Political indigeneity is not an island: Youjeong Oh, ‘The Emergence of Political Indigeneity: The Resistance Movement on Jeju Island against Colonization by Development’, Critical Asian Studies, 2024 | settler colonial studies blog

Political indigeneity is not an island: Youjeong Oh, ‘The Emergence of Political Indigeneity: The Resistance Movement on Jeju Island against Colonization by Development’, Critical Asian Studies, 2024

07Sep24

Abstract: While Jeju Island South Korea is internationally known for its longstanding anti-base movement at Gangjeong Village, the island’s modern history of resistance can be traced to 1991, when the South Korean government’s Special Act on Jeju-do Development ignited an extensive resistance movement. Two conceptual frameworks—colonization by development and political indigeneity—are employed to explain the island-wide social movement that continued over a sixteen-month period. Mirroring the ways that settler colonialism dispossesses people of their land and land-based social and ecological relations, colonization by development refers to the ways in which local places and people are colonized by land-oriented tourism and property development. This legislation became a specific geographical and historical conjuncture from which Jeju indigeneity emerged, linking it to islanders’ deeply rooted experiences of oppression and injustice. During the movement, Jeju people used indigeneity as a form of political subjectivity, as a weapon against dispossession, and as a form of agency for local autonomy. As a form of colonization, development initiatives function as an ongoing regime of dispossession. The emergence of political indigeneity describes the new sense of consciousness that spread among Jeju people, catalyzing and sustaining place-based contestation to reject developmentalism and promote self-determination.

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