Image of a British Empire soldier on a camel (detail)

Postcolonial Theories

In this session of the “Children in Theory” series, Sarada Balagopalan (Rutgers University) introduces the main tenets of applying a Postcolonial approach as a theoretical framework to childhood studies. She later discusses with Diana Carolina García Gómez (Bridgewater State University) and Smruthi Bala Kannan (University of Chicago) the application of the framework to studies of childhood and children’s rights in different contexts.

What are Postcolonial Theories?

Balagopalan, S. (2024). What are Postcolonial Theories? In N. Brando, D. Lawson and H. Stalford (eds.) Children in Theory: Theoretical Methods and Approaches to the Study of Childhood. Online Masterclass Series. University of Liverpool.

In this session, Sarada Balagopalan introduces Postcolonial theories as a method for the study of childhood. She introduces the core foci, contributions, aims and key theorists in the postcolonial tradition.

The session then centres on providing an in-depth exploration of five key contribution of Postcolonial theories to social research and research on childhood. Postcolonial theories centre their attention on how colonial histories have continuing effects on current social, cultural and political practices. They aim to understand the historically determined relationships between states and cultural groups based on colonial relationships of domination and subordination.

Postcolonial theories contribute by bringing to the fore the continuing traces of past actions on current colonial realities, not only in terms of physical and geographical domination of territories and resources, but also on the epistemic, cultural and identity impact that it has on colonised populations.

 Key issues addressed:

  • Epistemic and Material Devaluation of Colonised Peoples.
  • The Hegemonic Temporality of Western Modernity
  • Critique of European Limited ‘Humanist’ Understandings of Freedom
  • Gayatri Spivak and The Dangers of Simplifying ‘Inclusion’
  • The Role of Capitalism in Postcolonial Domination

Postcolonial Theories and Childhood Studies

García Gómez, D.C., Kannan, S.B., and Balagopalan, S. (2024). Postcolonial Theories and Childhood Studies. In N. Brando, D. Lawson and H. Stalford (eds.) Children in Theory: Theoretical Methods and Approaches to the Study of Childhood.  Online Masterclass Series. University of Liverpool.

Springing from the introduction to postcolonial theories, Diana Carolina García Gómez, Smruthi Bala Kannan and Sarada discuss the ways in which they have used Postcolonial theories and methods in their own research. They introduce the varied ways in which each of them has applied it to different case studies and settings, and explore the added benefits of studying childhood using a postcolonial lens. Through different case studies done in different parts of India and Colombia, they explain how postcolonial thought can be put into practice to understand different realities and the added value it has given to their work. Among the issues addressed are the following topics:

  • Introduction to their varied research on childhood.
  • The connection between studying childhood in the Global South and Postcolonial thought.
  • What added value does postcolonial research provide to childhood studies?
  • Postcolonial theory, collective memory and peacebuilding in Colombia
  • Postcolonial theory, education and hygiene in India.
  • Postcolonial theory, child work and education in India.

Further References and Sources

Foundational Sources on Postcolonial Thought:

  • Bhabha H (1994) The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
  • Chakrabarty, D. (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Chatterjee P (1993) The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Cohn, B. (1996) Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 
  • Cooper, Frederick. and Ann Stoler, 1997. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Fanon, F. 1961. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove.
  • Mamdani, M. (1996) Citizen and Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 
  • Mudimbe, V. (1988) The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 
  • Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. London: Routledge.
  • Said, E. (1993) The World, the Text and the Critic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Spivak, G. (1988 [1985]) ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, reprinted in Cary Nelson and Laurence Grossberg (eds), Marxist Interpretations of Culture, 271–313. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 
  • Spivak G (1992) Thinking Academic Freedom in Gendered Postcoloniality (T.B. Davie Academic Freedom Lecture Cape Town). Cape Town, South Africa: University of Cape Town.
  • Spivak G (1993) Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge.

More on Postcolonial Thought and on Childhood:

