on the one hand and the German State Derivation debt on the other hand. It then touches upon relevant political-economical contexts in the debate like world-system dynamics, imperialism and depedencia in order to advance the relevant particularities of a materialist take on the state in the south. A reappraisal of older debates around authors like Hamza Alavi, John Saul or Tilman Evers is still crucial for the understanding of today’s problematics, that is why they are considered in depth in the following part. The chapter ends with a discussion of the (few) recent advancements in the field of materialist state theories of the periphery and an outlook on relevant open research agendas.
The Human Rights record in the Global South largely reflects an absence of care/concern for human life; though before we apportion blame and castigate the leaders and peoples of the Global South, we should perhaps first examine our own roles in the creation and propagation of the many human rights abuses that have been documented (and the many more that will never be). It is argues, and it is a central premise of this chapter that while we can ‘pretend to peer over the fence’ and look askance at the activities that happen largely out of sight and mind. It is us who ultimately bear the blame for and therefore the responsibility to protect vulnerable populations around the world from our voracious appetite for raw materials, an appetite that has spawned what is often called the resource curse.KeywordsColonialismConsumer societyComsumerismDemocracyGlobal communityGlobalizationGlobalization of needsGlobalization of wantsHuman rightsHuman rights abusesHuman rights educationImperialismMaterialismResource curseSocial justiceThe global southVulnerable populations
This paper analyzes the hegemonic role of the military vis-à-vis elected civilian governments in Pakistan from the vantage point of institutional political economy. Absence of “good governance” on the part of elected civilian governments is often depicted as the key underlying factor that allows the military to maintain its dominance over state and society. In sharp contrast, we argue that the emphasis on “good” governance as a pathway to democratic consolidation ignores socio-economic and institutional factors which facilitate the successful reproduction of Pakistan’s militarized hegemonic order. The paper argues that the military hegemony is rooted in the prevailing political economic structure mediated by forces of imperialism. By drawing from Erik Olin Wright’s (2010. Envisioning Real Utopias) tripartite conceptual scheme of “symbiotic,” “interstitial,” and “ruptural” transformation strategies, we offer a new framework to analyze processes of democratic transformation in Pakistan. We contend that the consolidation of democracy and civilian supremacy mandates a shift away from a narrow focus on governance to transformative politics. The latter has to be centered around an alternative hegemonic conception counterposed to the established military-centric order that would incorporate aspirations of socio-spatially and economically deprived segments from the ethnic peripheries, as well as progressive and working-class constituencies within metropolitan Pakistan.
Dramatic changes in media law and practice took place on Israel’s 70th year of independence: The Press Ordinance was abolished; the Broadcasting Authority (IBA) was replaced by the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation (IBC); and the Second Authority Law (which governs commercial broadcasting) was amended, abolishing the “dual broadcasting model” established in the 1990s. What characterizes these changes is that they mark the breaking up of Israel’s media policy structure from its post-colonial roots. The new laws demonstrate for the first time in Israeli media policy history a unique Israeli structure.
While much literature has been produced on globalization, privatization, and the State individually, it has not been common to treat them together, at least not in the field of comparative and international education. There is excellent work that has documented the ways in which globalization and privatization have influenced education reform, but extant scholarship typically has not engaged with theories of the State. In this paper, through the case of Honduras, we explore the aforementioned issues. First, we draw on the approach of Critical International Political Economy (CIPE) to understand the ways that (political-economic) globalization and privatization have affected and manifested in both policymaking and the provision of education. The second half of the paper then turns the gaze back on the Honduran State and draws on State theory literature to consider why globalization and privatization have been able to be so influential in the first place.
The emphasis since the 1990s in the neoliberal paradigm on the non-interventionist state, and the theoretical disinterest in the state by critical scholarship, has negatively affected the prospects for political and social change. The fragmented and dispersed social movements analysed by critical scholars have proven insufficiently counter-hegemonic. All this invites us to reconsider the postcolonial state at a new theoretical level to guide better choices for political practice. This article analyses the prevalent academic literature on the postcolonial Pakistani state. In these analyses, an omnipresent and omnipotent military state decides the fate of democracy, now and again replacing politicians at the helm and also promoting Islam. Political practice remains confined to inter-elite struggles for the restoration of democracy, whereas imperialist hegemony and the role of marginalised classes as reservoirs of counter-hegemony are largely missing. This article critically builds on the legacy of the renowned Pakistani scholar Hamza Alavi to show, historically and empirically, how imperialist powers (from the United States to China) have used the military as a seat of power to bring the local elite under their hegemony. A political theoretical practice and the building of a counter-hegemony which goes beyond and beneath inter-elite struggles is much needed.
