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Imagining settlers over there: Steven Conn, ‘The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is—and Isn’t, University of Chicago Press, 2023

23Jul24

Description: It seems everyone has an opinion about rural America. Is it gripped in a tragic decline? Or is it on the cusp of a glorious revival? Is it the key to understanding America today? Steven Conn argues that we’re missing the real question: Is rural America even a thing? No, says Conn, who believes we see only what we want to see in the lands beyond the suburbs—fantasies about moral (or backward) communities, simpler (or repressive) living, and what it means to be authentically (or wrongheadedly) American. If we want to build a better future, Conn argues, we must accept that these visions don’t exist and never did. In The Lies of the Land, Conn shows that rural America—so often characterized as in crisis or in danger of being left behind—has actually been at the center of modern American history, shaped by the same forces as everywhere else in the country: militarization, industrialization, corporatization, and suburbanization. Examining each of these forces in turn, Conn invites us to dispense with the lies and half-truths we’ve believed about rural America and to pursue better solutions to the very real challenges shared all across our nation.


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Authoritarian settlers in outer space: Julian G. Waller, ‘Characterizing Future Authoritarian Governance in the Space Domain’, Journal of Advanced Military Studies, 15, 1, 2024, pp. 115-135

22Jul24

Abstract: Traditionally, discussions of governance beyond Earth have largely been held to the purview of debates about space law and global governance regimes. Yet, the priority of space exploration among ambitious, tech-industry associated billionaires and its continued potential for militarization suggest that a more dynamic approach may be needed, given that state-sponsorship of extraterrestrial colonial projects may be more akin to partnerships between private and public actors rather than nation-states assuming traditional roles as sole sources of decision-making. Permanent settlements in space will require forms of localized government that may look distinct from contemporary models of political order. This article thus asks a provocative question associated with the empirical record of human colonization and settlement in prior eras: What sort of authoritarian governance is most likely to form in human space settlements during the medium term? Reviewing variations on political order in small-scale colonial settlements in light of recent conceptual work on authoritarian rule, the article identifies three theoretical models of governance that may emerge once beyond Earth settlements become permanent fixtures of human society.


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Settler viruses and Indigenous salmon: Darcey Evans, Salmon Viruses and Sovereignties-at-Sea: A Settler Colonial Politics of Salmon Aquaculture, PhD dissertation, University of California Santa Cruz, 2024

22Jul24

Abstract: This dissertation examines the settler colonial, multispecies, and microbial politics of Atlantic salmon aquaculture in what is now British Columbia, Canada. Salmon aquaculture production systems enable 18 million Atlantic salmon to be raised in nets that are anchored to the seafloor in the coastal waters of British Columbia each year. Aquaculture is recognized as the fastest growing method of food production worldwide and is often positioned as a “blue revolution” capable of providing sustainable, affordable seafood in the midst of salmon population declines. In British Columbia, however, the raising of Atlantic salmon in critical Pacific salmon migration routes has engendered concerns about emerging industrial uses of the waterscape and the ability for farm-borne viruses to move between species. By investigating how industrial aquaculture is encountered, negotiated, and resisted on-the-ground, particularly by Indigenous communities in whose waters the practice is occurring, I instead propose that aquaculture is not a radical departure or a revolutionary break from the past, but is steeped within and dependent upon histories of colonialism, industrialization, and capitalism that have long transformed salmon and waterscapes into sites of state and economy-building. Stemming from ongoing uncertainties regarding the potential for pathogens to transfer between Atlantic and Pacific salmon, this dissertation particularly focuses on historic, scientific, and political controversies that surround salmon viruses. In the absence of state monitoring for salmon pathogens like Piscine orthoreovirus (PRV), Indigenous leaders and their allies travel to sites of aquaculture production to monitor the daily operations of farms and gather underwater video footage from within farm sites. Campaigns to enact stronger fish health protections and document the spread of viruses and pollution also become part of broader political movement aimed at reclaiming territory and restoring Indigenous forms of governance within coastal waterscapes. While pathogens come to reflect and reinforce colonial structures of dispossession, I argue that Indigenous-led efforts to track pathogens throughout salmon bodies and ecosystems are shifting power dynamics in ways that offer new possibilities for the “blue revolution.” This research brings scholarship on pathogens and industrial landscapes into conversation with enduring concerns about the material consequences of environmental injustice and colonialism. In situating aquaculture as part of an under-explored extension of settler colonial logics, structures, and governance into marine space, I suggest that the dominant framing of settler colonialism as land-based leaves large openings for understanding how colonialism and sovereignty are enacted in water-centered and maritime regions. Illuminating how industrial aquaculture and efforts to track pathogens take place within a broader politics of asserting sovereignty “at sea” reveals how historical inequalities and ongoing power dynamics become inscribed within oceans, with important implications for understanding contemporary ocean politics in the 21st century.


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Settler sword and Indigenous neck: Rashid Khalidi, ‘”The Neck and the Sword”, Interviewed by Tariq Ali’, New Left Review, 147, 2024, pp. 5-38

22Jul24

Excerpt: ‘If you accept the settler-colonial framework of analysis, then the metropole is as important as the settler colony. Israel is not a typical settler colony, by any means; it’s also a national project, with a significant Biblical dimension, and a refuge from persecution. No other settler colony was a refuge from persecution to such a degree—the Puritans and other religious dissidents, like the Quakers, who came to North America, certainly experienced repression, but not on the same scale. Basically, this combination of characteristics is unique to the Israeli project. But the core of it, the settler-colonial core of it, relates to a metropole. And the elites in that metropole, unfortunately, have barely changed from the time when I was a child. The new generations are going to have to deal with this‘.


