2025/11/12 by Hannah Cox · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Diaspora, migration, transnational identity #Migration, Refugees, and Integration #Interdisciplinary Cultural and Social Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/00207020251396426
openalex publication_date 2025/11/12 · openalex created_date 2025/11/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
internationalist "Third Worldism."He neglects to note that this proposed restructuring of the economic order, which required authoritarian state direction of economies, was sponsored largely by regimes characterized by "forms of state capitalism in which ruling parties entrenched themselves … by tightening control over their country's natural resources and other sources of wealth" (280)-which he concedes had become widespread among former colonies.For Thomas, one of the paradoxes of globalization is that, while it encouraged decolonization in some ways, its culmination in neoliberalism merely entrenched what he sees as indefensible economic inequalities.He does not acknowledge that those former colonies that have recently gained most in prosperity and freedom for their citizenry are those that have embraced integration into the global economy and accepted the standards of "good governance"-which he denigrates-rather than the crackpot economics of the NIEO.Though it contains occasional insights, this book is fatally flawed in that it defines decolonization so expansively that its completion would require not merely formal independence, but the redressing of virtually all the world's ills-from terms of trade that favour some countries over others, to residual racism in everyday life.This is tantamount to wishing that history could begin anew, something a serious historian can hardly regard as possible.Thomas closes with the limp conclusion that "we still have some way to go" (350).The reader, reaching the end of this frustrating volume, may conclude that when it comes to understanding decolonization, some have further to go than others.