settler colonial studies blog

The extractions of settler colonialism: Claire Blencowe, Spirits of extraction: Christianity, settler colonialism and the geology of race, Manchester University Press, 2025

17Mar25

Description: Spirits of extraction revisits the troubling history of socially reformist, ostensibly anti-racist, Christianity and its role in the expansion of the extractive industries, British imperialism, and settler colonialism. The book explores key moments in the history of Methodism and the evangelical movement. Colonial fears, and the attempt to ‘civilise savages’, were crucial to the movement’s foundation in eighteenth-century industrialising Bristol, England. Through the culture of the Cornish mining diaspora of the nineteenth century, Methodism enmeshed with all the complexity of race and labour-structures of the British empire. At the same time, in Anishinaabewaki/Upper Canda/Ontario, Methodist missionaries laid the foundation of abusive education and racialised ideas of redemption that both enable and sacralise the mining industry. Through these histories of our present, the book theorises the relation of religion and education to racism, modernity, biopower, extractivism, and the geology of race.

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Settlers monopolise violence: Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, ‘On the monopoly of violence: Ideal types of settler colonial violence and the habitus of sumud’, Current Sociology, 2025

17Mar25

Abstract: Political sociologists have articulated state-making as the concentration of power and violence within state apparatuses. However, classical theories have often overlooked the distinctive characteristics of settler colonial nation-state formation, whose raison d’état is the preservation of settler sovereignty and supremacy, accumulated largely through practices of dispossession, appropriation, subjugation, and elimination, and whose power is dispersed at times to settler-citizens. Examining the case of Israel, and identifying divergent ideal types of settler colonial violence, the article pinpoints the unique features that define Israel as a settler colonial state. Moreover, it explores how the monopoly on violence is variably applied depending on contingent dynamics, and dialectical interactions with the indigenous and their habitus of sumud (steadfastness). The analysis delves into the themes of state violence and the state of exception, examining the case of the ‘Dignity Intifada’ in May 2021, alongside the genocidal war since October 7, 2023. By comprehending the material and symbolic processes shaping the persistence of settler colonialism in its different formations, the article contributes to a nuanced understanding how ‘war-by-other-means’ and indigenous resistance both endure.

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Settler capitalism, today: Hugh Burnam, ‘Postdigital Settler Capitalism’, in P. Jandrić (ed.), Encyclopedia of Postdigital Science and Education, Springer 2024

17Mar25

Abstract: Embedded as a societal structure, settler colonialism has only intensified in our postdigital age. Under a free-market capitalist economy, digital consumerism undermines Indigenous rights when tech companies have interest in large-scale extraction of raw materials like lithium, gold, and copper on Indigenous lands. While private tech companies extract natural resources from Indigenous lands, this increases socio-cultural conflict, causes harm to the environment, exploits workers, and dispossesses Indigenous Peoples of their rights and their lifeways on their sacred lands. Private interests in the mass production of digital technology, under a settler capitalist system, continues to threaten the welfare of people and lands locally and globally.

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Targeting the reproduction of Indigenous peoples: UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, ‘Rights probe alleges sexual violence against Palestinians by Israeli forces used as ‘method of war’, UN News, 13/03/25

14Mar25

Excerpt: The Commission’s report finds that the destruction amounts “to two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births”.

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Settler combined ideologies and their outcome: Zoe Bertenshaw, Carla Houkamau, Chris G. Sibley, Danny Osborne, ‘Identifying Profiles of Colonial Ideologies: A Test of the Moral Credentialer Hypothesis’, European Journal of Social Psychology, 2025

14Mar25

Abstract: Research warns of a tokenistic combination of two colonial ideologies that recognises Indigenous culture as part of the nation’s identity (low symbolic exclusion) yet denies the relevance of colonisation to contemporary inequities (high historical negation). Because symbolic exclusion and historical negation respectively reinforce symbolic and material inequalities, this Moral Credentialer profile may mask intolerance with superficial support for equality. Using latent profile analysis, we investigate the presence of this asymmetric response pattern among a nationwide random sample of Pakeha (New Zealand Europeans; ¯ N = 13,877) and Maori ( ¯ N = 2004). As expected, we identify heterogeneity among both ethnic groups, yet find a Moral Credentialer profile (high historical negation and low symbolic exclusion) among only Pakeha. Sociopolitical attitudes predicted profile membership, which, in turn, predicted bicultural political attitudes. Results thus corroborate a tokenistic subgroup of settler colonisers who endorse less costly forms of symbolic equality whilst upholding material inequities.