A Somália tem sido considerada pela sociedade internacional ao longo dos anos um dos países mais perigosos do mundo e o quinto pior lugar para ser mulher. Em meio ao caos da guerra civil que dura há mais de duas décadas, as somalianas ainda assim demostram, através de seus envolvimentos nos processos de promoção da paz e reconstrução dos aparatos estatais, que são agentes para além de vítimas. Por conseguinte, é objetivo do presente artigo analisar a agência feminina na Somália sob a perspectiva de três abordagens feministas: os feminismos pós-coloniais, africanos e islâmicos. Estas abordagens são substanciais para se entender o contexto local, além dos avanços e entraves nos direitos das somalianas, que foram colonizadas no passado pelos impérios britânico e italiano, e hoje observam o aumento do extremismo religioso no país.
Stefan Kipfer (2019) “(De-)constructing housing estates: How much more than a housing question?” in: Massive Suburbanization: (Re-)Building the Global Periphery Eds. Murat Güney, Roger Keil and Murat Üçoğlu (Toronto, University of Toronto Press)
There is an extensive body of literature that delves deeply into the question of how a state is constituted, by examining it from various theoretical and empirical perspectives. Scholars engaged in the field of political science, as well as in other fields such as the social sciences, are constantly endeavouring to explain the myriad ways in which states are formed in different regions of the world. According to one set of academics, the social setup that prevailed in most of the post-colonial states of Asia, Africa, and Latin America was mainly due to the plurality of their multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, and multi-cultural populations. This plurality had a profound effect on the way the state was formed. A significant volume of literature on Sri Lanka too is available, much of which approaches the question of state formation and reconstitution from the standpoint of ethnicity and nationalism. This survey reviews both the theoretical and empirical literature on state constitution/ formation and pays special attention to three main themes; viz. theories on state constitution (formation), research on post-colonial state formation, and studies about Sri Lankan politics. The state-in-society theory is studied with focus on the crucial question of how state and society transform and constitute one another. This is a qualitative study based on text analysis. A wide selection of existing literature was reviewed. This survey shows that there is a paucity of research work on post-colonial state formation in Sri Lanka and state-minority contestations. It also draws attention to the research gaps in existing literature and the need to explore them further.
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain creatively demonstrates in Padmarag (1924) the socially embedded association of women with evil. She brings together a group of women on the premises of Tarini Bhaban in order to explore their psychological terrain, as they share with each other previously untold memories and document their experiences of patriarchal oppression and domestic abuse. Through their reminiscences and memories, Rokeya lays bare the angst of women in a patriarchal social order that silences and suppresses them. Beyond the belief of sisterhood at Tarini Bhaban, in one way or another, most of these women are considered “evil” in society as a whole. For example, Saudamini is a stepmother with no biological children of her own and is regarded as a dakini (witch) and rakshasi (a female demon). Other women of Tarini Bhaban have received comparable tags from society and experienced similar victimization. Based on the representation of “evil” women in the novel, in this article I will discuss their stories and examine some of the contributing factors to their victimization and characterization as wicked in the context of early twentieth-century Bengal.
The visibility of globalization as a bundle of social, economic, political, cultural, ideological, and epistemological processes as well as military practices has not only recalibrated postcolonial critical and theoretical positions, but also has redefined its parameters for reading the history of ideas and power. The endless wealth and plenitude this critical trajectory carries for postcolonial studies is resourced by a whole set of new critical practices which look into the productive forces shaping the dynamics of human history. This critical reformulation and recalibration of postcolonial cultural politics of engaging the violent histories of western imperialism and colonialism will be discursively explored through a critical focus on the link between postcolonial studies, globalization, world-literature, and terrorism. The contention is to redirect the interpretive horizon of such postcolonial critical parameters as history, ideology, culture, nation, race, gender, class, ethnicity, religion, etc. from mere discursive constructions entertaining a sense of epistemological primacy or precedence over the laws of historical evolution into “modalities of existence,” whose material conditions of possibility and rules of formation are conditioned by the power of economy not only to inflect the dissemination and productions of human knowledge, but also to govern the forces which shape the evolution of human history.
