Limitations to Decolonization seen from the Irish Neoliberal Ecological Regime

 In the meeting of November 17th, Katherine presented the article “World-Ecology and Ireland: The Neoliberal Ecological Regime” written by Sharae Deckard. This text bridges together analysis of world-system theory (influences primarily by Immanuel Wallerstein) that have been used to study Ireland as a periphery with Jason Moore’s world-ecological paradigm. One of the questions Katherine presented at the end of her presentation was to rethink sovereignty in the contrast of territorial sovereignty versus natural resources sovereignty. We started the conversation with a question about the colonial history of Ireland and how to think and characterize the native population of Ireland, whether they are consider indigenous and the role that race, identity and culture plays in the characterization of the Irish. Katherine shared a brief overview of the long history of colonization of Ireland and the difficulties of qualifying the Irish as indigenous. Some key points of this historical revision were: 

- How Ireland was Britain first colony and how Britain established the first plantations in Ireland. 

- The long history of invasion and dispossession in Irish land where religion differences played an important role in informing colonial tactics and rhetoric to systematic disposed the catholic Irish (example: Penal laws).

- Racialization of Irish share similar racist tropes as the racialization of non-white colonized people that animalized and inferiorized Irish people, even though there might not be much phenotypical differences with the Britain. 

- Racial formation in Britain changed with its colonial relationship in the US and the enslavement of Africans. 

-  The case of Ireland not only complicate what we understand of race but of how we understand more broadly colonialism. 

Following the general discussion about colonialism in Ireland but also going back to the text we puzzled with the question of what is specific about colonization that can be distinguish from primitive accumulation? In the account presented by Deckard, how is an ecological account of colonization different from an economic/materialist analysis? What is specific about the world ecological analysis that can be distinguished from other Marxist approach? How to understand colonialism today in relationship to economic system like financial neoliberalism and capitalism? Part of the problem that we encounter is that in different approaches to the question of colonialism there seems to be a split between an approach that is more epistemological versus an approach that is economic and political. The challenge is to combine both analyses. This article also challenges some preconception we have about disciplines. In this case is a materialist, ecological, political analysis coming from a scholar that works in English studies. Another example of crossing academic boundaries is environmental humanity that are incorporating colonial theory. Images and metaphors have material implications. One example is the representation of Ireland “Greenness” as an icon of colonization through the deforestation that open the path for cattle and industrial capitalist agriculture. 

The conversation continued with the question about the limitations of pursuing localized process of independence or decolonization when one considers the political and economic structures that regulates exchange, commerce, and economic relations among nations. This brings the question of how to decolonize within a global capitalist system that is colonial and imperialist. This challenges projects of decolonization that are partial. From this perspective, it seems, decolonization, to be sustainable, needs to have a globalized approach. Decolonizing beyond borders brings again the challenge of creating and sustaining networks of solidarity outside of capitalist accumulation. The difficulty of thinking of how decolonization works and how we decolonize today is to account for the entanglement of economy and politics between the local and the global. We consider the importance of not falling in a dichotomy between systematic change and local changes. The challenge is how to act and think in the entanglement of local realities that are part of global economies and political networks.