settler colonial studies blog

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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Assyrian indigeneity in Iraq: Mariam Georgis, ‘Traversing Disciplinary Boundaries, Globalizing Indigeneities: Visibilizing Assyrians in the Present’, Meridians, 23, 1, 2024, pp. 182-209

16Apr24

Abstract: The author’s work spans the disciplinary boundaries of political science, Middle East studies, Indigenous studies, and their subfields. Broadly situated within critical theoretical bodies of knowledge, she focuses on an Indigenous nation in what is today known as Iraq. Her work is grounded within particular and fragmented locations that blur various lines and multiple layers of coloniality. This article offers a critical reflection of the invisibility in working on Indigeneity in southwest Asia within the structural imperatives of the academy. It takes up each of these themes by examining the fields of international relations and Iraqi studies to show how the story of Assyrians is invisible or unintelligible across these fields of political science and Middle East studies. Moreover, what the Assyrian story tells us about these disciplines and the multiplicity of coloniality (Patel 2019) is also rendered invisible. Despite the absence of Assyrians from Indigenous studies, the author sees this field as a site from which to potentially globalize Indigeneities. Specifically, she uses Indigenous feminism to construct a more nuanced framework into Assyrian histories, a framework that uses the lens of colonialism, land theft, erasure, and genocide to reframe the Assyrian experience as a remnant of the colonial global order.

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Settler colonial intersections: Eman Alasah, ‘The Palestinian Feminist Movement and the Settler Colonial Ordeal: An Intersectional and Interdependent Framework’, Meridians, 23, 1, 2024, pp. 110-132

16Apr24

Abstract: In light of recent developments in both the (anti)colonial and feminist discourses surrounding the settler colonial condition of Palestine, this article revisits and expands intersectionality as an analytical tool that captures manifold paradigms of subjugation. By considering the various ways in which colonial hegemony and patriarchal authority empower, substantiate, and contribute to one another, the article proposes interdependence as a more comprehensive analytical concept that, in addition to accentuating the multiplicity of oppressive structures, illuminates how they interact within a broader, complex matrix of power. The article positions the Palestinian feminist anticolonial struggle in relation to wider debates on Black, transnational, and Third World feminisms to contextualize the movement. The article eventually turns to contemporary examples of intersectional feminist mobilization that exemplifies the nuanced and ever developing nature of the movement.

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Indigenous feminisms against settler colonialism (introducing a special issue of Meridians): Basuli Deb, Ginetta E. B. Candelario, ‘Indigenous Feminisms across the World, Part 1’, Meridians, 23, 1, 2024, pp. 1-13

16Apr24

Excerpt: Several years ago Meridians joined many academic organizations and institutions in the United States by acknowledging that our Western Massachusetts–based offices are on Nonotuck land. In this we formed part of a wave of solidarity with Indigenous peoples that necessarily begins with recognition of how settler colonialism is deeply ingrained, embedded, and naturalized in every way, from place-naming conventions to thought structures. Further, as a first step toward moving from acknowledging to acting in the spirit of redress and forum building, Meridians undertook an audit of the content we have published in the twenty-four years of our existence. We found a shocking (if all too common) lack of Indigenous feminists and/or Indigenous feminist work in our oeuvre to date. As a result of this data-driven insight, and by way of beginning to transform our archive, we have endeavored to increase the participation of Indigenous feminist scholars and knowledge producers as peer reviewers and contributors to the Meridians project. Editor Candelario’s preliminary efforts yielded several publishable submissions focused largely on the Americas. Rather than intersperse these among other issues, we decided to devote an entire issue to Indigenous feminisms across the world.

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The memories of settler colonialism: Olli Hellmann, ‘Settler memory and Indigenous counter-memories: narrative struggles over the history of colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand, Political Science, 2024

14Apr24

Abstract: As with other settler colonies, Aotearoa New Zealand has seen a longrunning conflict between a Eurocentric ‘master narrative’ of the historical past and Indigenous counter-narratives. Previous research on these narrative struggles adopts the ‘top-down’ perspective on collective remembering, focusing primarily on how memory entrepreneurs deploy cultural texts and practices to construct particular representations of history. To broaden the methodological scope, the analysis developed in this paper follows the ‘bottom-up’ approach, which makes it possible to map the distribution of collective memories across individuals and investigate their attitudinal effects. By means of a rigorous survey study (N = 1,066), the paper reveals three key findings about collective remembering in Aotearoa New Zealand. First, individuals in the ‘critical years’ of adolescence are more open to weaving Indigenous Māori perspectives into their understandings of history than older generations. Second, when compared to the monocultural master narrative, historical reconstructions that reflect Māori experiences promote a more inclusive understanding of national identity and generate public support for redressing historical injustices against Māori. Third, the empirical analysis finds no evidence for claims made by conservative political actors that creating space for the articulation of Māori histories perpetuates social division and weakens popular identification with the nation.

