ABSTRACT
Many accounts of colonialism produced in the last thirty years have emphasized the shared histories of the colonized and colonizer. If the histories of these two populations become divorced and that of the colonizers is given primacy as a socially transformative mechanism, then the process of colonialism is seen “above all as a coherent imposition, rather than a practically mediated relation” (Thomas 1994:3). When this happens, ethnographic representations situated in a larger regional or global arena unfold with the neatness of a Cartesian model of society. Invariably, this creates a bizarre dualism between local activities and regional and global realities. The colonized are perceived as chronically static in reaction to the constraints imposed by the colonizers.
