Modern Western Organization as a Tool of Colonial Politics: Intersections and Erasures of Resistant Native Organizing

Abstract

This study interrogates the way politics and organisation constitute each other in the colonial context. It asks “what happens when one shifts the lens to the organisation itself as the tool of politics, not just the site?” I interrogate the intersection of organisation of imperial politics with the politics of organising resistance by examining how colonial power controls and subjugates native organising and resistance by drawing boundaries of MWO to demarcate the formal from the informal, the legal from the illegal and disenfranchise the native. By studying two cases of organising and resistance – one historical of Bombay Textile Mills during British colonial rule and another contemporary of Vapi chemical cluster’s pollution in the condition of coloniality. It finds that colonial power controls and subjugates native organising and resistance by using modern western bureaucratic organisation to draw boundaries demarcating the formal from the informal, the legal from the illegal. Colonial politics via formal organisation eliminates native politics of organising resistance rooted in anticipatory action and erases the locus of community’s resistance by shifting it to a distanced third party who follows obligatory action, all under the guise of protecting the abstract interests of subordinated. This study finds that the longue durée of colonial power operates by using MWO as a tool to limit and control the terms through which the disenfranchised may engage in politics of voice and resistance. The study concludes that modern western organisation is not just a site of politics, but actually a tool of control and obedience that dismantles and disables resistance, especially in the colonial context. This paper contributes to the literature on politics of organisation and decolonising management and organisation studies.