settler colonial studies blog

Is settler colonial studies useful in Brazil? Déborah Scheidt, ‘”We are here to stay”: An introduction (and a few interrogations) to settler colonialism’, Estudos Literários e Culturais: Ilha Desterro, 77, 2024

01Oct24

Abstract: Settler Colonial Studies proposes a differentiation between franchise colonialism and settler colonialism, based on Patrick Wolfe’s pioneering theories, according to which in colonialism per se the colonizer exploits colonized labour to, eventually, return to the Imperial metropolis. In settler colonialism, on the other hand, the settler, aiming at possessing the land belonging to indigenous people, “comes to stay.” Settler colonialism would therefore be a structure, rather than an event, in the life of the colonized. The main logic of settler colonialism, according to Wolfe, is the (literal or metaphorical) elimination of indigenous people. Departing from Wolfe’s ideas, Lorenzo Veracini refines and develops concepts, themes and theoretical tools, aiming at organizing Settler Colonial Studies as a discipline. Theories on settler colonialism have been developed in an anglophone context, aiming at examining this type of domination as it occurs mainly in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and, at present, have been little acknowledged in Brazil. After presenting some of the basic tenets of Settler Colonial Studies, this article considers the possible applicability of Settler Colonialism to the Brazilian context, encouraging reflexion on the expansion and adaptation of this mostly anglophone field of studies to new historical and cultural environments.

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Multiple settler transpacifics: Andrea Mendoza, ‘Transpacific Critique and the Extimacies of Settler Coloniality, Race, and Asia-Latin America’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies , 2024

30Sep24

Abstract: This review essay examines how studies of transpacific modernity take up the entanglements between settler coloniality in Latin America and Japanese imperialism to grapple with formations of racism and modes of colonial dispossession that emerge outside the traditional purview of US-centric accounts of the transpacific. In their studies, Torres-Rodríguez, Le, Chang, and the contributors to Iacobbelli, and Lu’s volume develop powerful vantage points that demonstrate transpacific attachments to settler and imperial national modern formations, offering key terms for amplifying our approaches to the study of Asia-Latin America.

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It’s the settler timescape: Mary E. Stuckey, ‘“To Preserve Unimpaired”: The Presidency, National Parks, and the Preservation of the U.S. Settler Colonialist State’, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 27, 1, 2024, pp. 1-26

30Sep24

Abstract: Control of time is critical to the maintenance of settler colonial states. In the United States, which relies on linear conceptions of time, time is treated as moving forward, which implies a specific view of the national past. It also moves backward, which proscribes a particular understanding of future possibilities. In both cases, time is mobilized to produce political stasis, rendering it very difficult to question settler colonialist ideologies and possession of land. Unsettling the U.S. settler colonial state requires a different conception of time and different temporalities.

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It’s the settler landscape: Laura Barraclough, ‘Indigenous Cultural Landscapes: Decolonizing Landscape Within Settler Colonial Societies’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2024

30Sep24

Abstract: Geographic scholarship on landscape and colonialism has not substantially engaged with the specific logics of settler colonialism, propelling recent calls to “unlearn” and “decolonize” landscape studies. This article highlights the Indigenous cultural landscape (ICL), a policy tool used since the 1990s to protect aboriginal landscapes globally, as a vital resource for geographers interested in decolonizing both material landscapes and landscape studies. I analyze six ICL studies conducted by the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, a unit of the U.S. National Park Service, in robust partnership with Indigenous nations, academics, and conservationists between 2013 and 2022. In their approaches to scale, mobility, temporality, visuality, and modes of relationship, the ICLs documented and mapped in these collaborative studies fundamentally challenge settler colonial histories and conceptions of landscape. These conceptual distinctions have clear material impacts, as I demonstrate: In Virginia, the Rappahannock River ICL study facilitated the return of land along Fones Cliffs to the Rappahannock Tribe. Considering the processes, conceptual interventions, and material impacts of the Chesapeake ICL studies together, I argue that the ICL concept can generate and expand Indigenous relational space amid ongoing settler occupation, despite the tensions and limitations of working with the settler state to do so.

