Dismantling new and old forms of colonialism: border thinking in Latin American universities

ABSTRACT

Latin American universities have been subject to old and new forms of colonialism that act concurrently. Old forms of colonialism are based on a matrix of race and labour divisions that universities have inherited, reproduced, and reinforced. New forms of colonialism are attaching to global forces that promote a world class university model based on prestige, competition and international rankings. By means of both a bibliometric and a thematic analysis, this paper examines scholarly work on colonialism and internationalisation in Latin American universities and suggests that Latin American universities have developed both local and global-oriented mechanisms so as to deal with old and new forms of colonialism. Both mechanisms take place within universities although one is oriented to local actions, while the second has a more reflective nature. It is argued that both mechanisms are part of what has been called ‘border thinking’, that is collective and contesting narratives and actions that aim to dissolve colonial forces in the periphery. Although Latin American universities have been proactive in developing concrete initiatives to cope with older local forms of colonialism, a further task remains of promoting and instituting initiatives that confront the newer and global forms of academic colonialism.

KEYWORDS:

• Colonialism
• decolonial studies‌
• universities
• Latin America
• dialogue among knowledges
• border thinking

Acknowledgement

I want to thank Matías Montero and Ricardo Zavala for producing and analysing the paper database.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FONDECYT-ANID (Chile) [grant number Project number 1200633].