« Locke him up! David Armitage, Teresa M. Bejan, Felix Waldmann, ‘Locke and Settler Colonialism’, in David Armitage, Teresa M. Bejan, Felix Waldmann (eds), The Political Thought of John Locke: New Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2026

Settler colonialism is an infrastructure not an event: Sarah Montoya, ‘Networking the Nation: Settler Colonialism as an Analytic in Critical Infrastructure Studies’, in Alan Liu, Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, James Smithies (eds), Critical Infrastructure Studies and Digital Humanities’, University of Minnesota Press, 2026

22Jul26

Excerpt: At the core of discussions of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructures are land and property ownership, the understandings of which are shaped by settler colonialism in the United States and administered by a constellation of global settler state formations. Settler colonialism names an orientation to the world and life; it is a way of being and relating to land, peoples, objects, and knowledge that prioritize the liberal humanist citizen-subject and the creation and acquisition of property and possession, and it is deeply characterized by white supremacy and enforced through various forms of targeted violence (Estes et al., 59, 107). When utilized as an analytical approach, settler colonial studies insists on making legible the relationship between land, infrastructure, private property, and the project of settler statecraft. This framework extends research in electronic and digital colonialism and makes explicit the spatial and racial violence required to maintain settler society. Bringing forth the connections between the settler state, surveillance projects realized through the military-industrial complex, and the impact of commercial interests in the shaping of the use of internet technology, this chapter argues that a web of networked settler logics emerges through a critical reading of ICT infrastructure that links the development of the telegraph, telegraphone, and the internet to settler colonial property regimes in the United States. While this chapter applies settler colonial studies as a lens through which to analyze ICTs in the United States, it is important to approach other geopolitical sites with attention to their specific imperial and colonial histories and understand that occupation is quotidian, ongoing, and altered by local conditions. The goal of this chapter is to confront and dismantle narratives of settler technological supremacy and consider anticolonial and decolonial approaches in critical infrastructure studies (CIS).


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