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The abolition of settler colonialism: Kyla Simone Piccin, ‘Taking Settler Colonialism Seriously in Abolition Ecologies: Centring Indigenous Dispossession in Geographies of Carceral Power, Ecocide, and the Abolitionist Ecological Imagination’, Antipode, 2025

13Mar25

Abstract: Scholarship increasingly examines international social movements advocating for the abolition of the prison-industrial complex. Within this landscape, Abolition Ecologies has emerged as a generative intellectual space for examining the intersections of carceral power, environmental exploitation, and racial-capitalist violence. However, there are opportunities to address the material dynamics of settler coloniality and Indigenous dispossession in this literature. Amid debates concerning the compatibility between abolition and anti-colonialism, this article asks: What insights emerge when we centre Indigenous dispossession and settler coloniality in Abolition Ecologies? How might these insights complicate how solidarity is conceptualised and activated in the literature? This article identifies three under-explored frictions that arise in centring Indigenous dispossession and settler colonialism in Abolition Ecologies. These frictions reveal complex challenges for the field. However, this article ultimately argues that Abolition Ecologies offers creative analytical and methodological tools to engage with these frictions. Rather than foreclosing solidarity, these frictions spark new opportunities for analysis.

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Not all settlements are settler settlements: Olukunle P. Owolabi, The Divergent Legacies of Forced Settlement and Colonial Occupation in the Global South, Oxford University Press, 2023

13Mar25

Description: An examination of the divergent developmental legacies of forced settlement and colonial occupation on both sides of the Black Atlantic world. The European powers that colonized much of the world over the last few hundred years created a variety of social systems in their various colonies. In Ruling Emancipated Slaves and Indigenous Subjects, Olukunle P. Owolabi explores the divergent developmental trajectories of Global South nations that were shaped by forced settlement, where European colonists imported African slaves to establish large-scale agricultural plantations, or by colonial occupation, which resulted in the exploitation of indigenous non-white populations. Owolabi shows that most forced settlement colonies emerged from European domination with higher levels of education attainment, greater postcolonial democratization, and favorable human development outcomes relative to Global South countries that emerged from colonial occupation after 1945. To explain this paradox, he examines the distinctive legal-administrative institutions that were used to control indigenous colonial subjects and highlights the impact of liberal reforms that expanded the legal rights and political agency of former slaves following abolition. Spanning three centuries of colonial history and postcolonial development, this is the first book to systematically examine the distinctive patterns of state-building that resulted from forced settlement and colonial occupation in the Black Atlantic world.

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A city on the (Martian) hill? Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? Penguin, 2025

13Mar25

Description: The bestselling and hilarious investigation into space settlement. Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away – no climate change, no war, no Twitter – beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of original research, and interviews with leading space scientists, engineers and legal experts, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea. Space tech and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the deep knowledge needed to have space-kids, build space-farms and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create a nightmare, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. With deep expertise, a winning sense of humour and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself – whether and how to become multiplanetary.

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Still, settler Puritans: Abram Van Engen, ‘Resisting Puritans’, American Literary History, 37, 1, 2025, pp. 94-109

11Mar25

Abstract: This essay lays out five stages in the development of Puritan studies over the past three decades: Freestanding Puritanism, Diverse Puritanisms, Transatlantic Puritanism, Settler-Colonial Puritanism, and Persistent Puritanism. These categories map onto similar movements in early American studies more broadly. Having surveyed these developments, the essay spells out a few ways forward, looking specifically at Anne Bradstreet for inspiration (one of the oldest subjects in Puritan literary studies). Finally, the essay turns to the dominant paradigm of oppression and resistance, which guides early American studies more generally and Puritan studies in particular. The essay argues that this paradigm, while important and useful, could be nuanced and made even more useful if it took into consideration how the Puritans themselves understood and applied such categories—resisting and oppressing often in one and the same act. The Puritans set up constitutional constraints to limit and oppose authoritarianism, for example in their actions with the 1629 Charter of Massachusetts Bay. Yet in resisting authoritarianism, they also opened floodgates to white settler colonialism. The essay argues for understanding both aspects together and thinking through the legacies of each.

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The gravity of outer space settler colonialism: Werner Grandl, ‘A Mars habitat inside the Martian moon Deimos: the ultimate human outpost with 1 g simulated gravity’, Space Renaissance International, 2025

11Mar25

Abstract: One of the most fascinating goals in human spaceflight is to land humans on Mars and to establish an initial human outpost on the red planet. Visionaries like Elon Musk propose to build human settlements for thousands of people on Mars and even to “terraform” the planet into an Earth-like “Planet B”. But there are some serious doubts about these projects. Mars has just about 38% of Earth´s gravity, which can cause in the long run danger to human health, especially critical bone and muscle loss. Because of the thin atmosphere the human body is exposed to cosmic rays and micrometeorites. But there is an alternative solution for a safe Martian settlement: building habitats inside the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos. The two moons are supposed to be former asteroids which have been captured by Mars long ago. We choose Deimos, the smaller one, to demonstrate the construction of a rotating space habitat with 1 g simulated gravity. Initially a space station is docked to Deimos´ surface, which will be enlarged step by step becoming a mining and industrial facility. After digging a central tunnel into Deimos big caves are excavated and the ore is processed into building material. Water and oxygen can be extracted from the polar ice of Mars. Finally one or more rotating human habitats can be built inside the caves, providing a safe environment for some hundreds or even thousands of settlers, who will exploit the natural resources of Mars and even the asteroid belt for the future benefit of mankind.

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