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Settler colonialism goes postal! Charli Muller, ‘The Capitalist and Colonial Logics of Rowland Hill’s Postal Reforms: Terra Nullius, Uniform Pricing, and “Conveyance at the Lowest Rate”’, monde(s), 26, 2024, pp. 51-74

29Sep24

Abstract: Rowland Hill’s 1837 Post Office Reform is credited with influencing Britain’s Postage Act of 1839 which introduced uniform, low pricing and prepayment of mail. These reforms then influenced the 1874 Treaty of Bern. Post Office Reform was written while Hill served as the South Australian Colonization Commission’s secretary. Studying this context, we gain new insights into the colonial and capitalist logics behind his postal reforms, which were influenced by Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s scheme of colonization.

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The spirit under settler colonialism: Salim J. Munayer, ‘Spiritual Leadership in the Upheaval of Settler Colonialism’, Religions, 15, 10, 2024, #1168

29Sep24

Abstract: In the current global landscape, characterized by religious fervour, social and political unrest, economic instability, and environmental challenges, spiritual leaders stand as pivotal agents of change. Their role is especially crucial in contexts marred by ingrained injustices and persistent conflicts, such as the Palestinian–Israeli settler colonial context—a reality I have been intimately involved with over three decades of reconciliation work. This paper contextualizes scholarship on spiritual leadership within the Palestinian–Israeli context by integrating it with settler colonial theory. By applying insights about spiritual leadership to this context, three key traits of spiritual leaders—(1) spiritual authority, (2) discernment, and (3) the ethical use of power—are identified as essential for envisioning an alternative future. By embodying these traits, spiritual leaders can effectively guide their communities through the multifaceted realities, advocating a transformative approach to leadership and interreligious work.

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The settlers take their time: Johanna Adolfsson, A new storm over the Naqab: The temporality of space in Israeli settler colonialism, PhD dissertation, Stockholm University, 2023

29Sep24

Abstract: How can a posthumanist conceptualization of landscape, one that embraces temporality and practice, help us to better understand contemporary settler colonialism? This thesis explores this proposition through its analyses of the desire of the Israeli state to ‘settle’ the Naqab. The Naqab, an area located in the south of modern-day Israel and within its borders, is continuously narrated as under threat of being lost to the Palestinian Bedouins. In contrast to the breadth of scholarly attention given to the occupied Palestinian Territories, there is a relative paucity of studies focusing on the Naqab and on the Palestinian citizens of Israel living therein. Inspired by the concept of taskscape and, more broadly, by a posthumanist political ecology approach, in this thesis I seek to remedy the determinist undertones quite often found in settler colonial studies. The thesis’ empirical data draw from qualitative methods and field research in the Naqab, undertaken during multiple field visits between the 2018 and 2021. The thesis comprises a comprehensive summary (kappa) and three research papers. In Paper 1, I show how a schism between the Jewish National Fund and the civil society green movement surfaced amid land conflicts between the state and Bedouin villagers east of Beersheva. I argue that this schism offers insights into how nature is negotiated in relation to environmentalism and Zionist ideology. Further, I discuss how these negotiations point to an emerging new self-image of a post-settlement state that has abandoned pioneering, and replaced it with a planted forest (and natural) landscape as an emblem for Zionist nature. In Paper 2, I focus my attention on a network of Jewish villages in the Naqab. Based on a discourse analysis of YouTube videos produced by two Zionist organizations, I show how the narrative of Jewish relocation to the Naqab encompasses a modern re-enactment of the pioneering ideal, one mediated by a new neoliberal ethos of Israel as a ‘start-up nation’ and the Naqab as a new Israeli tech-hub. Finally, in Paper 3, I trace the cultural and political context of forest grazing in the Naqab. I argue that while the state uses afforestation as a proxy for territorialization, the irony is that it is the Bedouins who are largely responsible for everyday management of these forest areas, as grazing is a cost-effective method for keeping shrubs and other undergrowth low. I argue that in trying to accommodate grazing in the forest, policy makers struggle to juggle Bedouin land claims via continuous use and cultural connection to the land. Throughout the papers I affirm the performance of Israeli settler colonialism through the making of the natural environment. I assert that the tendency towards forest and grazing regulation, also articulated in planning policy, represents a move beyond the ‘era of pioneering’ towards a more formal type of society. I conclude by contending that the multiple spaces and temporalities presented in the paper’s case studies are indicative of contradictory narratives in the portrayal of the Naqab is and thus assemble as a necessity of the settlement ambition.

