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Settler/farmer/peasant: June Ann Jones, The Peasant and the Farmer: (Re)Constituting Settler Colonialism and Capitalist Relations in the US Imaginary, PhD dissertation, Virginia Tech, 2024

22Apr24

Abstract: In the face of catastrophic climate change, scholars and activists have sought to fundamentally transform the existing food system in the United States. One solution being offered, repeasantization, seeks to reinvigorate the idea of the small farm accompanied by principles of ecological production. While invoking the term “peasant” promises something potentially new in the US context, where the farmer is hegemonic, this movement could end up reenacting the failures of the homesteading and back-to-the-land movements which reconstituted settler colonial and capitalist relations in the US imaginary. Using literature from peasant studies, development studies, and Marxist theory, I develop a theoretical orientation towards this potential problem which focuses on how the ideas of the peasant and the farmer are part of a dialectic which has regularly reinforced the existing dominant paradigm. Imagining a new way of thinking, I introduce the concept of the “peasant+ imaginary” in order to outline the ways that the general way of thinking about farming and farmers in the US serves the ideological function of ‘othering’ alternative practices and subjectivities. Through a historiography which focuses on the structural logic and compulsions of settler colonialism and capitalism, I reconstruct the history of the peasant-farmer dyad in the US context. Through a critical discourse analysis of Farmers’ Bulletins, I also show how the United States Department of Agriculture reinforced a settler-capitalist farmer subject-formation in the interest of a “national agriculture” which served to marginalize Black, Indigenous, and non-capitalist ways of being. This dissertation is my contribution to literature which seeks to reimagine the US food system, with the goal of creating a truly sustainable agriculture which nourishes the land and the people who work and live on it.


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Indigeneity, settler commodified: Gabi Kirk, ‘Commodifying Indigeneity: Settler colonialism and racial capitalism in fair trade farming in Palestine’, Historical Materialism, 2024

22Apr24

Abstract: The recent proliferation of settler colonial and Indigenous studies of Palestine have addressed historical and present-day enclosure of Palestinian land, yet the question of ‘indigeneity’ is underexamined in this literature. Claims to indigeneity in Palestine straddle varied definitions: a racial category; as constructed through the colonial encounter or preceding colonialism; and as a local relation or an international juridico-political category. Using discourse analysis of a specific Palestinian sustainable agriculture initiative. I show how for Palestinians, claiming indigeneity brings into tension potential political economic gains, social relations of struggle, and discursive formations of collective subjectivity. A valorisation, commodification, and privatization of indigeniety narrows notions to the biological-cultural, offering challenges for Palestinian struggles for sovereignty. I conclude by asking what theorizing from Palestine offers to Marxist theories of racial capitalism and settler colonialism, and whether indigeneity can exceed its commodification.


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Settler colonial infrastructure: Holly Randell-Moon, ‘First Nations foundations: cities and the infrastructuring of settler colonisation’, in Nicola Piper, Kavita Datta, The Elgar Companion to Migration and the Sustainable Development, Elgar, 2024, pp. 226-239

22Apr24

Abstract: The infrastructuring of First Nations land into cities is a central project of settler colonisation. In the lands now known as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, settler-colonial myths of ‘uncultivated’ territory justified English invasion and settlement. These myths continue to inform contemporary infrastructure development and discourse which resist First Nations’ sovereignties and self-determination even as the latter unsettles settler-colonial infrastructuring. Analysing how settler permanence is infra/structured discloses the settler-colonial dynamics of urbanisation. This chapter offers a predominantly theoretical account of how urban infrastructuring is a constitutive feature of settler colonisation and how settler-colonial urban imaginaries construct both urbanisation and infrastructure as non-Indigenous. The chapter uses the case study of Sydney, situated in the Eora Nation, to illustrate the relations between urban infrastructure, settler colonisation, and First Nations.


