Settler technification: Sulagna Basu, ‘Settler militarism and technification: the case of the Navajo Code Talkers’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 2026

22May26

Abstract: This article builds on Juliet Nebolon’s conceptualisation of settler militarism (2024) to argue that settler militarism operates through the process of technification that emerges as a specific mechanism through which settler colonialism and militarisation seek to mutually constitute, legitimise, and conceal each other. By examining the Navajo Code Talkers program during the Second World War, I highlight how technification attempts to systematically transform Indigenous peoples, epistemologies, and sovereignties into technical resources that can then be militarily appropriated, operationally deployed, and rendered obsolete even as it obscures the political violence of this process under the guise of technical necessity. Crucially, through analysis of Navajo oral history interviews I contend that the process of technification must be understood as unstable, contested, and continually perturbed by Indigenous efforts to exceed, resist, and refuse its terms and the broader logics of settler colonial violence.


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Eugenics and the settler crisis: Heidi Nicholls, ‘Settler Sociology: Eugenic Responses to Imperial Crises in the 20th Century’, Sociology Lens, 2026

22May26

Abstract: In the twentieth century, academic concerns about changes in the racial demographics of the United States emanated from the potential crisis of settler colonial decline. In their references to previous empires, stories of contact between people groups, and changes in demographics, settler scholars worked to provide solutions to the ever‐present threat of racial difference. Two variants of eugenic responses aimed to predict the relationship between people(s) and the empire‐state. Early US sociology was central to these efforts. Scholars trained at the University of Chicago combined eugenic ideas with settler colonial ideologies of Indigenous erasure and elimination. They worked for the empire‐state as social scientists tasked with predicting the stability of the empire through notions of race. They argued for laws and programs that either criminalized interracial unions or promoted racial amalgamation. Seemingly contradictory strategies shared an ideology that the greatest crisis was the instability of the empire‐state. The impetus for eugenic projects, that states that not only rule over populations but can and should work to produce a certain kind of population amenable and useful to state rule, is still with us today.


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Genocide and settler colonial violence: Jon Douglas Solomon, ‘Genocide, Settler Colonialism, and Imperial Causality’, in Jon Douglas Solomon, Foucault and Genocide: International Political Theory, Palgrave, 2026

22May26

Abstract: Drawing from the work of Robert Meister, this chapter begins with an analysis of the sources of the fictional basis of modern political community in the temporal imaginary of settler colonialism. The bulk of the chapter turns to Dirk Moses’s pioneering attempt to replace the concept of genocide with that of permanent security. In light of the species-security nexus established by Foucault, Moses’s proposal remains flawed in the absence of a critical approach to “social speciation” and epistemic decolonization. Moses’s emphasis on permanent security could be fruitfully expanded by Foucault’s insight that security is a species concept. Seen from this Foucauldian perspective, the concept of genocide appeals to causality in a very specific way that takes the temporality of specific or species difference—the genos—as both cause and effect. In that sense, genocide is a trope, specifically the tropic figure of metonymy. As such, the concept of genocide is based on a peculiar form of causality that is aesthetic and figural.


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Settlement is sovereignty: Hüseyin Sevinç,  Mert Mahir Göz, ‘Settlement Policies and the Sovereignty Regime in Palestine: Demographic Engineering, Settler Colonialism, and Spatial Politics’, Journal of Humanity, Peace and Justice, 3, 1, 2026, pp. 57-78

18May26

Abstract: This study analyses Israel’s settlement policies in the Palestinian territories — which gained momentum in the late nineteenth century and were institutionalised with the establishment of the state in 1948 — as a long-term sovereignty project and a practice of demographic engineering. Whilst the existing literature predominantly addresses the settlement issue from the perspectives of conflict studies, international law, or human rights, this article explains these policies through an integrated theoretical framework articulating the concepts of demographic engineering, settler colonialism, and spatial politics. Drawing on a qualitative research design, 69 secondary documents — comprising reports from United Nations agencies, international human rights organisations, peer-reviewed academic literature, legal texts, and cartographic sources — were systematically examined through directed content analysis. The findings reveal that Israel pursues its settlement project through four coordinated strategies: (1) dispossession through legal and administrative instruments, (2) spatial fragmentation and control regimes, (3) population transfer and demographic transformation, and (4) legitimising discourses. The original contribution of this study lies in its multi-mechanism operationalisation of demographic engineering — moving beyond conventional definitions confined to forced migration or direct population transfer to explain the combined operation of legal-administrative dispossession, spatial fragmentation, and legitimising discourse. The findings demonstrate that the Israeli-Palestinian issue transcends a simple territorial dispute, representing a structural and long-term project that systematically targets the spatial and political sovereignty of a people.