The main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the key contributions made by Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre in ‘Enrichissement. Une critique de la marchandise’ (Paris: Gallimard, 2017). With the exception of one journal article, entitled ‘The Economic Life of Things: Commodities, Collectibles, Assets’, their collaborative work has received little attention in Anglophone circles. This paper aims to demonstrate that Boltanski and Esquerre's Enrichissement contains valuable insights into the constitution of Western European capitalism in the early twenty-first century. In order to substantiate the validity of this claim, the subsequent inquiry focuses on central dimensions that, in Boltanski and Esquerre's view, need to be scrutinized to grasp the nature of major trends in contemporary society, notably those associated with the consolidation of the enrichment economy. In the final section, attention will be drawn to several noteworthy limitations of Boltanski and Esquerre's analysis.
In the last two decades, Taiwan has made a successful democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a vibrant democracy. Yet for Taiwan's indigenous peoples, a "double transition" has not yet taken place. In this paper, based on my Ph.D. research, I argue that in States with a colonial and authoritarian past, indigenous peoples are dominated by the colonial legacy and the coercion of the authoritarian regime. As indigenous peoples, they remain in a subjected position because of an ongoing colonial order; as citizens of an authoritarian regime, they are politically oppressed. They suffer a "double oppression". So, to guarantee indigenous peoples' rights, States need a "double transition" from authoritarianism to democracy; and from colonialism to decolonization. Applying this theoretical framework to Taiwan, this paper shows that Taiwan's indigenous population played an important role in Taiwan's democratic transition, because they were part of the broad opposition movement. Also, through democratic reforms, their political rights and freedoms have increased. So, they were enabled to push forward claims for their rights to land and self-government. But so far, there has not been a deep change in the relationship between the Taiwanese government and the indigenous peoples. The Taiwanese government maintains superior powers over the indigenous peoples, embedded in a flawed and poorly enforced legal framework. Most indigenous peoples' lands have not been returned, and attempts to increase indigenous self-government have failed. There are still many challenges ahead, but Taiwan's indigenous peoples have shown strong determination and Taiwan's unique international status may help them in their struggle.
It is widely acknowledged that Jürgen Habermas is an advocate of a deliberative model of democracy. This chapter aims to demonstrate that Habermas’s concern with democracy is inseparably linked to his interest in language. More specifically, it seeks to illustrate that the following ten elements are central to Habermas’s multifaceted account of democracy: (1) deliberation, (2) reciprocity, (3) self-determination, (4) citizenship, (5) the state, (6) sovereignty, (7) communicative rationality, (8) regulation, (9) will-formation and (10) constitutional law. The chapter concludes by addressing a number of issues that arise when confronted with the task of assessing both the validity and the usefulness of Habermas’s communication-theoretic account of democracy.
This chapter describes the recent conjuncture and the centrality given to law and the judiciary in the ‘good governance’ paradigm as promoted by International Financial Institutions in postcolonial societies. It suggests the inability of this paradigm to implement democratization and equitable social change. The reason for this is the institutionalist-functionalist focus of liberal legal project and managerial solutions of the good governance paradigm. As opposed to this, the framework in this book suggests the use of Gramsci’s idea of hegemony as a political practice of state formation to analyse the discourse of the judiciary as well as to grasp the structural inequalities in the society. This chapter argues that the Pakistani state should rather be viewed through a class structural lens, and the judiciary should be seen as part of the juridico-bureaucratic structure of the state.
