The heritage of settler colonial ‘Oslo’: Claudia Vlad, Cultural Heritage in Palestine: Practices of Grassroots Resistance Under Settler Colonialism and the Oslo Agreements Impasse, PhD dissertation, University College Dublin, 2026

14Oct26

Abstract: Drawing on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in Palestine, this thesis explores the role of cultural heritage in Palestine within the context of ongoing settler colonialism and the Oslo liberal peace model. Palestinian cultural heritage is a vibrant arena of resistance, situated between loss, displacement and neoliberal visions of a future “state-to-be”. Despite enduring decades of dispossession, violence, and external interventions, the practices surrounding Palestinian heritage flourished, showcasing heritage’s role in envisioning decolonial imaginaries against erasure and occupation. The research is guided by three main questions: (1) How does discourse shape cultural resistance about land in both local and global contexts? (2) In what ways do Palestinian heritage organisations reproduce the land as a site for an envisioned national future, utilising cultural heritage as a tool of resistance and spatial reimagination? (3) What are the “trade-offs” faced by these practices given the evolution of settler colonialism and the current impasse of the Oslo framework? The study begins by engaging with Smith’s concept of the “Authorized Heritage Discourse” (AHD) and the ideological role of human rights. It shows that Palestinian practitioners do not simply adopt global, supposedly neutral paradigms such as AHD and human rights frameworks; instead, they strategically repurpose these discourses to gain legitimacy, amplify Palestinian narratives, and carve out space for decolonial perspectives within international settings that often marginalise Palestinian voices. Building on theoretical frameworks from Anderson and Chatterjee, the research further explores how Palestinian heritage practitioners transcend Western models of nation-building by reimagining community and territory in innovative ways. Against settler colonial strategies of erasure and the commodification of heritage (museumification and “Disneyfication”), Palestinian NGOs enact “deruination”, transforming heritage sites into living, communal spaces. These practices are embodied and communal, grounded in everyday nationalism and the ethos of sumud, or steadfast perseverance in the face of dispossession. Finally, the thesis addresses the complex political terrain and the “trade-offs” inherent in resistance through heritage work, particularly in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords. The Oslo process institutionalised a Palestinian “state-to-be” without sovereignty, deepening Israeli control and dependence on international donors. The rise of the liberal peace paradigm has professionalized and fragmented Palestinian activism, privileging project-based work and individual gain over collective resistance. Mechanisms such as the “Anti-Terrorism Clause” are analysed as tools of governance that depoliticise and regulate Palestinian activism, including heritage organisations, through conditional aid and biopolitical controls. Despite these limitations, Palestinian heritage organisations are not passive. They actively negotiate, resist, adapt, and sometimes subvert donor and Oslo-imposed limitations through hybrid strategies – pragmatic negotiation, everyday acts of refusal, and creative reinvention. Therefore, I showcase how the struggle for liberation remains ongoing and aspirational, with resistance constantly being renegotiated within the shifting boundaries of power, conditionality, and settler colonialism.


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On mass violence (and in places on settler colonialism): Nerina Weiss, Maria Six-Hohenbalken, Linda Green (eds), The Routledge International Handbook of Mass Violence, Routledge, 2027

14Oct26

Description: Interrogating the complexities of mass violence in contemporary society, this handbook reconceptualizes the accumulation, intensity, and temporality of mass violence – rather than depending on numbers alone – to develop a critique of mass violence adequate for our times. The Routledge International Handbook of Mass Violence critically engages with classic political, sociological, psychological, and strategic paradigms to ask how violence operates when it is temporally diffuse, socially obscured, and institutionally normalized. This volume is thematically organized to explore the theories, strategies, legacies, memories, perpetrators of mass violence, and investigates topics that were previously considered to lie beyond the scope of studies of mass violence such as the carceral system and environmental damage. Contending with questions of justice and reconciliation, and issues surrounding burials and exhumations after mass violence, this book explores an extensive range of international case studies to determine the boundaries of the concept of mass violence and how instances of mass violence are categorized. This volume promotes an intellectual interchange that broadens our understanding of mass violence beyond the instrumental and orchestrated violence perpetrated by political and state actors, and will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, anthropology, law, and politics with interests in mass violence.


