Last year, the visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Bangladesh to attend celebrations marking 50 years since the birth of the country following the Liberation War in 1971 has drawn attention to the difficult task of building a nation on the back of a brutal and bloody civil war.
On 8th September 2021, a crowd gathered on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, USA, near the base of its iconic statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The atmosphere in the crowd was jubilant as workers positioned a crane, wrapped the statue in a harness, and finally–after an hour of preparation, a year of court cases, and 131 years of racial terror set in stone–pulled the statue down from its plinth.
This cross-posted DSA Development Study Group launch event discussed the retrospects and prospects of decolonising development studies. It was interested in imagining what a decolonial agenda in Development Studies could look like and what interventions are needed in practice.
There has been much discussion and debate about the concept of ‘decolonising the curriculum’ within higher education and some might argue that this is now a buzz theme. However, I have remained curious as to why this phrase does not appear to have reached the vocabulary of many who contribute to teacher education in Scotland.
In 2019, Musée d’Orsay held an exhibition on Black Models, and the National Museum of the History of Immigration held a year-long exhibition on the musical contribution of migration to Paris and London.
Recent calls to decolonise the university in South Africa culminated in the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Cape Town and breathed new life into student-led campaigns around the world to rethink the curriculum.
In the 1940s, Britain was confronted with race in a way it had never been before.
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