This chapter examines the rising ‘legalism,’ ‘constitutionalism,’ ‘strong’ and ‘activist’ judiciary within the ‘weakening’ state formation under the Structural Adjustment Policy (SAP) of the 1990s. The consolidation of the liberal legal project was now joined by thin ‘civil society’ NGOs. The Chief Justices Afzal Zullah (1990–1993) and Nasim Hassan Shah (1993–1994) strengthened the judiciary through PIL using Islamic provisions and the controversial Objectives Resolution. The judiciary bitterly fought elected governments and upheld the decisions of dissolutions of Assemblies by strong presidents particularly under Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah (1994–1997). This chapter thus offers a fresh new reading of the case law along with autobiographies and speeches of the Chief Justices which make very clear their contempt for politicians, and self-realization of their role in the era of neo-liberal political and economic development. The working class in this arrangement was dissipated into the ‘public’ and ‘citizenry’ and the perception was that only judges would watch out for their ‘interest.’
This chapter is about the relation of law and judiciary with the nation-building project of 1950–1960s during the ‘modernization’ of newly independent Pakistan. The legal and constitutional problems of this era were met by the judiciary under the leadership of Chief Justice Munir (1954–1960) and later, Chief Justice Cornelius (1960–1968). This chapter analyses the decisions of their courts along with their writings and speeches to understand their vision of political development in relation to changes during the hegemonic capitalist modernization. It is evident that, despite the differing positions of Munir and Cornelius CJs, both were with the liberal tradition of law and were against socialist modernization, popular democracy, and the deeper and broader participation of masses. Finally, under the leadership of Chief Justice Cornelius, the Pakistani judiciary devised a US type of constitution with a strong president with limited democracy and a strong judiciary protecting rights as substitute for this democratic deficit. Furthermore, Cornelius was the first to start grafting Islam to this constitutional set-up to further limit participation. After Cornelius, his collective of judges, Chief Justices Shahabuddin, S.A. Rahman, Hamoodur Rahman (1968–1975), Nasim Hasan Shah (1993–1994) and jurists like Sharifuddin Pirzada, A.K. Brohi, and Khalid M. Ishaque, developed this legal formation to an ultimate practice under Zia in the 1980s. The book calls it a quasi-liberal legal project, that is a hybrid of the U.S. liberal legal and Islamic system.
This chapter aims to shed light on the impact of postmodern thought on current debates in sociology. In this respect, the shift from modern to postmodern forms of analysis is paradoxical in that it attacks the heart of sociology: namely, its concern with the constitution of ‘the social’. As shall be elucidated in the following sections, contemporary conceptions of ‘the social’ have been significantly influenced by what may be described as the cultural turn1 in sociology. Sociology is a child of modernity. From a postmodern perspective, recent paradigmatic trends in the social sciences appear to have contributed to converting sociology into a mature adult, aware not only of its own limitations but also of the unrealistic ambitions that shaped its infancy. From a modern point of view, by contrast, the very idea of a ‘postmodern sociology’ is a contradiction in terms. It is not only because of its modern roots, however, that it seems implausible to treat sociology as a postmodern discipline. Furthermore, it is due to two of its most basic assumptions that it is difficult to conceive of sociology — understood in the classical sense – as a postmodern endeavour: on the ontological level, the assumption that ‘the social’ actually exists; and, on the methodological level, the assumption that ‘the social’ can be scientifically studied.
This article describes and makes sense of why and how China’s communications was undeveloped from the late Qing Dynasty through the Civil War. The purpose is to bring into sharp focus the imprint of global capitalism and imperialism on China’s domestic social-spatial relations as well as the well-entrenched underdevelopment dynamics in communications. It argues that communications, shaped successively by historical configurations of relationships, domesticated spatially China’s peripheral position in the world capitalist system. This spatiality, expressing internal underdevelopment and external subordination, had never been effectively overhauled and even remained true of socialist modernity after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which then has informed and deformed communications development since the country’s market reform.
This paper describes and makes sense of why and how China’s telecommunications was undeveloped from the late Qing Dynasty through the Civil War in the 1940s. The purpose is to bring into sharp focus the imprint of global capitalism imperialism on domestic socio-spatial relations in China — and its legacy effect on contemporary underdevelopment tendencies. It argues that communications infrastructures, shaped successively by historical configurations of social relations since the late 19th century, domesticated spatially China’s peripheral position in the world capitalist system. This spatiality, expressing internal underdevelopment and external domination, had not been effectively overhauled and remained characteristic of colonial modernity, which then informed and deformed China’s communications development after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
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