Abstract
Academic contributions and literature on postcolonialism and decoloniality have blossomed in the last decade. As a consequence, rather than remaining on the periphery, this critical approach is undergoing a transformative shift towards the mainstream, as its incisive analysis of colonial legacies permeates academic disciplines, cultural expressions and social movements. As the significance of decolonial perspectives is recognized and the demand for such perspectives spread, postcolonialism has become central to contemporary academic discourses, reshaping knowledge production. Today, the contributions of pioneering Latin American scholars like Anibal Quijano and Arturo Escobar, as well as contemporary scholars of reference across various regions, including Vandana Shiva in Asia, Wolfgang Sachs in Europe and Achille Mbembe in Africa, are widely acknowledged and relevant to scholars worldwide.
Literature on urban development has also deeply evolved during the first decades of the century, shifting from a primarily local perspective to a more global outlook, and consequently incorporating transnational and comparative approaches. This evolution reflects the changing nature of cities and urban processes in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world. In this transition, the field has certainly not been oblivious to the impact of postcolonial theory, which unveils the complex dynamics of power, space and identity, especially in postcolonial cities. This disciplinary encounter has exposed how colonial legacies shape urban landscapes, social hierarchies and marginalization, calling for decolonial approaches that focus on local knowledge, agency and spatial justice.
Garth Myers’ work, Rethinking Urbanism: Lessons from Postcolonialism and the Global South, exemplifies this intersection of urban studies and postcolonial theory by critically examining urbanism within the context of postcolonialism and the Global South. And as may happen when interdisciplinarity emerges, by doing so Myers’s contribution addresses some of the criticisms traditionally raised against postcolonial studies. His insights into how these aspects are addressed makes this book worth reading for both the epistemic communities.
Theoretically, Myers challenges the simplistic binary framework often associated with postcolonial theory, emphasizing the complexities of urban experiences in the Global South and acknowledging the diversity of voices, perspectives and power dynamics within these contexts. Such binary framework neglects the diverse and multifaceted nature of colonial histories, obscuring the agency and resistance of subaltern groups and overlooking intra-colonial power dynamics. For example, when introducing the case studies, he states, ‘Southern thinking enables scholars to see the immense impacts of global historical forces—genocide, slavery, colonialism and resistance to all three—on the shape of cityscapes in both the global South and North’. Myers’ nuanced approach avoids essentializing cultures by promoting a more complex and comprehensive understanding of urban spaces.
Many scholars (Moosavi, 2020) argue that, in its radical oppositional stance towards Western imperialism, postcolonial theory often perpetuates cultural relativism, which limits the potential for cross-cultural dialogue and understanding. As Myers states, there is a need to overcome such potential parochialism by acknowledging both the negative legacies of colonialism and the positive contributions made by Western thought and institutions. By doing so, he encourages a critical engagement with Western urban theories while recognizing both the postcolonial roots of such schools and the agency and resilience of urban residents in the Global South. This epistemic encounter avoids reinforcing a victimization narrative and perpetuating a sense of grievance which, according to the author, hinders opportunities for reconciliation and cooperation between formerly colonized and colonizer nations and institutions.
As for methodological limitations, Myers’ Rethinking Urbanism also overcomes some of the criticism traditionally raised against postcolonial analyses. The author goes beyond hermeneutical and contextual analyses by incorporating the multidisciplinary approach of urban studies. By combining ethnographic research with interviews, text analysis and fieldwork, Myers provides empirical evidence and a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of urban citizens. This methodological expansion allows for a more comprehensive analysis of the economic, social and political dimensions of urbanism in postcolonial contexts and their often-complex interactions.
Consequently, one of the boldest proposals on Rethinking Urbanism is that Myers does not refuse to distil lessons to be applied in other urban environments. And not only in cities in the Global South but also worldwide. By analysing multiple cities on different regions with a transnational and comparative lens, Myers’ contribution allows focusing on similarities, differences and patterns of interaction. This approach opens the possibility not only to understanding the urban phenomena in a broader context but also to apply cross-city and cross-regional comparisons and learning.
To achieve this, the author explicitly avoids homogeneity in the unit of analysis by analysing well differentiated cities in all kinds of contexts. Thus, the books include analyses from Hartford in the USA to Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago, which only share their relatively small number of inhabitants, to Shenzhen in China with more than 12 million residents. How does the author manage such diversity, unusual in other studies of Comparative Politics, in terms of size, location, cultural tradition or economic dynamics? This is the book’s greatest achievement, and its most striking contribution.
Myers, though not always consistently, relies on systematizing his case studies through what he calls ‘the six Ps’: Processes, Patterns, Postcolonialism, People, Products and Policies. Using these six axes of analysis, the author elucidates commonalities and shared explanatory causes, as well as differences and context-related issues. However, following Simone and Pieterse (2017), the author does not pursue evidence on best practices, but ‘links among supposedly disparate places, people, histories and materials’. With this approach, the ‘six Ps’ methodology allows Myers not only to highlight context-related Processes, Patterns, Postcolonialism, People, Products and Policies, but also to identify what we call ‘a web tying the urban planet together through Historical, Geographical, Ecological, Socio-cultural, Economic and Political themes’.