Intimate Colonialism

A lyrical, autoethnographic study of a woman's Peace Corps tour, showing the personal, intimate side of development work and the lasting impressions on both the worker and the community.

Looking at the way cultural competencies and sensibilities entered into the construction of race in the colonial context, this text proposes that 'cultural racism' in fact predates its postmodern discovery.

Laurie Charlés finished her Ph.D., then took off to West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. Asked to create programs to help adolescent girls stay in school, she found herself enmeshed in the politics and cultural barriers that prevent these girls from creating a better life. But that was not all that was enmeshed. Charlés found love, sexual fulfillment, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination, all of which further complexified her stated mission. Her candid assessment of life and work in Africa, the intimate relationships that gave hope to the possibility of change, the emotional and physical highs and lows that affected her ability to function, all become factors affecting her success in improving the lives of African girls. This eloquent narrative should be of interest both to those doing development work and to those interested in autoethnographic exploration of the self.

Privileging Indigenous voices and experiences, Intimate Integration documents the rise and fall of North American transracial adoption projects, including the Adopt Indian and Métis Project and the Indian Adoption Project. Allyson D. Stevenson argues that the integration of adopted Indian and Métis children mirrored the new direction in post-war Indian policy and welfare services. She illustrates how the removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities took on increasing political and social urgency, contributing to what we now call the "Sixties Scoop." Making profound contributions to the history of settler colonialism in Canada, Intimate Integration sheds light on the complex reasons behind persistent social inequalities in child welfare.

Nayoung Aimee Kwon examines the Japanese language literature written by Koreans during late Japanese colonialism. She demonstrates that simply characterizing that literature as collaborationist obscures the complicated relationship these authors had with colonialism, modernity, and identity, as well as the relationship between colonizers and the colonized.

Expanding the narrow script of what it means to be Parisian, Laila Amine explores the novels, films, and street art made by Maghrebis, Franco-Arabs, and African Americans, including fiction by Charef, Chraïbi, Sebbar, Baldwin, Smith, and Wright, and such films as La haine, Made in France, Chouchou, and A Son.

This volume examines human sexuality as an intrinsic element in the interpretation of complex colonial societies. While archaeological studies of the historic past have explored the dynamics of European colonialism, such work has largely ignored broader issues of sexuality, embodiment, commemoration, reproduction, and sensuality. Recently, however, scholars have begun to recognize these issues as essential components of colonization and imperialism. This book explores a variety of case studies, revealing the multifaceted intersections of colonialism and sexuality. Incorporating work that ranges from Phoenician diasporic communities of the eighth century to Britain's nineteenth-century Australian penal colonies to the contemporary maroon community of Brazil, this volume changes the way we understand the relationship between sexuality and colonial history.

This book looks at colonialism in its social, political and psychological context. The author suggests that the fundamental character of colonialism is not so much economic or technological domination, but cultural subservience of the indigenous people, and the cultural arrogance of the rulers. Nandy bases his thesis largely on a study of Gandhi and Kipling in colonial India. The book is in two parts: The Psychology of Colonialism: Sex, Age, and Ideology, and part two: The Uncolonized Mind: A Post-colonial View of India and the West.