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Colonial Legacy (colonial + legacy)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	80%

Selected Abstracts

Colonial Legacy in African Museology: The Case of the Ghana National Museum

MUSEUM ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
Arianna Fogelman
Abstract African museums were largely founded during the colonial era to house artifacts amassed by imperial agents whose contemporaneous understandings of race, evolution and culture led them to believe local populations were "backward" or otherwise "primitive." Today in the hands of independent governments, scholars frequently cite "colonial legacy" to explain these institutions' continued irrelevance to the local communities they purport to serve. Recent efforts to "localize" African museums have proceeded without a critical analysis of the "colonial legacy" concept, which both denies local agency and cultural malleability in the museum concept, as demonstrated with the case of the Ghana National Museum. [source]

The Common Sense of Anti-Indian Racism: Reactions to Mashantucket Pequot Success in Gaming and Acknowledgment

LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 2 2006
Renee Ann Cramer
Anti-Indian racism, as typified by anticasino backlash, is a part of the "common sense" of race relations in the United States, which increasingly impacts federal administrative procedures used to acknowledge the existence of tribal status. Using ethnographic and archival research, this article shows that the backlash over Mashantucket Pequot recognition and casino success has taken the form, primarily, of racialized attacks on the Mashantucket Pequots' Indian identity. It argues that such backlash carries over to impact groups who seek recognition of their tribal status, and the legitimation that such recognition might bring to their identity. Examining the colonial legacies of anti-Indian racism shows us that such racial antagonism in the United States is nothing new. However, understanding the contexts within which its recent resurgence has occurred may help bring fairness to the acknowledgment process, and may further illuminate intersections of common sense racism and legal spheres in American life. [source]

Wildlife and Politics: CAMPFIRE in Zimbabwe

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2000
Jocelyn Alexander
CAMPFIRE programmes have been hailed internationally for the innovative ways in which they have sought to confront the challenges of some of Africa's most marginal regions through the promotion of local control over wildlife management. In Zimbabwe, CAMPFIRE has been cast as an antidote to the colonial legacy of technocratic and authoritarian development which had undermined people's control over their environment and criminalized their use of game. This article explores why such a potentially positive programme went so badly wrong in the case of Nkayi and Lupane districts, raising points of wider significance for comparable initiatives. Local histories and institutional politics need careful examination. The first part of the article thus investigates the historical forces which shaped attitudes to game, while the second part considers the powerful institutional and economic forces which conspired to sideline these historically formed local views. CAMPFIRE in Nkayi and Lupane was further shaped by the legacies of post-independence state violence in this region, and the failure of earlier wildlife projects. This range of factors combined to create deep distrust of CAMPFIRE, and quickly led to open confrontation. [source]

Skills under threat: the case of HIV/AIDS in the mining industry in Zimbabwe

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2006
Caroline N. Matangi
Abstract The Zimbabwe mining industry is currently battling to arrest further spread of the HIV/AIDS crisis in workplaces, especially its impact on labour productivity. Labour in the closed community of mines has been greatly susceptible to HIV/AIDS infection. The current AIDS incidence in the mine sites is estimated at a weighted average of 15,per,cent amongst miners, with the largest category of workers,the 30,39 years age group,also constituting the worst affected category. Given the current state of the country's economy and consequently its adverse impact on the lifestyle of miners, the pandemic is expected to increase. This paper builds on the work of the ILO (1995) involving a survey of 18 various firms/institutions. The survey was carried out in Zambia in order to assess the impact of HIV/AIDS on the productive labour force. The survey revealed that many of the firms are experiencing irregular work attendance, ,wasted' training as some of the trained workers are constantly ill or die, high medical bills, funeral costs and reduced productivity and profits. An analysis of data on the main causes of death in 1993 shows that at least 61.8,per,cent of deaths could be attributed to causes that are very closely related to HIV/AIDS complications. Based on points highlighted by respondents and analysis of symptoms suffered, it was observed that HIV/AIDS tended to affect most general workers (36.8,per,cent), followed by the lower management (30.9,per,cent) and the middle management (20.6,per,cent). Comparatively, 11.8,per,cent of the deaths in 1993 belonged to the top management. Although it is hard to appreciate the meaning of the figures without knowledge of the number of people in each category, it nevertheless helps to form a clear picture of the impact of HIV/AIDS on industry. This paper seeks to further investigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on the productive labour force, by focusing on one particular industry,mining,using a blend of research methods to collect the data. This paper examines the impact of HIV/AIDS on the productive labour force and management responses. It forms part of the findings of data gathered in 2001 in the mining industry in Zimbabwe, to examine factors affecting management responses to HIV/AIDS in the mine sites. Zimbabwe is a country with a complex historical legacy of mine labour. This phenomenon can largely be attributed to the production oriented nature of the mining industry. Mines focus mainly on mineral extraction and as a result the bulk of mine workers tend to be production workers whose skills have developed over long periods of time. Production workers on mines have a tradition of long-term employment. This phenomenon has meant that labour in the mines is hard to replace as a result of skills, especially tacit knowledge, acquired over many years. Thus while the recent closure of some gold mines, largely due to low commodity prices, has meant that more miners are available in the labour market, this situation has not necessarily eased the process of replacing labour lost to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as certain skills are firm specific. Production workers are predominantly male with the bulk falling in the 35,39 years age group. Most mine workers reside in mine villages, a colonial legacy that ensured miners were close to the workplace. The village system is a system of housing labourers, which demonstrates capitalistic methods of controlling labour and minimising costs. Of significance in this study's background is how the village system has come to be viewed as a factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS in the mining communities, because of its ,closed' nature. It is against this complex historical backdrop that the paper turns to examine the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on production workers and management responses to the crisis using the Resource Based View of the Firm model (RBV), one of the theories in the Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) tradition. RBV was chosen for this study out of many HRM models that exist, because this theory, in particular, explains why it is advantageous for sites to use their ,unique' firm based resources in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Given this rationale it was, therefore, presumed that this theory would best apply in mines battling with the adverse impact of HIV/AIDS on productivity, especially in the light of the harsh national economic climate, which would likely place limitations on response mechanisms. Further, the issue of firm-specific skills was also taken into consideration as an important factor in the mines, limiting their ability to resort to external solutions. Thus, given these factors, RBV was deemed the most appropriate model. The study finds that the pandemic depresses labour productivity through a number of significant ways: increased rate of HIV/AIDS induced absenteeism gradual labour turnover as a result of AIDS induced morbidity; and consequently declining skills availability, particularly firm-specific skills. Maintaining labour productivity in the face of gradually diminishing skills and indisposed labour will be key to softening the adverse economic consequences of the pandemic in the mines. To reduce the threat to labour productivity, mines must find ways of utilising, to the maximum extent practicable, existing skills. Results indicate that a move towards the utilisation of existing miners is the most favoured response mechanism in most mines. Utilising existing miners enables mines from spending financial resources on avoidable recruitment and training and quite often mechanisation, which may not necessarily be compatible with the old infrastructure in certain mines. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]