« The religion of settlers, the settlements of religion (introducing a special issue): Tisa Wenger, ‘Making Religion, Making the West’, Pacific Historical Review, 92, 3, 2023, pp. 327–341
The settler gaze, then and now: Luhui Whitebear, ‘Resisting the Settler Gaze: California Indigenous Feminisms’, Feminist Formations, 35, 1, 2023, pp. 97-116 »

Spicy settler colonialism? Xiaowei R Wang, ‘Spicy red in Shrimp Town: Smart farming and settler colonialism in Guizhou province’, New Media & Society, 25, 8, 2023, pp. 1888–1912

19Jul23

Abstract: This article explores the chili pepper industry in Guizhou and how it intersects with a push toward high-tech, digital agriculture schemes as part of Guizhou’s economic development driven by a data economy. State bureaus, tech companies, and research institutes around rural development cast digital, data-driven agriculture as a broadly positive development that will provide environmental sustainability and economic benefits to small farmers. In examining Guizhou’s Chili Pepper City, I argue that such initiatives maintain state power through accelerating complexity and implementation of universalizing technologies. In the context of Guizhou, these universalizing technologies are intertwined with a legacy of China’s own settler dynamics, the political uses of poverty alleviation and environmentalism to control land, and socialist legacies of using agricultural modernization toward nationalist ends. I draw on a multitude of news articles, journals, and secondary sources, as well as repeat site visits and interviews that I conducted in Guizhou from 2017 to 2019.


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