UWC Deliberation guide: How has colonialism impacted us? | Introduction to Gender & Sexuality Studies

Instructions for facilitators

This guide is designed for a 1.5-hour session, for small groups (6-8 participants) of UWC students. The United World Colleges is a group of 18 schools that offer the IBDP to international students of diverse backgrounds. These boarding schools gather students from 150 different countries (some students come are undocumented or hold refugee status), offering financial assistance for 80% of students to ensure accessibility. Students usually are 16-19 years old, and are proficient in English. Therefore, facilitators should expect students to bring different understandings of colonialism, especially considering that participants have gone through different educational systems.

The session aims to be the beginning of a longer conversation. More specifically, this session is designed to introduce a difficult topic for students to take to their residences and academic spaces, so as to raise awareness of the impacts that Colonialism has in the way we see our world and how we interact with each other. No materials have been assigned previous to the session.

The session is structured as follows:

Introduction and agreement – 15min
Initial discussion – 20m
Themed discussions – 40m
Reflection – 15m

Background

“Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another.” Often, colonialism elicits the idea of expansion of European nations to other territories, such as the Americas, Australia, Africa and Asia. Nevertheless, practices of colonialisms can be traced back more ancient times such as the Greek, Romans, Moors, Ottomans, etc.

While debates on the impact of colonialism are not new, and in fact they have been ongoing for centuries, new approaches to colonialism of the last 50 years have been focusing on reviewing our understanding of colonialism, and the impact that it has nowadays. These approaches understand that, while official colonial rule including political and economic control has ended, the impacts and many institutions remain. Two frequently referenced approaches are Postcolonialism and Decolonialism.

Postcolonialism refers to the official end of colonial rules (e.g. the independence of countries from empires and the formation of nation-states such as the Latin American countries’ independence from Spain), and focuses on the impacts and institutions that remain thereafter. Decolonialism also analyses institutions in a similar manner, however, it questions the universalizing nature of postcolonialism. This is looking at post-colonial institutions from the same Western perspective. Instead, Decolonialism proposes the deconstruction of post-colonial institutions, and thus it is perceived as a more radical view.

Moreover, feminist scholars have also contributed to the debate by focusing on matters of representation and the disproportionate impact of colonialism and post-colonial institutions in women, ethnic minorities and other groups that do not comply with the norm established by colonial powers. Queer scholars, for example, point out how the gender-binary was institutionalized during colonial times forcing indigenous communities to adapt to the imposed norm. As Suzanne Spencer-Wood points out, the narrative of civilizing colonialism forced indigenous women to a domestic, passive role in order to be accepted in a society that equated the colonizing effort as a way of civilization, development and progress.

Both postcolonialism and decolonialism, including feminist scholars, highlight the tension that the narrative of colonialism as a way to societal progress has created, against the views that do not take for granted that the colonizer society was more developed than the colonized society at the time of colonization. In other words, scholars criticize equating Western, colonialist societies as more developed and civilized since it assumes that progress is a linear process in which societies fall as more or less advanced. This view, on the other hand, characterized indigenous societies as less developed, uncivilized, unorganized, etc.

It is important to note that colonialism is not restricted to countries or nations. A useful distinction is the one made by Linda Gordon (2006) that divides colonialism into external and internal. The former refers to the exploitation of indigenous people by foreign invaders while the latter refers to the oppression of minorities in the polity.

Shared language

As mentioned before, colonialism refers to a practice that has been present for millennia, although it oftentimes elicits the idea of the expansion of European nations to the Americas, Australia, Africa and Asia. For the purpose of this discussion, the suggested definition of colonialism as provided by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is “a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another.” While looking at historical events is important to understand Colonialism, this discussion should encourage participants to focus on the impacts of colonialism (broadly defined) and the post-colonial institutions that they can identify nowadays.

Introduction and Agreements

This first section aims to start the conversation by introducing each person, the goals for the session and the agreements. This section should take approximately 15 min. Once all participants are present and ready to begin, everyone should introduce themselves, with their pronouns. Additionally, participants may mention their country of origin.

Secondly, the group facilitator explains the goal for the session and logistic details, including:

The goal for the session is to start a conversation that students can continue in other spaces too. This session aims to inspire reflection on what colonialism is, how it impacts us and how our understanding of colonialism can change when contrasted with different perspectives.
This session does not aim to achieve a comprehensive and detailed understanding of colonialism.
This session is not a space to blame or re-victimize people. We understand that topics related to colonialism and colonialism itself can be triggering. This is why we encourage you to not only think about what you say, but also how you say it. If at any point you need to take a break or leave the room, do not hesitate to do so.
Altogether, the session will last 90 min. After this introduction and the agreements for the session, we will move on to an initial discussion about what we understand by colonialism. Then, we will discuss two more specific topics in relation to colonialism. Finally, we will take some time for reflection at the end of the session.

The following list of agreements is based on the deliberation guides of the Deliberate Citizenship Initiative (DCI) at Davidson College. These are only suggestions for the session and should be discussed, modified, removed, complemented and agreed upon by all participants before moving on to the next section of the session.

Be authentic and respectful
Be an attentive and active listener
Be a purposeful and concise speaker
Approach other participants’ stories, experiences and arguments with curiosity, not hostility
Assume the best intention and values from other participants
Bring intellectual humility, and follow other participations up with curiosity rather than criticism
In case of disagreement, remember that you disagree with the idea and not the person. Be mindful of your language and ask yourself how will other people feel with this before expressing your ideas.
Do not focus only on the disagreements
Avoid speaking in absolutes (i.e. “All people think this” or “people from this place are like this”) and remember that no one here represents a group of people, country or ideology.
Respect the confidentiality of the discussion, and be intentional about making this a safe space for all participants

Participants are encouraged to express concerns about the topic of the session that might be personal to them. It is important for everyone to participate in setting up the agreements for the session and agree upon them by consensus rather than the vote of the majority. Participants can be reminded of these agreements at any point during the session.

Initial discussion

The initial discussion should address the following 3 questions.

What is colonialism?
Can you think of any examples of colonialism?
Who is disproportionately affected by colonialism?

After all participants have shared their answers, people are encouraged to discuss and comment on other participants’ answer, or ask follow-up questions. Facilitators can focus on similarities and differences between participations and encourage participants to talk, identify the sources of their information or the specific narratives that they used.

Themed discussions

The themed discussions are two discussions on topics related to Colonialism chosen by the group. These are suggested by the facilitator from the list below. The facilitator can also suggest other topics related to colonialism that have emerged during the discussion in the previous section. Each themed discussion should last 20 min approximately. Topics do not need to be extremely specific, and it is not recommended to focus on one specific historical event nor on any topic that requires specific background information that is not available for all participants (e.g. The Portuguese rule of Brazil might not be known by everyone in the group). Historical events are useful to exemplify arguments, but should not restrict the participation of others in the session.