Confronting Hierarchies: A Podcast on Decoloniality, Peace, and Conflict

Together with Hanna Al-Taher and Firoozeh Farvardin, this episode explores a wide range of topics, including authoritarianism, collective mobilization, epistemic hierarchies, and the relationship between resistance, praxis, and academia. Drawing on the fascinating work of our guests, we highlight insights from decolonial and critical feminist perspectives.Further Information & Reading: Al-Taher, H., & Younes, A.-E. (2023). Lebensraum, geopolitics and race—Palestine as a feminist issue in German-speaking academia. Ethnography, 25(2), 142-168. https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381231216845 Al-Taher, H. (2024). Deutsche Staatsräson und die Verunmöglichung palästinensischer Realität. PERIPHERIE – Politik • Ökonomie • Kultur, 44(2–2024), 250–259. https://doi.org/10.3224/peripherie.v44i2.08 Farvardin, F. (2024). Other Feminisms: A Subversive Gift to the World. In International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies & kollektiv orangotango (eds.), Beyond Molotovs – A Visual Handbook of Anti-Authoritarian Strategies (S. 286–295). transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839470558-045 Farvardin, F. & Talebi, N. (2024). Challenges of Southern Knowledge Production. In I. Dulley & Ö. E. İşcen (eds.), Displacing Theory Through the Global South (S. 57–77). ICI Berlin Press. https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-29_05 Video: [Round Table] Coloniality in the City // 8 July 2024 // Universität Freiburg

Episode 5 is an invitation to shift the gaze and think about Europe as a postcolonial space. Together with Miguel Cardina and Gerlov van Engelenhoven, we delve into the implications that colonialism has had (and continues to have) on Europe’s identities and current realities, as well as contestations thereof. We also address the issue of (post)colonial memory, exploring both its meaning and its relevance for what is commonly assumed to make Europe “Europe”.Bios: Miguel Cardina is a historian and a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He was an European Research Council (ERC) Grantee - project: «CROME - Crossed Memories, Politics of Silence. The Colonial-Liberation Wars in Postcolonial Times» (2017-2023). He is the author or co-author of several books, book chapters or papers on colonialism, anticolonialism and the colonial wars; political ideologies in the sixties and seventies; and the dynamics between history and memory. Gerlov van Engelenhoven is an assistant professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). His research concerns postcolonial memory and heritage, law and culture, and cultural interaction. He also teaches various courses on these topics. His research methodology combines participatory research with discourse analysis and (auto)ethnography.Further Information & Readings:12:00 Postcolonial Memory-Cultural/Collective Memory StudiesTalk by Sakiru AdebayoPostcolonial Memory – Frankfurt Memory Studies Platformalso see below: Book by Gerlov 16:00 Former Holocaust Transit Camps in the Netherlands being used as “Repatriation camps”: Repatriation Camp – Kamp Westerbork 20:00 Activism-removal Debate about the Jan Pieterszoon Statue in Hoorn. Netherlands: Statue of Jan Pieterszoon Coen in Hoorn 24:00 Amílcar Cabral’s impact on Portuguese democracyInterview with Peter Karibe Mendy on Amílcar Cabral,  The Socialist Agronomist Who Helped End Portuguese ColonialismMaria Poblet on Revolutionary Democracy, Class-Consciousness, and Cross-Class Movement Building: Lessons from Amílcar Cabral 25:45 The term Slow Violence was coined by Rob Nixon in 2011: Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Definition: “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all”  31:00 Banda Islands GenocideKatharine McGregor and Ana Dragojlovic (2024): Songs from another land: Decolonizing memories of colonialism and the nutmeg tradeMultimedia journal: https://thebandajournal.org/ 34:05 Gloria Wacker (2016): White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race 36:45 Herbert Marcuse (1969): Repressive Tolerance 46:45 Notion of the Combatant. Book from Inês Nascimento Rodrigues and Miguel Cardina (2023): Who is the combatant? A diachronic reading based on Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe 50:00 Gerlov on Silence: ‘There’s a great deal to be said about silence’See also Book (2023): Postcolonial Memory in the Netherlands: Meaningful Voices, Meaningful Silences 1:01:00 Museum on the History of Dutch Slavery

In Episode 3, we will explore what it means to challenge (post)colonial hierarchies in the classroom together with Amya Agarwal and Swati Parashar. The classroom is a space which can serve to promote critical thinking, a space that not only provides the possibility of reimagining the fundamentals of academic disciplines but that also allows for critical  students and radical scholarship to emerge and thrive. Bios: Amya Agarwal is a lecturer of International Relations at the University of Sheffield, UK. Prior to moving to the UK, she was a senior researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, Freiburg, Germany (2021–2023) and a postdoctoral fellow in Duisburg, Germany (2019–2021). She received her PhD from the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, India in 2017. In the past, she has held teaching positions in the University of Delhi, South Asian University, University of Freiburg and University College Freiburg. Amya's research lies at the intersection of gender, conflict and security. In particular, she studies and writes about masculinities, motherhood, art and aesthetics in times of violence and resistance.   Swati Parashar is a Professor of Peace and Development at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her teaching and research have led to academic appointments and fellowships in India, Singapore, the UK, the US, Ireland, Australia, and Sweden. She has also taught at the University of Rwanda in Kigali and at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica. Swati is a member of the Swedish Development Research Network and has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of SIDA. Her research interests include feminism, postcolonialism, research methodologies, gender-based violence, famines, and development in South Asia and East Africa. She has published numerous journal special issues, articles, policy papers, and popular media pieces. In 2025, she will be honored as the Distinguished Scholar of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section at the ISA Convention in Chicago. Further Information and readings: bell hooks (1994): Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. New York and London. Routledge. Jenny Edkins: “Global Politics” as basis of Professor Parashar’s seminar Audre Lorde (1984): “Uses of the Erotic” Audre Lorde and bell hooks as central Black feminist scholars Swati Parashar (2016): “Feminism and Postcolonialism: (En)gendering Encounters” Swati Parashar (2017): “Feminism Meets Postcolonialism: Rethinking Gender, State and Political Violence” Conversation with J. Ann Tickner and Phillip Darby (2017) on “Feminism and Postcolonialism: The Twain Shall Meet”, edited by Swati Parashar; Video of the conversation Katherine Mayo (1927): “Mother India” as an instrument of Indian control and policing bodies Women Peace and Security Agenda (UN) promoting the idea of responsibility of Global North to save women. Adopted through Resolution 1325 by the UN Security Council in 2000. 1 in 5 Australian women face intimate partner violence: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Report on Personal Safety (2023) Chandra Talpade Mohanty and L. H. M. "Lily" Ling as postcolonial feminists Swati Parashar’s lecture on the coloniality and violence of famines in the Global South Peace Adzo Medie: a feminist and postcolonial scholar who discussed the question of why the burden of decolonising academics lies with non-Whites

