settler colonial studies blog

The violence of Indigenous boys: Katherine Irwin, ‘Boys’ Violence in Settler–Colonial Contexts: Illegitimate Civic Duty and Pathways to Violence’, Deviant Behavior, 2023

18May23

Abstract: The data for this paper come from an 11-year participant observation study in a public high school in Hawaiʻi. The study included 25 interviews with working-class and poor boys of color, most of whom were of Pacific Islander ancestry. This manuscript considers whether everyday acts of violence among the boys in the study stemmed from common motivations that cut across race, gender, and class divides. The study also explored whether the boys’ violence could be tied to historic, multifaceted inequalities within the settler-colonial order of Hawaiʻi. The boys authored a form of violence that can be called “illegitimate civic duty,” which allowed them to demonstrate their alignment with mainstream nationalist ideologies and masculinity norms. In some ways, the boys’ violence in enacting their civic duty could be tied to common motivations that affect boys across the U.S. In other cases, however, the boys’ use of violence could be linked with their unique consciousness and view of the historic injustices embedded in the settler-colonial system of Hawaiʻi. The findings are used to weave together general and subgroup-specific perspectives on male violence.

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Settler colonialism is an infrastructure (not an event): Rebecca Clements, Glen Searle, Tooran Alizadeh, ‘Epistemic silences in settler-colonial infrastructure governance literature’, Geographical Research, 2023

16May23

Abstract: The existing landscape of infrastructure governance discourses tends to focus on closing “governance gaps” commonly based on fractured and opaque neoliberal planning and delivery processes, privatisation and financialisation issues, and inequitable distribution and undemocratic decisionmaking processes. These gaps represent a deeply troubling erosion of infrastructure’s capacity to serve public interests or confront crises of climate injustice. However, the literature rarely confronts the uncomfortable politics of decolonising infrastructure or acknowledges ongoing permutations of settler-coloniality, implicating infrastructural framings of land, development, property, ownership, and decision-making power. This paper reflects on the current state of infrastructure governance literature about ongoing settler-colonial legacies in urban planning and development. Explaining some of the ways unceded Indigenous land has been exploited to facilitate settler state infrastructure development in major Australian cities, we then draw a line to the complicities of contemporary infrastructure governance. This foundation is considered using a systematic method to review infrastructure governance literature and reveal stark gaps in engagement with settler-coloniality and the politics of decolonisation. In light of these silences, we reflect on disciplinary responsibilities to redress research practices and suggest two reflexive approaches centred on to truth-telling and deep listening.

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Decolonial struggles: Lucas Savino, Decolonizing Patagonia: Mapuche Peoples and State Formation in Argentina, Rowman & Littlefield, 2023

16May23

Description: In Decolonizing Patagonia: Mapuche Peoples and State Formation in Argentina, Lucas Savino examines Indigenous efforts for self-determination, territorial autonomy, and decolonization in Northern Patagonia, Argentina. Through an analysis of the ways in which Mapuche activists organize in particular localities in the province of Neuquén, this book contributes to broader theoretical understandings of collective identity formation and Indigenous activism under multicultural neoliberal regimes of citizenship. Building on interdisciplinary contributions on state formation, citizenship, and collective identity formation, Savino demonstrates that territorial struggles and the importance of the local political level are crucial for understanding how collective identities are configured.

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The skulls of settler colonialists: Alexandra Roginski, Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World: Popular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, Cambridge University Press, 2023

15May23

Description: The contentious science of phrenology once promised insight into character and intellect through external ‘reading’ of the head. In the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of nineteenth-century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, popular phrenologists – figures who often hailed from the margins – performed their science of touch and cranial jargon everywhere from mechanics’ institutions to public houses. In this compelling work, Alexandra Roginski recounts a history of this everyday practice, exploring how it featured in the fates of people living in, and moving through, the Tasman World. Innovatively drawing on historical newspapers and a network of archives, she traces the careers of a diverse range of popular phrenologists and those they encountered. By analysing the actions at play in scientific episodes through ethnographic, social and cultural history, Roginski considers how this now-discredited science could, in its own day, yield fleeting power and advantage, even against a backdrop of large-scale dispossession and social brittleness.

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The premises of settler colonialism: Rauna Kuokkanen, ‘From Indigenous private property to full dispossession – the peculiar case of Sápmi’, Comparative Legal History, 2023

15May23

Abstract: The concept of dispossession has become ubiquitous in contemporary critical theory, including analyses of settler colonialism and Indigenous scholarship. It suggests that in addition to being colonised, Indigenous peoples have been deprived of their lands and the territorial foundations of their societies. Critics, however, allege that theories and arguments of Indigenous dispossession are inconsistent, arguing that Indigenous peoples did not have conceptions of land as property or possession. The critics’ question is as follows: how can there be an act of dispossession if there was no prior possession or Indigenous concept of ownership? This article examines a case where there was both prior possession and a concept of ownership adopted by and extended to an Indigenous people, the Sámi, and upheld by the colonial court system. What can the Sámi case of individual (family) land ownership tell us about the concept of dispossession and Indigenous conceptions of ownership and property? The objective is to demonstrate how the concept of dispossession has different histories in different contexts, and how individual land ownership has not historically been alien to Indigenous peoples.

