« A deliberate misconstruction (it seems obvious, but think about it: if the ‘settlers’ are not in charge, they are immigrants and there is no settler colonialism): Yehezkel Lein, Oren Yiftachel, ‘Estonia’s Russian Speakers: Contiguous Settler Colonialism and its Aftermath’, Europe-Asia Studies, 2026
Resistances deSPITE settler colonialism: Chelsea Watego, Kevin Yow Yeha, Jamal Nabulsi, David Singh, Alissa Macoun, Elizabeth Strakosch, Scaring the shit out of the colony: Sovereignty, solidarity, survival … and spite’, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 2026 »

The settler colonialism of sociology: Dean Ray, ‘Settler-Colonial Structure and Indigenous Agency’, Sociological Theory, 2026

23Aug26

Abstract: Settler-colonial theory has become an influential framework in sociology. Yet its central claim—that settler-colonialism is an enduring structure organized by a “logic of elimination”—generates a theoretical paradox. If settler-colonialism is total, how can Indigenous agency be theorized without reproducing the structure it seeks to transcend? I address this tension by bringing sociological theories of structure and agency into dialogue with settler-colonial studies and Indigenous theory. Drawing on William Sewell Jr.’s conception of structure as the coupling of cultural schemas and material resources, I reinterpret two foundational concepts: the logic of elimination and the politics of recognition. Yet Indigenous theorists highlight forms of agency that exceed sociological accounts of action within a shared structural field. I therefore distinguish between interior agency, exercised within settler structures, and exterior agency, which sustains Indigenous worlds beyond them.


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