In Episode 1, part 2 we discuss the Postcolonial Hierarchies Competence Network (which this podcast is a part of)  and the network’s project of confronting coloniality/modernity dynamics in peace and conflict studies with.... Siddharth Tripathi - Senior Research Fellow at University of Erfurt. As part of his research at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels, he has conducted extensive fieldwork in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Berlin and Brussels. He edited the Rowman and Littlefield Handbook on Peace and Conflict Studies: Perspectives from the Global South (s) which is a collaborative endeavour of scholars from the Global North and the Global South ...and Susanne Buckley-Zistel - Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and Executive Director of the Center for Conflict Studies at the Philipps University Marburg. Her main interests lie in (transitional) justice, memory, gender, space and post-colonialism. Links: Achille Mbembe in Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive https://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/Achille%20Mbembe%20-%20Decolonizing%20Knowledge%20and%20the%20Question%20of%20the%20Archive.pdf  Agenda of Peace by Boutros Boutros Ghali (1992) as the foundation of the understanding of liberal peace (and development etc.) An agenda for peace : (un.org) Johan Galtung’s concepts of structural, cultural, and direct violence Short video of Johann Galtung explaining his concepts of violence - YouTube Stuart Hall: West/Rest-Dichotomy https://globalsocialtheory.org/thinkers/hall-stuart/ Stuart Hall (1992): The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power hal1995-westa (wordpress.com) Edward W. Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Homi Bhaba as scholars of Postcolonialism Postcolonialism – GLOBAL SOCIAL THEORY World Systems and Dependency Theory Development theory - Dependency, World Systems, Theories | Britannica Money Aníbal Quijano, Maria Lugones and Walter D. Mignolo as scholars of Decoloniality Decoloniality – GLOBAL SOCIAL THEORY Gurminder Bhambra (2011) (Gurminder K Bhambra – Gurminder K Bhambra (gkbhambra.net)) on postcolonial and decolonial dialogues Full article: Postcolonial and decolonial dialogues (tandfonline.com) “Theory is always for someone and for some purpose” - Robert W. Cox: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03058298810100020501  “Dealing with the Past and Reconciliation (Transitional Justice)” (2019)  https://transitionaljusticehub.org/glhimages/content/Interministerial-Strategy.pdf  Prof. Cori Wielenga from university of Pretoria who is working on an archive by female mediators Prof Cori Wielenga | University of Pretoria (up.ac.za) Paulo Freire on everybody’s responsibility to create a more just world Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Zinn Education Project (zinnedproject.org) Paulo Freire (1970), Pedagogy of the Oppressed  [Paulo_Freire]_Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed(BookFi.org).pdf (amu.edu.et) Paulo Freire (1992), Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paulo Freire · Pedagogy of Hope · Pedagogy for Change (pedagogy4change.org)+ Gloria Anzaldúa as a theorist of hope ANZALDÚA, Gloria E. – GLOBAL SOCIAL THEORY The episode was moderated by Abdul Karim Ibrahim  from the institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. We also want to thank our team behind the scenes for the collaboration and contributions. We want to thank Abdul Karim Ibrahim for the introduction to this episode, Aurelio Cossar for the illustration of the cover and Harry and Tom Parfitt for the Jingle. It was inspired by Sheriff Ghale’s piece called “Nni Yeli”.  For the preparation and recording of the podcast, we want to thank Miriam Bartelmann and Harry Parfitt. Furthermore we want to express our gratitude for the assistance on this podcast to Nora Wolf. The equipment was provided by the media center of the University library in Freiburg, while Florian Laurösch from Radio Dreyeckland postproduced the podcast - thank you for the help and collaboration.

Manuela Boatcă, a Professor of Sociology and Head of Global Studies at the University of Freiburg, discusses crucial themes around coloniality and knowledge production. She examines how sociology must confront its Eurocentric foundations and explores the complexities of knowledge influenced by colonial history. Boatcă advocates for a decolonial approach in academia, emphasizing the transformative potential of creativity and inclusivity. She highlights the urgent need for radical change in educational institutions to challenge colonial legacies and foster diverse perspectives.

Exploring the complexities of coloniality, decoloniality, and power dynamics with guest speakers. Redefining violence through a decolonial lens and highlighting the impact of coloniality on shaping attitudes. Navigating activism and academia in policy spaces, sharing personal experiences. Challenges in scaling initiatives and policy-making, reflecting on political disillusionment. Redefining peace and conflict in Latin America post-2005, emphasizing maintaining hope amidst limitations.