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On genocide and settler colonialism and on Canada and genocide and settler colonialism: Andrew Woolford, Genocide in Canada: A Critical Approach, Fernwood Publishing, 2026

14Oct26

Decsription: “Is it genocide?” Too often the answer to this question requires killing fields, death camps, gas chambers, and massacres. Genocide in Canada directs us instead to the relationships through which groups of people persist as a people. Andrew Woolford’s critical approach pinpoints the many forms of violence that can and are used to destroy peoples. Woolford explores settler colonial genocide in Canada, overcoming the limitations of the traditional genocide concept and its legal formulation and demonstrating that settler colonialism threatens the existence of Indigenous Peoples. Framed as a sociology of collective life, this book focuses on assimilative education such as occurred through residential schools. It examines how the residential school system was implemented by the settler state to deal with the “Indian problem,” intending to destroy Indigenous Peoples’ culture and relationships with family and territory, to eliminate them as peoples. Woolford traces the genocide debate in Canada, illuminating the blind spots and assumptions that disguise settler colonial patterns of group destruction. He exposes the deeply flawed genocide denialist claims about residential schools as many cling to a redemptive story of Indigenous-settler relations that absolves Canada of anything more than a “dark chapter” or “mistakes.”


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Registration! Ekaterina Zmyvalova, ‘An informational tool, not a legal guarantee: the federal registry of Indigenous persons in Russia’, The Polar Journal, 2026

13Oct26

Abstract: The establishment of a Unified Federal Registry of Individuals Belonging to Indigenous Small-Numbered Peoples of Russia in 2022 was a necessary step to regulate the rights of Indigenous peoples. The lack of a formal procedure for verifying Indigenous identity had hindered the implementation of their rights and complicated resource monitoring by environmental and law enforcement agencies. This gap previously allowed non-Indigenous individuals to exploit Indigenous rights, leaving legitimate members unprotected. The Registry aimed to streamline the process of claiming rights, facilitating the realisation of social and economic entitlements, including the protection of traditional habitats, customary ways of life, and territorial self-governance. The idea behind creating the Registry was to allow Indigenous individuals to establish their ethnic identity once, avoiding the need to repeatedly submit documentation when accessing rights related to traditional subsistence activities and state support. However, judicial practice shows that the Registry has not fully addressed the issue of formalising Indigenous identity and access to rights. It functions primarily as an informational tool, rather than a legally binding one, limiting its effectiveness. Courts continue to rely on discretionary interpretations and additional documentation, highlighting the ongoing challenges faced by Indigenous groups, like the Shor, in asserting their rights.


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Transferring Indigenous peoples: Olivia Doyle, Hiroshi Maruyama, ‘”Why did our ancestors have to leave home?” Revisionist and decolonial histories of the 1875–1876 forced relocation of Karafuto Ainu and the struggle for human dignity and rights’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 2026

13Oct26

Abstract: Under the Treaty of St. Petersburg in 1875–1876, 841 Ainu were forcibly removed from their homes in Karafuto and relocated to Tsuishikari in Hokkaidō. This article centres Ainu experiences of relocation when narrating the so-called ‘Northern Territories’ dispute between imperial Japan and Russia. It offers a decolonial historiography, including unpublished family histories from Karafuto Ainu descendants, to counteract the prevailing historiography’s over-reliance on colonial sources, which minimise the forced relocation and its consequences for descendants. One such consequence is the contested repatriation of ancestral remains. Karafuto Ainu descendants demand their return, while Japanese public institutions resist the descendants’ authority to make the demand. This conflict exemplifies the broader colonial legacy of institutions, ranging from universities and museums to the legislature, disregarding Karafuto Ainu rights. Responding to this erasure, the article amplifies Karafuto Ainu leadership and challenges historical revisionism to support their claims to dignity, Indigenous rights and cultural resurgence in the context of settler-colonial violence.


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Land taking: Hidayat Maamache, Moussa Loucif, ‘Features of the French Colonial Trajectory in Algeria: Land Policy as a Case Study’, Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, 13, 2, 2026, pp. 660-670

13Oct26

Abstract: The acquisition of Algerian lands constituted one of the foremost objectives of French colonial policy in Algeria. The colonial authorities did not confine themselves to employing various forms of coercion and violence to establish control over both the land and its inhabitants; they also resorted to expropriation and confiscation in order to deprive Algerians of their principal means of livelihood, namely land, through the implementation of an inequitable land policy. In order to provide a legal framework for these practices of dispossession and confiscation, the colonial authorities enacted a series of land laws and regulations that granted them the legal authority to appropriate large areas of Algerian land. This policy gave rise to a succession of legislative measures, the most significant of which are examined in this study.

