Colonialism, Relationality, and Membership Rights: Rethinking Colonial Legacies and Postcolonial State Formation

Focusing on the relationship between colonialism and postcolonial state formation, this article examines theoretical problems in existing studies and how they could be resolved. It directs particular attention to the bifurcated conceptual frame between colonizer and colonized, an overemphasis on the institutional similarities between the colonial and postcolonial periods that results in insufficient attention to decolonization processes, and an exclusive focus on the relationship between the empire and colony, which underestimates the effect of global historical context on postcolonial state formation. In an attempt to resolve these theoretical issues, this article reconsiders shifting relationality and membership rights in the national community through colonial intervention. It advances the argument that a more integrative view can be developed through the exploration of how internal conflicts among indigenous people, which had been produced and reformulated through colonial rule, shape the reconstruction of social membership in the process of postcolonial state formation, thus resolving the theoretical issues of existing studies and enriching the scope and perspective of colonialism and postcolonial transformation.