Rhetorics and realities of management practices in Pakistan: Colonial,post-colonial and post-9/11 influences

This study explores how colonial laws and administrative practices shaped the evolution of employment management in Pakistan. It identifies important mechanisms used by the British Raj (the period of British rule of the subcontinent) to institutionalise legal and administrative frameworks: the legacies of these structures continue to influence contemporary management practices in government sector organisations. This article investigates the legacy of the Raj's ‘quota system’ in the civil services and the doctrine of the ‘martial race’ in military services, both of which offered enduring structural advantages in the labour market to designated groups. It further considers the implications of the study's findings for international HRM in particular, but also management theory, comparative HRM and comparative management in post-colonial societies.     

Oriental imagery and American attitudes toward Asia: an exploratory tourism study

The concept of Orientalism has served to define post-colonial thinking, reflecting the West's interpretation of non-Western individuals and cultures. In this binary set, the West/us is approached as representing the standard, while the East/them represents that which is outside the norm. For the last few decades, Orientalism has continued to influence discussions in tourism studies; nevertheless, there is a dearth of empirical studies examining how the discourse lives out in daily tourism practices. Therefore, employing quantitative research methods, this study explores what Orientalism means to contemporary Americans and how it affects their attitudes toward Asian destinations. The result indicates that the imaginary construct of the East has reflected three different dimensions, namely contempt, curiosity, and fear, through which the Western world has traditionally framed the non-Western world; however, Americans generally believe that contemporary Asia cannot be adequately explained in these traditional and fixed ways. This study suggests that two terms, Asia and the East, connote very different meanings in contemporary American society, revealing how the traditional discourse of Orientalism is transformed and reinterpreted, although not totally changed, within the changing nature of the contemporary global environment.     

迈克尔·翁达杰《遥望》中“他者”的身份认同

以后殖民主义理论中有关＂他者＂和＂身份认同＂的论述为理论视角,考察加拿大亚裔英语小说家、诗人迈克尔·翁达杰的作品《遥望》。分析作者是如何在历史与现在的时空交错中,突显＂他者＂的身份焦虑,将寻求身份的认同贯穿于整个小说多条情节线索之中,并融于小说复杂的人物关系内的,又是如何使得《遥望》充满可读性和理论研究价值的。     

Visual tourism and post-colonialism: imaginative geographies of Africa in a Portuguese travel magazine

This paper is about tourism, visual culture, and imperialism in the post-colonial present. International literature on these issues has been especially focused on the experience of British and French post-colonialism. Few studies have addressed this issue regarding other post-colonial realities. This paper runs counter to that fact by analysing the visual touristic discourse produced in the post-colonial Portugal. The paper examines the way the sub-Saharan Africa is represented in a Portuguese travel photo-magazine – the Blue Travel magazine – so as to verify the extent to which the ideology of colonialism continues to shape the post-colonial touristic discourse in this former colonizing country of the southern Europe. More than 522 photographs were analysed. Using visual methodologies, the paper concludes that many aspects of the photographs contain encoded encomiastic messages of colonialism and participate in a discursive construction of Africa that was clearly shaped by an imperialist gaze. The paper suggests that not only there is an obvious nostalgia for empire in the Portuguese touristic discourse on sub-Saharan Africa, but also that many imperialist myths continue to circulate diffusely within the Portuguese post-colonial society and to shape the way sub-Saharan Africa is touristically imagined.     

Location Shooting and the Filmic Destination: Transylvanian Myths and the Post-Colonial Tourism Enterprise

In this study, we examine a contested tourism proposal in Romania, Dracula Park, and its attempts to balance the indigenously produced history of the region with the powerful myths imposed by European and American filmic and literary influences: Bram Stoker's Dracula and the ‘heritage films’ it spawned. While the project was recently announced to be abandoned, the Romanian discourse on Dracula Park offers an avenue for a post-colonial critique which we explore in the context of globalisation, place, identity and various texts of the culture industry. A film-location-tourism spectrum helps illustrate some of the issues raised in this paper. Dracula films and Dracula Park (DP) occupy a problematic spot on this continuum, as myth and history are mediated around a real Transylvania by local-global cultural intermediaries. This helps us situate the political economy of tourism in settings like post-socialist Romania. We argue that the literary-film-DP example shows tourism as a postcolonial enterprise of a globalised culture industry. This industry, of which tourism is a part, not only shapes touristic spaces in ex-colonies within the developing (lesser developed) world, but also constructs identities and heritage in peripheral spaces within the cultural coloniser's Europe.     

刍议小森阳一后现代后殖民主义理论

在小森阳一看来,“后殖民主义”话语中带有浓厚的西方“口音”,因此,他所主张的“后殖民主义”并非以美国为代表的“后殖民批评”。他指出,现在世界上所出现的所有事态,都只不过是欧美日原帝国主义列强国家所建构的、殖民主义世界的产物,因此,真正的后殖民主义批评应该将责任与斗争的方向性并提。正因为所有的政治的、经济的、军事的、文化的现象都在一种地缘政治学的力的关系和霸权斗争的关系中展开,所以,对之必须采取批判态度。认识到这一点并且负上实践的责任,才是“后殖民批评”的前提性立场。     

Barriers to visiting South Africa's national parks in the post-apartheid era: black South African perspectives from Soweto

Almost 80% of South African citizens are of black African origin, yet are significantly underrepresented in numerous leisure activities and especially at national parks: they accounted for only 8.8% of visitors to South African parks’ recreational spaces in 2010/2011. A review of literature on this issue finds a series of research shortcomings. Using a sample of 466 respondents from Soweto (414 self-administered surveys and 52 in-depth interviews), this paper re-examines the significant barriers deterring black South Africans from visiting national parks. Economic impediments to travel were frequently reported but other previously ignored barriers emerged, including lack of paid holidays, leisure “immobilities” fostered under apartheid, transport issues, time constraints, and lack of understanding and knowledge of what to do in national parks. All maintain the perception of parks as unwelcome spaces for many black South Africans. While park management is now largely done by black South Africans, and valuable policy statements now exist, the problems remain. The paper suggests potential actions to reverse the common belief that national parks remain exclusive white South African domains, including deconstructing the parks’ historical relationship with oppression, better promotion, specialised tour development, and work with schools. Links are made to comparable situations elsewhere.     

Consuming postcolonial shopping malls

Abstract

Through a naturalistic inquiry, we interpret shopping malls in India as post-colonial sites in which young consumers deploy the West in an attempt to transform their Third World identities. Shopping malls in former colonies represent a post-colonial hybridity that offers consumers the illusion of being Western, modern, and developed. Moreover, consumption of post-colonial retail arenas is characterised as a masquerade through which young consumers attempt to disguise or temporarily transcend their Third World realities. This interpretation helps us to offer insights into transitioning retail servicescapes of the Third World, which in turn helps to improve extant understanding of consumer identity and global consumer culture.     

历史记忆和民族寓言——试论《耻》

库切的《耻》尽管在他本人获得诺贝尔文学奖之前就被翻译到国内，但这个与后殖民理论暗相契合的小说文本在中国获得广泛关注还是获奖之后的事。《耻》是一部对南非种族制度所导致的价值观和行为进行反思的文本，以话语与权力为基点，尝试探讨后殖民话语中个体与总体、历史与当下的复杂关系。是进入库切世界的重要前提与途径。