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Adapting settler discourse on climate change: Faisal Bin Islam, Lindsay Naylor, James Edward Bryan, Dennis J. Coker, ‘Climate coloniality and settler colonialism: Adaptation and indigenous futurities’, Political Geography, 114, 2024

21Jul24

Abstract: Climate change puts an inequitable and heavy burden on people who are forced to adapt to unjust socioenvironmental conditions created by the legacy of ongoing climate coloniality and historical settler and imperial colonialism. However, universalizing climate adaptation discourses fail to conceptualize these historical processes by framing climate change as external to complex social and human systems. A plural reconceptualization of adaptation instead asks us to question what it means to adapt to environmental changes not just under the guise of global climate change, but as embedded in coloniality and settler colonialism in place. Critically engaging with different epistemologies of adaptation and grappling with what it means to do this work in the context of settler colonial realities asks scholars to co-produce knowledges of adaptation that embody place-based histories and human-environmental relations that are too often erased, elided, or appropriated in mainstream Eurocentric adaptation science. In this paper, we draw on an environmental oral history with the Chief of the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware to understand how the possibility of indigenous futurity and climate adaptation unfolds towards confronting climate coloniality and efforts to unsettle settler colonialism on stolen lands. Addressing climate coloniality on settler colonial territories suggests that as part of discussing climate change adaptation, scholars should make way for repatriating indigenous knowledges of adaptation and climate change to repair colonial wounds.


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Mobilising settler womanhood: Ashley Noel Mack, ‘Transantagonisms and the symbolic “woman” in U.S. settler reproductive rhetorics’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2024

21Jul24

Abstract: Dominant reproductive rhetorics in the U.S. settler colonial nation-state, I argue, centralize a symbolic and universal womanhood that functions as a transantagonistic rhetoric. Transantagonism is the symbolic and material hostility that is mobilized to maintain cisnormativity and the colonial/modern binary gender system. I reveal how these settler reproductive rhetorics operate to maintain this system through an analysis of the Dobbs v. Jackson and L.W. v. Skrmetti court rulings.


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Parking the settlers: Amy Jo Dugan-Kimball, Indigenizing the National Park Service: Unlearning Settler Colonial History, MA dissertation, Montana State University, 2024

21Jul24

Abstract: Each year, millions of people retreat to what are now known as (WANKA) America’s
national parks and their units. This escape from the settler-colonial lives of our capitalistic
economy and imperialistic mindset is often touted as a much-needed respite for overworked,
stressed-out adults and technology-addicted youth- a result of our “more is better” lifestyle and
demand for instant gratification. The learning opportunity afforded, although unconventional,
provides space with which to bring the voice of Indigenous Peoples to the forefront of the
narrative of national parks’ history and the legacy of displacement.


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Sorry – not sorry: Thea Bladt, ‘Scandinavian Apologies and Compensation to Indigenous Peoples: Human rights violations require meaningful responses, but whether “sorry” is significant depends on the context’, The New Nordic Lexicon, 09/07/24

21Jul24

Abstract: Official apologies for human rights violations perpetrated by colonising countries often attract much media attention. However, the actual meaning of an official apology and the concrete consequences emanating from it are usually highly ambiguous, particularly as indigenous communities may well be advocating for some other type of remedy. Examples from each Scandinavian country suggest that the path from apology to compensation is rarely straightforward, and the popular fixation on the official apology can even obfuscate important steps towards justice for indigenous communities, such as the Inuit and the Sámi. 


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Settler irony, water under the bridge: Teresa Shewry, Philip Steer, ‘Uncertain Waters and Irony in Australian Settler Literatures’, Environmental Humanities, 16, 2, 2024, pp. 351-370

21Jul24

Abstract: Critics are increasingly recognizing the presence of irony in environmental cultures, often stressing its ability to highlight disjunctions between the individual’s convictions and their compromised behaviors. This article extends this work by taking up the relationship between irony and settler-colonial imaginaries in writings about unpredictable bodies of water. Focusing on settler writing in Australia, the article juxtaposes nineteenth-century author Henry Lawson and contemporary novelist Jane Rawson to argue that irony constitutes a form of environmental knowledge, calling up norms and hierarchies regarding water but also creating openings toward waters that cannot be given meaning. Lawson’s writings about ephemeral rivers and lakes stress their divergence from metropolitan ideas of water’s continuity, presence, and visibility. Largely ignoring Indigenous peoples’ relationships with water, his ironies of overturned expectations and norms make contact with but also disparage water in unfamiliar forms. By contrast, Rawson’s A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists (2013) employs irony to grasp how climate-changed floodwater disrupts settler norms founded upon the erasure of floodplains and of Indigenous and colonial histories of urban rivers. Juxtaposing Rawson with Lawson illuminates an ongoing need to be cautious about the ideals that irony may evoke in response to changing and uncertain waters. At the same time, irony provides a multivalent tool to critically address what Mark Rifkin calls “settler common sense,” to glimpse the persistence of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives, and to acknowledge occluded forms of environmental agency.


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In a decolonial mood? Chad Shomura, ‘Decolonial Mood Work’, Theory & Event, 27, 3, 2024, pp. 433-456

21Jul24

Abstract: This essay develops “decolonial mood work,” a political project that changes affective orientations toward crises in settler society and prospects for decolonization. Decolonial mood work is a crucial supplement to scholarship that has focused on demystifying the ideological dimensions of settler colonialism. This essay shows that the regulation of affect is a central, though less addressed, operation of settler state and society. Its case is the management of houselessness in Hawai’i, which is shown to be a settler project that further dispossesses Indigenous peoples by enforcing the affects of settler home.


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