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The settler’s house: Marisa da Silva Martins, ‘Writing Back to the Canon: The Birchbark House as Counter-Narrative to Little House on the Prairie’, Via Panoramica, 14, 1, 2025

18May26

Abstract: This article focuses on two children’s novels: Little House on the Prairie (1932) by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and The Birchbark House (1999) by Louise Erdrich. Both works are set in the nineteenth century, specifically during the westward expansion, and during the forced displacement of Indigenous communities. This article aims to read the two novels as opposing narratives, particularly regarding the ways in which settler-colonialism and Native Americans are represented. Through a postcolonial lens, this article aims to show Louise Erdrich’s novel as a counter-narrative, in which the culture and way of life of the Ojibwe community is put in the foreground, as well as its resistance toward white settlers.


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Russian settler colonialism today: Rusana Novikova, ‘”The land needs a master”: agrarian ideals and settler realities in the Russian Far East’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2026

18May26

Abstract: This article traces the khoziain, the steadfast, self-sufficient land master, as an enduring ideal linking late Soviet agrarian reform, the Hectare program, and the state’s renewed fascination with Old Believers. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Russian Far East, it shows how this moral figure continues to shape state visions of productivity, settlement, and virtueeven as such projects falter in practice. While the Hectare rearticulates the khoziain through technocratic land distribution and media celebrate Old Believers as exemplary settlers, ethnography shows that land users instead define mastery through care, subsistence, and ecological maintenance rather than market-oriented agricultural production.


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Political settler colonial theory: David Myer Temin, Morgan Mowatt, Max Ajl, Phil Henderson, ‘Settler colonialism and political theory’, Contemporary Political Theory, 25, 2026, #38

17May26

Excerpt: Today the term ‘settler colonialism’ and its associated theoretical frameworks hold obvious significance. The notion of settler colonialism now serves frequently as a lens for critical political and social thought in the humanities and social sciences and outside the academy in social movements. The laser focus on the politics of erasure ought to be impossible to evade, by dint of its gruesome salience to the continuing live-streamed Israeli genocide of Gazans and the Palestinian people since the 7 October 2023 Hamas incursion into the Gaza Envelope. Of late, right-wing activists have even slotted the notion of settler colonialism in as their next target for classroom bans, calling it ‘Critical Race Theory 2.0’. In doing so, they aim to build on the Biden and now-Trump administration repression of movements and academic work opposing Israel’s relentless assault on civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. The fact of erasure must itself be erased.


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In press: Audrey R. Giles, Britta Peterson, Meredith Wing, Emilia Fera, Dan Henhawk, Daniel Brisebois, ‘A critical discourse analysis of the representation of Indigenous Peoples in Leisure/Loisir’s first 49 volumes’, Leisure/Loisir, 2026

17May26

Abstract: Perhaps one of the biggest changes that has occurred in the settler state presently known as Canada over the past 55 years has been relations between settlers and Indigenous Peoples. But how have these changes been reflected in scholarship published in Leisure/Loisir? To address this question, the authors engaged with settler colonial theory and critical discourse analysis to examine the ways in which understandings of Indigenous Peoples have been produced over the past 49 volumes. Their findings demonstrate that, for many decades, authors mainly centred the perspectives of recreation professionals, academics and government officials, thereby reinforcing the authority and expertise of those who produced knowledge about Indigenous Peoples. More recently, there has been an increase in the production of and importance placed on research with and by Indigenous Peoples, concomitant with critiques of settler colonialism. However, despite these discursive shifts, important silences remain, particularly pertaining to Métis Peoples and Inuit.


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If it’s terra nullius … : Rakesh Kumar, ‘Digital terra nullius? Artificial intelligence experimentation and sovereignty in Australia’, Dialogues on Digital Society, 2026

17May26

Abstract: The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI), data infrastructures, and digital experimentation in Australia raises a pressing question: are we witnessing the emergence of a new form of terra nullius, rearticulated through digital systems rather than land? The notion of ‘digital terra nullius’ although provocative, risks being either too metaphorical or too determinist. Instead, I propose that the expression can be productive if it is carefully situated in place and time. In doing so, I ask: to what extent do contemporary AI infrastructures reproduce colonial spatial logics and where might they diverge?


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Fiery resistance: Perry Mendoza, ‘Fires that Light the Way: On Witnessing Occupied Palestine—and Beyond’, Journal of American Folklore, 139, 552, 2026, pp. 197–203

17May26

Abstract: This paper investigates the situations unveiled symbolically by the wildfires in Jerusalem (Al-Quds). It considers the ongoing situation in Palestine as a complex of events that reveals various forms of settler colonialism, from their entanglements with archaeology, to their impositions on the flora and fauna of Gaza, taking the wildfires as a point of departure for a metaphorical contemplation on two possibilities: the possibility of hope and the possibility of political change that gives the fields both of Palestine and folkloristics a more optimistic future.


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