What does decolonisation mean?

Eleni Dimou is a Lecturer in criminology at the Open University. She has a BA in Sociology from Panteion University, Athens and an MA & PhD in Criminology from Kent University. Her doctoral thesis was an ethnographic study on issues around criminalisation of rap and reggaeton subcultures in Havana, Cuba. Her research explores issues around power and resistance and how these affect configurations of crime, harm and processes of criminalisation but also cultural and social change. She particularly focuses on colonialism and its impact today. Overall, Eleni’s research interests lie in the areas of: Social Justice, Coloniality/Decoloniality, Migration, Subcultures, Countercultures, Social Movements, Drugs and Culture, Cultural and Critical Criminology, Latin America and the Caribbean, State Crimes and Harm.  One of her latest project for BBC is: ‘Is it time to reassess our relationship with nature?’. She is the author of the article Decolonizing Southern Criminology: What Can the “Decolonial Option” Tell Us About Challenging the Modern/Colonial Foundations of Criminology? She is a member of the editorial board of  Decolonization of Criminology and Justice. 

A growing body of critical criminological literature has begun to illuminate and challenge the colonial foundations of criminology as a discipline and its continuous complicity to colonial power structures. That is for example, the production of knowledge that is still central in imposing colonial frameworks of knowledge and interventions globally and locally (in other words what is termed as administrative/mainstream criminology). The increasing traction that the critical criminological debates and discourses have gained, while invaluable, run the risk of decolonisation becoming an empty fashionable discourse, or as Tuck and Young (2012) argue, a metaphor. This paper will explore what decolonisation means and will provide an overview of the key perspectives leading the decolonising efforts in criminology; namely southern, counter-colonial, decolonial and postcolonial. While showing the merits of each approach the paper will also interrogate some of their limitations by exploring questions such as: what does the South mean? Should we continue to use binaries such as the North/South? Is all Western-centric knowledge obsolete and complicit to colonial power structures? Have there been any experiences and knowledges within Europe, Australia and North America that have been denied and silenced? By approaching critically these questions, the paper will take a serious reflexive stance on the continuous modes of inclusion and exclusion that persist within criminology, even in its most critical manifestations. The paper aims to show the necessity of both positioning of ourselves (who is speaking, wherefrom and for whom) and the need to listen, reflect, understand and learn from one another, if we are serious in undoing processes of coloniality that structure exploitation, ecocide, discrimination and exclusion in our contemporary societies.

This seminar is part of an open seminar series, hosted by the Centre for Criminology.