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The security of settler energy: Liam Midzain-Gobin, Joshua K McEvoy, ‘Contesting colonial beachheads: Settler colonial (in)security professionals and Indigenous peoples’ energy infrastructure’, Security Dialogue, 2024

14Apr24

Abstract: In April 2020, the British Columbia Utilities Commission released the Final Report of its Indigenous Utilities Regulation Inquiry. The Inquiry was tasked with determining the regulatory environment for Indigenous utility providers across the Canadian province. We analyse the Inquiry as a colonial encounter between Indigenous nations and the settler state, arguing that technical bodies like the Commission represent a sort of security professional working to depoliticize the reproduction of settler sovereignty, highlighting the operations of non-traditional security professionals in settler colonial contexts. Through the Inquiry, security comes through providing certainty for existing energy infrastructure and institutions as ‘colonial beachheads’, legitimizing the settler colonial political-economic order. However, the Inquiry also demonstrates that such processes offer opportunities for Indigenous nations to contest that order. Indeed, Indigenous nations used the Inquiry to both contest the legitimization of settler sovereignty and accumulation, and press for the capacity to build their own infrastructure and institutions, thereby enacting their decision-making authority. We explore this tension in the context of the contemporary reconciliation discourse, finding the Inquiry’s final recommendations represent an attempt to reify settler sovereignty, while also deepening settler insecurity through the possibilities opened for greater Indigenous self-determination.

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Nationalism as obfuscation: Muhannad Ayyash, ‘Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and Nationalism: On Motivations and Violence’, Middle East Critique, 2024

14Apr24

Abstract: In discourse that normalizes and propagates Israeli settler colonial conquest and domination, analytical attention is given to the supposed nationalist nature of the Zionist project painting Zionism as a liberatory project for persecuted Jewish peoples in Europe and beyond. To counter this discourse and its erasure of the colonized, many critical scholars have emphasized that Zionism is both nationalist and settler colonial. However, to present a decolonial alternative to the exclusive focus on Zionism as a nationalist project, critical analysis must insist that state nationalism is but one of the elements that scholars can analyze within, not alongside, the larger framework of settler colonial sovereignty. This article argues that we must examine the effects of the Zionist project and give the Palestinian experience its proper analytical weight at the forefront of the analysis, not as that which can illuminate the ‘unintended consequences’ of Zionism, but as that which reveals the very logic and nature of Zionism and the Zionist project.

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The settlers and their isolation (reviewing Lorenzo Veracini, The World Turned Upside Down, and Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler Nor Native): Adam Dahl, ‘”Then what are you doing here?” Political theories of settler colonialism’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2024

14Apr24

Excerpt: It is with these three dimensions of this question in mind that I want to frame this review essay. In evoking both the narrative and the normative, both books are deeply contextual and historically sophisticated works written with an eye toward the critical and normative stakes of the present. Furthermore, they reveal not only exciting new avenues for work on histories of settler colonialism, but also show how settler colonialism remains an incisive analytic device for cutting at core questions of political theory revolving around conceptions of revolution, the nation, democracy, territory, and sovereignty. At the same time, in grappling with this question, these works also reveal the limits of a political theory of settler colonialism for future scholarly work to contend with.

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The little house belongs to a settler (and you can visit it): Nancy Reagin, ‘Whose Homestead Is It? Little Houses on the Prairie and the Cultural Politics of White Colonial Settlement in the United States’, in Stijn Reijnders, Emiel Martens, Deborah Castro, Débora Póvoa, Apoorva Nanjangud, Rosa Schiavone (eds), Media, Place and Tourism: Worlds of Imagination, Routledge, 2024, pp. 155-167

14Apr24

Excerpt: Strung across the prairies of the United States, there are small towns whose claim to fame – and draw for visitors – is that they were once home to Laura Ingalls Wilder (1872–1957), author of the Little House series, which began publication in 1932. Wilder’s wandering family lived in homes and farms in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and South Dakota. Some of their original dwellings still stand.

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