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The consequences of settler colonialism: David G. Embrick, Johnny Eric Williams, ‘Alienation, Racial Capitalism, and the Racialization of Palestinians, Critical Sociology, 2023

15May23

Abstract: In this paper, we outline the contours of the history of oppression toward Palestinians to discern how the settler colonial racial capitalist state of Israel generates alienation in Palestinians. To accomplish this, we explore how the Global North disregards and/or participates in propping up Israel’s oppressive structural processes for stripping Palestinians of their land, resources, and identity. This includes the Palestinian healthcare system that has suffered decades of deliberate neglect, under-development, and strategic fragmentation, which hindered its coronavirus disease response. We conclude with implications and suggestions for rethinking not only how Palestinians are racialized and alienated as ‘others’ in a settler colonial racial capitalist system of oppression, but how the slow process of identity erosion (and perversion) works to dehumanize and justify the dispossession of Palestinians.

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Settlers see (and paint) what other settlers see: settler art comparatively on display at the Denver Art Museum

13May23

Access a High Country News article on the ‘Near East to far West exhibition here.

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Resubjecting settlers: Kathleen S.G. Skott-Myhre, Hans A. Skott-Myhre, Jeffrey Galvin Smith, Scott Kouri, Desettlering as Re-subjectification of the Settler Subject: Towards Alternative Traditions and Identity, Routledge, 2023

11May23

Description: This book offers an intervention into the process of decolonization through the re-subjectification of the settler subject. The authors draw on what Deleuze and Guattari call minor threads of philosophy, pedagogy, spirituality, and healing practices rooted in neglected lineages of European thought and ceremony. The book proposes a methodology for unontologizing the settler subject, which they term ‘desettlering.’ Rather than fetishizing indigenous theory and practice as a mode for resubjectifying settlers to facilitate land-based decolonization, it offers a fresh approach by looking towards alternative sets of traditions and identity. These alternatives are used to interrogate minoritarian European philosophies, practices, and beliefs, which the authors propose could be deployed to unontologize the settler within current historical conditions. Asserting that such a process is not volitional but a historical necessity, the book offers a novel and timely investigation into who settlers become if they intend to engage seriously in decolonization. It will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience of scholars and researchers in psychological science, social psychology, counseling, philosophy, indigenous studies, and sociology.

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Possessing settlers: Jay Scherer, Rylan Kafara, Jordan Koch, ‘The spectacle of settler colonial urbanism, racialized policing, and Indigenous refusal of white possessive logics’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2023

11May23

Abstract: In this article, we explore how the underlying logics of white possession continue to fuel a cycle of state-supported territorial acquisition, enclosure, and expulsion in Edmonton, Alberta’s city center through the recent opening of Rogers Place, a publicly financed $613.7-million arena and home of the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Edmonton Oilers. Drawing from a two-year ethnography, we examine how men’s professional hockey and its related land development projects are powerful mechanisms for bringing a new iteration of settler colonialism to the city, including as hockey fans re-enact a historical racial hierarchy that privileges certain lives over others, and as police enforce this racial project of accumulation and its colonial lines of force with impunity. Our research, moreover, challenges common-sense ideas about the benefits of sports-driven downtown redevelopment, as well as the widespread belief that settler colonialism is an event of the past that occurred outside of cities. Finally, as settlers renew and reproduce lines of power through these processes, we also explore the various ways in which city-center residents refuse white possessive logics in their attempts to transcend the limits of ‘settler-colonial city-making’ and policing, ‘producing urban space in their own right.’

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Europa Universalis is a settler game: Mitchell P. Losito, ‘Is EU4 only about Map Painting?’ Settler Colonial Ideology in Europa Universalis IV, MA dissertation, Georgetown University, 2023

11May23

Abstract: This thesis considers the historical strategy video game Europa Universalis IV (2013) in terms of its account of the history of the early modern era. It aims to show that this account is one which is predicated off settler colonial attitudes. To do so, this project will interrogate the game in terms of its settler colonial gameplay systems and the ways in which players interact with these systems. The two main chapters will more deeply explore these themes, exploring both how the game is a contemporary wargame, how settler colonial modes represent themselves in the underlying code, and the manners in which players navigate these modes through writing “After Action Reports” and modding. The thesis concludes by thinking about how incorporating perspectives from indigenous creators and settler colonial theorists might help move the game from being just about conquering a map and toward a more cohesive, authentic account of the game’s historical moment.

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