Abstract: Two assumptions reign supreme in the secession literature. The first is that separatist groups seeking autonomy necessarily fall into one of two camps, one that stresses essentialist criteria for social membership, the other emphasizing instead a socially constructed collective identity. The second assumption is that secession can only be defined as taking place in […]

Abstract: Research within Indigenous communities has been criticised for lacking community engagement, for being exploitative, and for poorly explaining the processes of research. To address these concerns, and to ensure ‘best practice’, Jamieson, et al. (2012) recently published a summary of principles outlined by the NHMRC (2003) in “one short, accessible document”. Here we expand […]

Abstract: In 1888, the colonial governments of Australia came together to agree on a policy of racial exclusion — aimed at preventing Chinese immigration. This article argues that key figures in the colonial ruling class feared the development of a racially divided population and shows them drawing on the mainstream liberal theory of anti-slavery, and […]

Abstract: Focusing on the embodiment of violence against pregnant women, this paper borrows from Palestinian women’s own words and descriptions to reveal intimate aspects of aggression against and surveillance over their bodies and lives. The paper examines both the effects of violence on young mothers and their community and the denial of violence by the […]

Abstract: The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 was a large-scale effort by Congress to make land ownership accessible for recently freed slaves by opening 46 million acres of public land exclusively for homesteading. Using new micro-data from Louisiana, we examine the factors that led to successful homesteading. We compare homesteaders to the agricultural population, finding […]

Abstract: This article aims to reintegrate the colonial history of Canada as part of the grids of analysis for understanding the evolution of its Federal cultural policy. Building on the notion of settler colonialism and its implication for Indigenous population (For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘Indigenous’ is used in place of, perhaps, […]

Abstract: Set in New Zealand during the Land Wars, William Satchell’s Bildungsroman, The Greenstone Door is widely considered to be one of the most seminal novels in New Zealand literary history. The text contrasts the rural topography and the social life of the Waikato with the urban landscapes and mentalities of Auckland and relates the […]

Abstract: Namibian Bushmen, such as the Hai//om and the Ju/’hoansi, are increasingly involved in the growing, white-dominated tourism industry. In this, white Namibians tend to position Bushmen and themselves as people of nature and conservationists. Elsewhere, white from southern African have avoided contact with blacks by identifying more with nature than with people. This has […]

Abstract: Credit markets develop hand in hand with a market economy. Pre-industrial credit markets, like credit (and capital) markets today, developed in order to smooth consumption, ease trade, and enable long-term investment. Yet in the eighteenth century Cape Colony, a Dutch settlement at the southern tip of Africa, commentators of the day were skeptical about […]

Description: No matter where in Canada they occur, inquiries and inquests into untimely Indigenous deaths in state custody often tell the same story. Repeating details of fatty livers, mental illness, alcoholic belligerence, and a mysterious incapacity to cope with modern life, the legal proceedings declare that there are no villains here, only inevitable casualties of […]