Decolonial Options for the Social Sciences – serie

Smash the Pillars builds on the efforts by scholars and activists to decolonize Dutch history and memory, as they resist the epistemological violence imposed by the state, its institutions, and dominant narratives. Contributions offer an unparalleled glimpse into decolonial activism in the Dutch kingdom and provide us with a new lens to view contemporary decolonial efforts. The book argues that to fully decolonize Dutch society, the current social organization in the Kingdom of the Netherlands relying on separate pillars for each religious and/or racial group, must be dismantled.

Crossing Racial Borders: The Epistemic Empowerment of the Subaltern explores critically the racial, socioeconomic, historical, and political contemporary conditions of the lived experiences of the subaltern, the oppressed. Through the lens of the decolonial school of thought developed by Latin American thinkers and scholars, this text focuses on the identification and analysis of the subalterns’ praxis of living, thinking, knowing, and doing. The contributors delve into the subalterns’ agency at work and how their [inter]subjective/reflective actions, gestures, and thoughts are deep-seated in subverting and resisting the material and symbolic coloniality of power's exploitation, categorization, and oppression. Drawing from sociological, anthropological, literary, and historical approaches, a new set of ideas and rationalities uncovers and challenges the complicities of modernity/coloniality (power-pattern-matrix) through new narratives and discursive epistemic-frames of empowerment and agency.

Teaching as Radical Logic: Dialectic, Analectic, and Education features original contributions from leading scholars in the fields of decolonial theory, Marxist theory, and critical education. This volume revitalizes the cross-fertilizing dialogue between traditions that historically propelled global anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist political movements, while restoring to pedagogy its central role as an organizing principle for liberation. At the same time, this volume explores the necessary ground of teaching in fundamental logics of radical thought and action. Starting from an engagement with the philosophical traditions of dialectics and analectics, and challenging familiar partitions between academic orientations and disciplines, the chapters in this volume extend currents in critical theory to offer original analyses of the fundamental organization of capitalism and coloniality in schooling and beyond. Contributors propose new approaches to radical and decolonizing praxis which take teaching seriously as a site for theoretical commitment and creativity. Refusing the notion of method as procedure, these interventions propose modes of critical pedagogical engagement that are at once rigorous and imaginative, and that operate across the diverse contexts and registers of contemporary classrooms, community spaces, and political life.

Teaching as Radical Logic: Dialectic, Analectic, and Education brings together groundbreaking work from leading voices in decolonial theory, Marxist thought, and critical education.This volume revitalizes the cross-fertilizing dialogue between traditions that historically propelled global anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist political movements, while restoring to pedagogy its central role as an organizing principle for liberation. At the same time, this volume explores the necessary ground of teaching in fundamental logics of radical thought and action. Starting from an engagement with the philosophical traditions of dialectics and analectics, and challenging familiar partitions between academic orientations and disciplines, the chapters in this volume extend currents in critical theory to offer original analyses of the fundamental organization of capitalism and coloniality in schooling and beyond. Contributors propose new approaches to radical and decolonizing praxis which take teaching seriously as a site for theoretical commitment and creativity. Refusing the notion of method as procedure, these interventions propose modes of critical pedagogical engagement that are at once rigorous and imaginative, and that operate across the diverse contexts and registers of contemporary classrooms, community spaces, and political life.

This edited volume critically examines the coloniality of humanity and how it affects colonized and racialized people in both the Global South and Global North. The contributors reveal how ongoing geopolitical power imbalances are rooted in colonial histories and colonial structures which perpetuate global inequalities. The volume explores how these entrenched colonial systems intersect with gender, class, disability, and other social factors, often overlooked in mainstream discussions of global inequality. By synthesizing empirical research and theoretical perspectives on race and colonialism across various historical and geographical contexts, it emphasizes the importance of combining postcolonial research with decolonial praxis. Through the perspectives of scholars and activists from the Global South, the book aims to decolonize knowledge production and challenge the continuing dominance of coloniality.

While many non-Indigenous academic researchers have introduced the concept of reconciliation in their work, they have not adequately explored what it means for transnational immigrants and refugee communities to view reconciliation as a source of knowledge and understanding. How can assuming responsibility for reconciliation empower immigrant and refugee women communities? Why should immigrant and refugee communities embrace decolonial and anti-racist ways of knowing and acting to foster meaningful relationships with Indigenous communities? What does it entail to comprehend 'decolonial and anti-racist learning and practice'—as a system of reciprocal social relations and ethical practices—as a framework for reconciliation? Decolonial and Anti-racist Transformative Autoethnographic Journey toward Reconciliation: A Racialized Immigrant Woman’s Empowering Stories aims to address these interdisciplinary questions. It endeavors not only to challenge our static comprehension of reconciliation but also to demonstrate how assuming responsibility for relearning decolonial and anti-racist meanings in our everyday practices is essential. These include: cultivating respectful relationships with Indigenous peoples, honoring Indigenous Treaties, taking steps to decolonize our ways of knowing and acting, understanding the impacts of colonial education processes, preserving our Land and environment, ensuring food security and nutritional adequacy, fostering intercultural spaces for social interactions, and promoting transnational empowerment.