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Indigenist Tocqueville? Raúl Rodríguez, ‘Tocqueville and Native Americans’, American Political Thought, 13, 2, 2024, pp. 215-238

20Apr24

Abstract: This article argues that Alexis de Tocqueville’s political philosophy was shaped by his personal encounters with Native Americans. By unearthing his letters and posthumously published writings, this article reveals how these experiences helped him think through key theoretical concepts he used in Democracy in America, such as freedom, restlessness, and justice. This article advances the work of scholars who have recognized the noteworthy aspects of Tocqueville’s encounters and intervenes in recent scholarship that views him as either indifferent to the fate of Native Americans or operating within a settler colonial ideology. Tocqueville’s engagement with Native Americans is more substantive and positive than previously believed. Overall, this article prompts scholars to reexamine Democracy with fresh eyes—to see how Native Americans helped Tocqueville understand modern liberal democracy.


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Mouldy settler colonialism: Joonsoo S. Lyeo, Michael D. Wong, Natalie Clyke, Becky Big Canoe, Penny Kinnear, Helen Stopps, Nicholas D. Spence, Sarah R. Haines, ‘Ten questions concerning First Nations on-reserve housing in Canada’, Building and Environment, 2024

20Apr24

Abstract: Indigenous Peoples are the original inhabitants of Canada and are made up of three distinct groups: First Nations, Métis and Inuit. About 40% of First Nations people with Registered or Treaty Indian status live on-reserve. Relative to the general Canadian population, First Nations living on-reserve are more likely to live in inadequate housing conditions that include significantly higher rates of mold growth and overcrowding, as well as a significant amount of existing housing stock in need of major repairs. Efforts to improve on-reserve housing conditions must be understood in the context of colonial policies, which have systematically prevented First Nations from obtaining safe, secure, and sustainable housing. This paper aims to evaluate the range of challenges, concerns, and innovative solutions for First Nations on-reserve housing. Ten questions and answers have been presented to characterize the current state of First Nations on-reserve housing in relation to the rest of the Canadian housing stock, including an in-depth comparison of the differences between on-reserve and off-reserve housing. Various known causes of challenges resulting in adequate on-reserve housing are discussed, as well as a review of various operational and construction-related challenges facing on-reserve housing, such as community remoteness, a lack of available skilled trades, and mold and moisture issues. Human health and wellbeing are also discussed as a key outcome of poor housing quality, looking at both physical and mental health in communities, with special attention to IAQ problems as a result of overcrowding and mold accumulation.


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Settler colonialism produces settler ecologies: Irus Braverman, ‘Settler ecologies and more-than-One Health: From malaria to avian flu in the Hula Valley, Palestine-Israel’, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2024

20Apr24

Abstract: The story of the Hula Valley in the Galilee region of Palestine-Israel serves as the focus of this article, which draws on the concepts “more-than-One Health” and “settler ecologies” to highlight the harmful ecological implications of settler colonial projects in this region and elsewhere. Specifically, I tell the story of the Zionist drying of the Hula wetlands in the 1950s for the purpose of fighting off malaria and advancing agriculture in the region—and then of Israel’s reflooding and rehabilitation of parts of the Hula in the 1990s in support of the massive annual bird migration. In winter 2021, more than eight thousand cranes succumbed to an avian influenza (H5N1) outbreak in the Hula Valley and over one million chickens in the area’s coops had to be culled. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted mainly in summer 2022, this article discusses the historical and socioecological conditions that have arguably enabled and exacerbated the avian outbreak, advocating for a more-than-One Health approach that is founded on acknowledging the settler colonial legacies of this place.


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The psychology of settlers: Sibusiso Maseko, Kevin Durrheim, ‘White settler ownership and dominance shape the consequences of autochthony beliefs on support for land reparations in South Africa’, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 30, 1, 2024, pp. 9-18

18Apr24

Abstract: Evidence suggests White settlers’ autochthony beliefs in historically colonized lands can both strengthen and weaken support for reparation measures. We propose that the divergent effect of autochthony beliefs on support for reparation measures is contingent on the perception of White settler ownership and preference for group-based hierarchies. In a single study with N = 807 White South Africans, we tested the moderation function of White settler ownership beliefs and preference for group-based hierarchies on the relationship between autochthony beliefs and support for land reparations. Results confirmed the hypothesis that endorsement of autochthony beliefs predicted stronger support for land reparation measures among respondents who perceived lower White settler ownership and preferred group-based equality. Our findings suggest that White settler ownership and social dominance orientation play a crucial role determining whether autochthony beliefs strengthen or weaken support for reparative measures in settler colonies.