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Documentary solidarity against settler colonialism: Lara El Mekaui, ‘Lands of Solidarity: Understanding Contemporary North American and Palestinian Indigenous Realities through Interactive Documentary’, in Francesca Mussi (ed.), Indigenous Storytelling and Connections to the Land: More-Than-Human Worlds, Palgrave, 2024, pp. 253-275

28Sep24

Abstract: Malek Rasamny and Matt Peterson’s 2018 documentary Spaces of Exception explores the histories and political commonalities found between Indigenous and Palestinian communities in North America and South-West Asian refugee camps, respectively. Building on the theory of inter/nationalism developed by Steven Salaita (Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), as well as on Mike Krebs and Dana Olwan’s comparative study of settler colonialism between Canada and Israel (‘From Jerusalem to the Grand River, Our Struggles Are One’: Challenging Canadian and Israeli Settler Colonialism’, Settler Colonial Studies 2(2): 138–64), this chapter analyzes the potential, as represented in Spaces of Exception, for solidarity between Indigenous peoples and Palestinian refugees. I argue that the documentary’s use of changing cartography reveals a historical parallel of land seizure that incites necessary political solidarity among nations occupied by settler colonialism. Spaces of Exception is an interactive documentary, which, Kathleen Ryan and David Staton state, “provides an opportunity for decolonization,” as “it offers a shared authority with narrators, audiences, and filmmakers” (Ryan and Staton, Interactive Documentary: Decolonizing Practice-Based Research. London: Routledge, 2022, p. 3). Through this interactive practice, the documentary’s depiction of daily life in Indigenous reservations and Palestinian refugee camps—and the larger project The Native and The Refugee it is part of—contributes to decolonizing efforts in these communities through reorienting focus from the state to the nation, and therefore reaffirming the need for Indigenous and refugee political solidarity. With the insight of interactive documentary theory, I also make the claim that beyond showing solidarity, Spaces of Exception contributes to decolonial work through the documentary medium.

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The settlers and their libraries: Olivia Radbill, ‘Settler Narratives: Colonial Genocide, Westward Expansion, the Gendering of Librarianship, and the Appointment of City Librarian Nellie Keith’, Journal of Radical Librarianship, 10, 2024, pp. 162-177

27Sep24

Abstract: The gendering of the library profession toward female dominance, occurring between 1876 and 1905, coincided with an influx of affluent, educated white settlers in California. The simultaneity of Westward expansion and gendering of librarianship laid the framework for white women settlers to find successful careers in libraries in California. The first City Librarian of the South Pasadena Public Library, located in South Pasadena, California, was a woman named Nellie Keith. Viewed through an intersectional lens, Keith’s journey, from her birth on a New Hampshire farm to her appointment as a City Librarian in California, was paved by both her access to white privilege and her subjection to the sexism of nineteenth century male figureheads in the field of librarianship.

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The settlers and their religion: Stephen Jackson, ‘”Harmonise with the rest of the Empire”: Empire’s influence on religious instruction in Australian and New Zealand primary schools, 1880-1962’, Journal of Beliefs & Values, 2024

27Sep24

Abstract: This article argues that imperial identities embracing Britishness within Anglo-settler colonies significantly influenced provisions for religious education in Australia and New Zealand primary schools from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, corresponding with James Belich’s chronology of recolonisation. The article begins with an overview of the foundational Education Acts of Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and New Zealand, each of which included stronger legal provisions for secularity than in other Australian and settler colonial contexts. The article then tracks the enduring campaigns to promote additional religious instruction in classrooms, revealing a common imperial imaginary shared by Protestant settlers within Australian and New Zealand contexts. Proponents drew upon one another’s tactics, including campaigns for referenda, the creation of Bible-in-Schools Leagues, and parliamentary lobbying campaigns. They also drew upon the idea that Britishness necessitated Christianity, though their calls sometimes did not reflect the legislative reality in Great Britain itself. In the mid-twentieth century, the context of the Second World War precipitated a renewed focus on Britishness as a bulwark and protector of the British Empire. When combined with the diffusion of Agreed Syllabuses, this enabled religious instruction advocates to overcome fierce opposition to strengthen systems of religious instruction from 1940 to 1962.

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