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Violence in all directions: Areej Sabbagh‐Khoury, ‘Decolonizing Epistemological Violence: Settler Colonialism and Intracommunal Violence and Crime in Palestinian Society in Israel’, Sociology Compass, 2026, #20:e70247

13Oct26

Abstract: This paper critically examines production of knowledge about intracommunal violence and crime within Palestinian society in Israel, highlighting the relationship between power structures and epistemological frameworks. It centers the ontological relationship of power to settler colonial structures, interrogating how knowledge is shaped within domination and resistance. The paper identifies two paradigms: the first, a cultural/pathological paradigm that frames violence as a manifestation of cultural or social dysfunction; the second, an ethnic‐minority/liberal paradigm, which attributes violence to inequality and social stratification, positioning Palestinians as a marginalized minority within a liberal state. It then introduces a third burgeoning paradigm, the settler colonial and apartheid paradigm, conceptualizing violence as a consequence of structural dispossession, systemic neglect, and “organized colonial abandonment.” Drawing on a systematic review of academic, NGO, and journalistic reports in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, the paper demonstrates how certain paradigms reinforce dominant narratives that stigmatize Palestinian society in Israel while obscuring the Israeli settler state’s role in sustaining violence and Jewish supremacy. It further highlights the key role of Palestinian NGOs, activists, and journalists in challenging two hegemonic frameworks and producing counter‐knowledge. By advocating anti‐colonial epistemology within social sciences, the paper calls for centering counter‐ hegemonic knowledge production, affirming indigenous struggles for epistemological and material decolonization.


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Marxism and the ‘colonies properly so called’: Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Marxism and Settler Colonialism: A Protracted History’, Fudan Journal of the Humaniies and Social Sciences, 2026

12Oct26

Abstract: The analysis of settler colonialism as a distinct mode of domination and a focus on class are not mutually exclusive. This article outlines a protracted tradition of Marxian, Marxist, communist, and Indigenous reflection on colonisation and settler colonialism. It argues that this tradition is indigenous to Marxism.


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Formal policy vs. settlement? John Ferejohn, ‘Early democratic land policy’, Journal of Historical Political Economy, 2026

11Oct26

Abstract: This paper examines American public land policy from the colonial period through the antebellum era, emphasizing the gap between formal policy and settlement on the ground. Early national policymakers faced competing objectives: generating revenue from western lands, promoting orderly territorial expansion and facilitating landownership among independent farmers. Federalists, and later Whigs, generally favored revenue-oriented policies and sales to large purchasers, while Jeffersonian Republicans and Jacksonian Democrats increasingly favored policies benefiting small settlers. Yet neither approach adequately accounted for the limited administrative and coercive capacity of the early American state. Settlers routinely occupied desirable land before surveys and legal sales, establishing claims through possession and improvement. Because the federal government lacked the resources to prevent or reverse this process, Congress repeatedly accommodated squatters through preemption measures that transformed unauthorized settlement into recognized property rights. These practices drew on colonial precedents and were reinforced by a republican and Jacksonian ideology associating independent landownership with citizenship, equality and opposition to monopoly. By the 1841 Preemption Act, episodic concessions to squatters had effectively become permanent policy. Early American land policy thus demonstrates how limited state capacity and settlers’ actions shaped the public domain more powerfully than formal policies enacted in Washington.


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Even the Apocalypse is not the end of the story: Julia Siepak, ‘Resurgent Ecologies: Indigenous Eco-Apocalypse in Waubgeshig Rice’s “Moon of the Turning Leaves”‘, Textus, 2, 2026, pp. 203-222

11Oct26

Abstract: This article offers a reading of Waubgeshig Rice’s speculative novel Moon of the Turning Leaves (2023) that explores its commitment to representing resurgent Indigenous futures and ecologies in the face of environmental catastrophe. Written within the convention of Indigenous futurism, the novel depicts Anishinaabe futurity amid anthropogenic environmental change, inherently linked to colonialism. Drawing from theorisations of colonisation as an Indigenous peoples’ apocalypse, the reflection centres on the ways of homing post-Apocalypse through reliance on traditional Indigenous ways of knowing and the Anishinaabe concept of return, biskaabiiyang. Indigenous mobility in the Anthropocene is approached as a strategy grounded in Indigenous intellectual traditions of adaptation and futurity.


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