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The commission of justice? Jeremie M. Bracka, ‘Reckoning with Colonial Legacies of Harm: Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commission’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2024

17Apr24

Abstract: Australia’s colonial era is formally over. Yet the legacies of structural inequality, dispossession, exploitation and racism against Indigenous Australia remain alive and well. In 2021, Victoria established the Yoorrook Justice Commission, culminating in a formal truth-telling and treaty process. Seeking to address harm since colonization, the state process is unprecedented both nationally and abroad. This article considers the relevance of the commission to truth recovery, accountability and structural reform in Australia. To date, national efforts to deal with the colonial past have been piecemeal and relatively ineffective. The Yoorrook Justice Commission departs from previous single-issue inquiries as well as from reconciliation policies driven by white-Australian federal institutions. While the Commission is not a panacea for resolving colonial injustice, it provides an important means of relational and structural truth-telling towards more just relations and righting racial wrongs. Ultimately, the Yoorrook Justice Commission sets a valuable precedent for Australia and other postcolonial nations. Its level of Indigenous ownership, its authority as a Royal Commission and the breadth of its inquiry make it a significant transitional justice project.


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A settler colonial anthropocene: Ruth A. Morgan, ‘A Pacific Anthropocene’, in James Beattie Ryan, Tucker Jones, Edward Dallam Melillo (eds), Migrant Ecologies: Environmental Histories of the Pacific World, Honolulu, University of Hawai’I Press, 2023, pp. 257-278.

17Apr24

Excerpt: That the Anthropocene is the product of historical processes has at-tracted environmental historians to its analysis. It is a concept that speaks to the very project of the field, that is, to show that all human history is en-vironmental. Their early engagements with the concept (and its critiques) focused on the intellectual history of the idea; questions of disciplinary expertise and authority regarding its definition; and representations of the Anthropocene in material culture and historical narratives; and have since turned to moral questions of historical responsibility and environmental justice. In this chapter, I open with a reflection on the contributions of settler Australian environmental historians in the articulation of the Anthropocene; I then situate this historiography in terms of the southwest Pacific and its peoples. Placing the Anthropocene in this way traces the connecting threads between the concept and its (uneven) materiality, recognizing the historical processes that have produced this moment and the material differences in its manifestation around the globe. Focusing on the southwest Pacific, as this chapter suggests, takes a regional approach to placing the Anthropocene that brings such material differences into sharp relief. 


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Surrogate settler colonialism (the reproductive settler frontier): Sigrid Vertommen, ‘Surrogacy at the Fertility Frontier: Rethinking Surrogacy in Israel/Palestine as an (Anti)Colonial Episteme’, History of the Present, 14, 1, 2024, pp. 108-137

16Apr24

Abstract: Surrogacy is a popular assisted reproductive practice in Israel, and it has been legal since 1996, albeit, until recently, only for married heterosexual couples. Same-sex couples who aspired to genetic parenthood were therefore “forced” to look for available surrogates abroad, in countries such as the United States, India, Nepal, Mexico, and Russia. This resulted in the emergence of a lucrative transnational surrogacy industry in Israel that relies on the reproductive labor power of racialized egg cell providers and surrogates in the global South, East, and North. While much of the existing research on surrogacy in Israel explains its ubiquity by centering cultural accounts of Jewishness, this article rethinks contemporary policies, practices, and markets of assisted reproduction from the vantage point of the “colonial episteme,” by unpacking the complex “intimacies” and reproductive afterlives of settler colonialism and racial capitalism in Israel/Palestine. The article argues that surrogacy operates both as a demographic frontier in the consolidation of a Jewish state in Israel/Palestine and as a commodity frontier for the accumulation of capital in a booming surrogacy industry. Surrogacy and other reproductive technologies also emerge as sites of reproductive resistance through practices of surrogacy strikes and sperm smuggling.


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