Prelims

Half Title Page

Decoloniality Praxis

Endorsement Page

This much-needed book unravels the intricate web of colonialism, neocolonialism, and the powerful resurgence of postcolonialism. It offers a fresh perspective on the roots and widespread impact of colonialism and its various forms, transcending spatial, temporal, and contextual boundaries. Through its thought-provoking narrative, the book invites readers to embark on a profound exploration of decoloniality and the complexities of postcolonialism and outlines the future and potential of humanity in light of colonial praxis.

Jawad Syed, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan

This book brings to the fore a critical global discourse on the untangling of the concept of colonialism which many people in academia, business, and public sectors are currently struggling with. The author, who is known for his factual evidence and critical reasoning, has brought a fresh perspective to the debate on the coloniality of power, capitalism, and Eurocentrism. The reader will come to new insights and a better understanding of the complexity within the term colonialism, specifically if an attempt is made to decolonialize, for example, an academic curriculum, a policy document, a business, or a community practice.

Prof Yvonne du Plessis, Emeritus Professor at the North-West University Business School, South Africa

Title Page

Decoloniality Praxis: The Logic and Ontology

BY

HAMID H. KAZEROONY

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2023

Copyright © 2023 Hamid H. Kazeroony.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Author or the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80262-952-1 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80262-951-4 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80262-953-8 (Epub)

Dedication Page

To Abdi

My Beloved Brother, Always in my Heart

Contents

About the Author

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Hamid H. Kazeroony (Dr), SPHR, SHRM-SCP, is a Professor at Walden University, Ph.D. Program, USA, currently serving as a European Academy of Management Board member (2021–2024), and Extraordinary Professor at North-West University, South Africa (2021–2024). He served as Chair of the Gender and Diversity in Organization Strategic Interest Group, EURAM (2017–2020); PDW, Symposium, and Caucus Chair, Africa Academy of Management (2014–2020); Membership Committee Chair, AOM between 2016 and 2019. His research reflects his interest in the way methods of production and diversity impact organizational leaders, institutions, values, and ethics as manifested in his recent editorial contributions to a wide range of academic Routledge, Palgrave, Sage, Information Age, Expert Press books, and journals. Currently, he is serving at the Global Partnership Management Institute annual conference, in Poland and serves as a Reviewer at Organization and Management Quarterly, Silesian University of Technology, Poland; and Series Editor for Routledge on Global GRDO.

Preface

This book reviews the roots and the reach of tentacles of colonialism, neocolonialism, its rebirth as postcolonialism, and what it takes to be decolonized irrespective of spatial, temporal, and situatedness. It will address colonialism’s spatial, ontological, and epistemological nature, decoloniality as a process for disengaging from coloniality, and its postmodernist conjured up postcolonialism. Decolonization requires ending the colonizers’ social, cultural, political, and economic hegemonic dominance and attending to cognitive justice (Visvanathan, 1997) and the liberation of the indigenous, the oppressed genders, races, ethnicities, and sexes, repositioning the ontological and the epistemic paradigms, allowing emergence from colonial and postcolonial practices. Yet, the untangling of colonialism is not an easy task – theoretically or in practice.

Through the ages, temporally and spatially, colonialism has been manifested differently at the hemispheric level, rooted in power, language, culture, and social structure and institutions. While on the American continent, colonialism has become entrenched in language and power structure; on other continents, heuristically, the colonial power has swayed life in its totality from modernist and postmodernist perspectives. Coloniality has been rooted in research by texts predicated on motivations to disincentivize and hide realities for arriving at desirable outcomes inconsistent with observable materiality (Patel, 2009).

To position the decoloniality argument, our frame of reference rests at the intersection of temporality, spatiality, and episteme. Temporality addresses the origin, reasoning, view, and paradigmatic essence of coloniality. Spatiality contains the conception of one’s perception of lived experiences relating to decoloniality. In the American hemisphere, decoloniality has shifted from management toward literary work, presenting a void in examining its impact on research and limiting our understanding of its full effects on gender, race, ethnicity, sex, and diversity in organizations (Arias, 2018). Therefore, we must explore colonial episteme, derived from the Latin word ἐπιστήμη, meaning science or knowledge requires an etymological understanding of how we know based on our approach, for example, realism, positivism, etc. (Frick, 2017). As an enabler, I will address how decoloniality research can decenter the Western ideals of knowledge production to help pave the way for sustainable practices by indigenous people everywhere autochthonous to their needs. Postcolonialism, rooted in the philosophical problem of modernism, “continues the Western ideals of the knowledge production of colonialism, corrupting the nature of objectivity in investigating reality rather than allowing multiple perspectives” (Kazeroony & Du Plessis, 2019, p. 48). Changing our approaches to examining postcolonialism and maintaining a decoloniality conceptual framework, as suggested by Chilisa (2012) and Smith (2012), can help arrive at a solution. Coloniality and postcoloniality prevent seeking practical solutions and pathways for the indigenous and marginalized.

Many management and organization scholars have tended to draw on Western concepts and privileged the Global North logic and frameworks when reviewing organizational change and development knowledge (Metcalfe & Woodhams, 2012; Syed & Metcalfe, 2017). Intersectional feminism has highlighted the differences in our lives and families and the stories/histories that generate different priorities and interests. However, intersectional frameworks have tended to gloss over the spatial dynamic of difference and organization (McDowell, 2009). Injecting spatiality allows the opening out, extending, and exploring new possibilities for pluralist feminisms and subjectivities. These inquiry lines will not be built on or in relation to Global North logic. Still, they will have a trajectory rooted in histories and unique geographic and cultural fields.

According to Mignilo (2007), the new geography of power includes three elements of coloniality of power, capitalism, and Eurocentrism. Mignilo (2007) stressed that the geography of power is built on hegemonic institutions, the nation-state, the bourgeois family, the capitalist corporation, and Eurocentric rationality. However, the 20th century political dynamics changed the nature of colonialism’s institutional praxis and Eurocentrism – colonialism became a Chinese and Russian practice under the guise of helping non-aligned nations, creating a new dimension far beyond any Orwellian thinking. There is growing evidence that social science research “needs emancipation from hearing only the voices of Western Europe, emancipation from generations of silence, and emancipation from seeing the world in one color” (Guba & Lincoln, 2005, p. 212).

The “coloniality of power” refers to the deeply racialized division of labor under global capitalism resulting from colonization processes (Mignilo, 2007; Quijano, 2007). Exploration of the coloniality of power refers to dismantling other knowledge that has shaped discriminatory discourses reflected in modern postcolonial societies’ social and economic conditions. While this highlights hierarchies in the global capitalist system, it does not explain how colonizing is a gendered process and how global capital organization has gendered impacts. While contemporary thinking has promoted post-feminism in the West, it is a logic that helped disappear concerns of ethics, equity, and equality. In the Global South, however, commitment to gender and social justice has been vibrant and robust, leading to the formation of the millennium development goals (MDGs) in 2000 (United Nations, 2018).

As the North and the South have become engaged in a dialogue, addressing the past travesties, the East¹ spread its colonial practices near and far. Therefore, the North and the East require attention as we explain the roots, the continuation, the methods, and the future of humanity in light of colonial praxis.