CALL FOR PAPERS

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ASSOCIATION – TORONTO (2014)

26-29 March, 2014.

Settler-Colonial Spaces:

Thinking Across Indigeneity and International Relations

As the ISA moves from Ohlone territories (San Francisco) to Mississauga and Haudenosaunee territories (Toronto) for its annual convention next year, this is a call to reflect on the international underpinnings of settler-colonial spaces. The ISA Toronto 2014 Call for Papers emphasizes the role of geopolitics in International Relations. The aim of this CFP is to facilitate the organization of panels that examine intersections between Indigeneity, settler-colonial spaces, and International Relations theory, including the gendered, racialized, classed, aesthetic, cosmological, and political economic dimensions of this under-theorized aspect of IR.

Since the early 2000s, numerous interventions in IR have done much to deconstruct the Eurocentric foundations of the discipline by inflecting it with anti-colonial, postcolonial, and decolonial perspectives (Agathangelou and Ling 2009; Barkawy and Laffey 2006; Blaney and Inayatullah 2004; Chowdhry and Nair 2002; Dotty 1996; Grovogui 2009; Henderson 2007; Jones 2006; Krishna 2001; Ling 2002; Sajed 2012; Shilliam 2011; Vitalis 2010). Nevertheless, a virtual silence persists regarding the ‘international relations’ underpinning the contested nation-spaces of settler colonialism and Indigenous self-determination. While other disciplines have increasingly welcomed settler-colonial studies as a growing field of academic inquiry, IR theory has once again been late to the table in incorporating such an important research program into its disciplinary frameworks. This elision is particularly troubling considering that the dominant institutional geography of IR often overlaps with and occupies lands claimed by Indigenous peoples. IR’s silence on this front enables the world’s remaining settler colonies to perpetuate laws and everyday practices that seek the erasure of Indigenous peoples from the realm of the ‘international’, reinforcing their tenuous claims to territorial integrity and sovereignty in the process.

The 2008 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is a crucial document that clearly ‘internationalizes’ the rights of Indigenous peoples by recognizing:  inherent rights of self-determination; sovereignty in governance of lands, resources, and social reproduction; and Indigenous-settler treaty relationships. Historical studies have also demonstrated the extent to which encounters between European colonial powers and Indigenous peoples were generative of key categories of international law. From its emergence to the present day, settler-colonialism manages its inter-national relations with Indigenous peoples by attempting to contain settler-Indigenous relationships within the framework of domestic politics. This colonial maneuver continues to generate multiple sites of contestation in world politics, as most recently seen with the #IdleNoMore movement.

Interested presenters are asked to submit 300 word abstracts – along with their names, institutional affiliations and contact information – to Konstantin Kilibarda (kole<AT>yorku.ca) and Emily Merson (merson<AT>yorku.ca) by May 1, 2013. Please also state if you are interested in acting as a Chair and/or Discussant on one of the panels in this series. Individual papers will be grouped into distinct panels based on mutual interest and lines of inquiry, though full panel proposals are also welcome.