  • Balagopalan, S. (2023) ‘Theorizing ‘Difference’: Postcolonialism and Childhood Studies’ in S. Balagopalan, J.Wall and K.Wells (eds) Bloomsbury handbook of Theories in Childhood Studies. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Balagopalan, S. (2023). Editorial. On the banality of attrition in the lives of chronically marginalized children. Childhood, 30(1), 3-8.
  • Balagopalan, S. (2021) Editorial. ‘Precarity and the Question of Children’s Relationalities’. Childhood 28(3): 327–32.
  • Balagopalan, S. (2019) ‘Why Historicize Rights Subjectivities?’ Childhood 26(3): 304–20.
  • Balagopalan, S. (2018) ‘Childhood, Culture, History: Beyond “multiple childhoods”’, in S. Spyrou, R. Rosen and D. T. Cook (eds), Reimagining Childhood Studies, 23–39. London: Bloomsbury Press.
  • Bhambra, G. (2007) Rethinking Modernity. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
  • Bhambra, G. (2014). Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
  • Bhambra, G. (2016) ‘Postcolonial Reflections on Sociology’. Sociology 50: 960–6.
  • Bhambra, G. and J. Holmwood (2021) Colonialism and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  • Chatterjee P (2004) Politics of the Governed: Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York:
  • Columbia University Press.
  • Kannan, SB, and R Kumari. (2020). “Collaborations Across Global North-South: Considering Opportunities and Challenges” NEOS 12 (1) URL:https://acyig.americananthro.org/neos-current-issue/kannan-and-kumari_neos_12-1_april-2020/
  • Kannan, SB. (2020). “Provision Rights” and “Protection Rights” in Daniel Cook edited Sage Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies.
  • Mbembe, A. (2003) ‘Necropolitics’. Public Culture 15(1): 11–40. 
  • Nandy, A. (1984). “Reconstructing Childhood: A Critique of the Ideology of Adulthood”. Alternatives, 10(3): 359-375.
  • Pasley, And, and Alejandra Jaramillo-Aristizabal. “Colonialities of Chrononormativity: Exploring the Im/Possibilities of Un/Becoming Childhoods.” Policy Futures in Education, May, DOI: 147821032311771.
  • Sanyal, K. (2007) Rethinking Capitalist Development: Primitive Accumulation, Governmentality and Post-colonial Capitalism. New Delhi: Routledge.
  • Spivak G (2004) Righting wrongs. South Atlantic Quarterly 103: 523–581.

Postcolonial theory in the Indian context:

  • Balagopalan, S. (2022) ‘The Politics of Deferral: Denaturalizing the “economic value” of Children’s Labor in India’. Current Sociology 70(4): 496–512.
  • Balagopalan S (2019) Afterschool and during vacation: On labor and schooling in the postcolony. Children’s Geographies 17: 231–245.
  • Balagopalan S (2014) Inhabiting Childhood: Children, Labour and Schooling in Postcolonial
  • Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Bhattacharya, R. and K. Sanyal (2011) ‘Bypassing the Squalor: New Towns, Immaterial Labour and Exclusions in Postcolonial Urbanisation’. Economic and Political Weekly 46(31): 27–40.
  • Kannan, SB. (2023). “Clean Bodies in School Uniform: childhood and media discourses of cleanliness in Tamil Nadu, India.” in Divya Kannan and Anandini Dar edited Childhood and Youth in India: Engagements with Modernity (Studies in Childhood and Youth), pp. 101-122, Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Kannan, SB. (2022). “Clean bodies in School: Spatial-material discourses of children’s school uniforms and hygiene in Tamil Nadu, India” Children’s Geographies. 20 (6): 803-817
  • Kannan, SB. “Hygiene, Sanitation and Childhoods in South Asia” [under review for Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies]

Postcolonial theory in the Colombian context:

  • García Gómez, DC. 2024. “The suffering we collectively inhabit”: Relational understandings of citizenship by the Colombian post-accord generation. Childhood, 31(1), 103-119. https://doi-org.mutex.gmu.edu/10.1177/09075682241226523
  • García Gómez, DC. 2021. ‘I Have the Right’: Examining the Role of Children in the #DimeLaVerdad Campaign. In: Beier, J.M., Tabak, J. (eds) Childhoods in Peace and Conflict. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74788-6_4
  • García Gómez, DC, and Strandgaard Jensen, H. "The Perfect Computer? Children's Experiences with ICT in Rural Colombia." In Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods, by April Mandrona and Claudia, eds. Mitchell. Rutgers University Press, 2018.
  • García Gómez, DC. “’I felt as if I was overflowing’: Transitioning to Adulthood in the Aftermath of the Colombian Armed Conflict.” (Children’s Geographies – Special Issue: Children and young people as future-makers, forthcoming).
  • García Gómez, DC. “Colombian child-soldiers & their status as political actors.” (Accepted for Handbook on Childhood and Global Development, forthcoming).
  • García Gómez, DC., and Giraldo Mueller, LA. “Childhoods and Collective Memory in Latin America”. (Under review for the Oxford Bibliographies in Childhood Studies).

This project has been developed by members of the European Children’s Rights Unit with the support of the British Academy’s Newton International Fellowship award No. NIFBA19\190492KU. For more information on the series, please contact Nico Brando.

 

Back to: Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences