settler colonial studies blog | A blog for the advancement of settler colonial studies | Page 228

Can you decolonise without undoing capitalism? Danielle Webb, Marxism, Rangatiratanga, and Māori Economies: Can the rangatiratanga sphere be built within settler capitalism? MA dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, 2022

16Jan23

Abstract: The dynamics of settler colonialism, of which capitalism is a dominant feature, continue to constrain the ability of Māori to assert tino rangatiratanga. Before the arrival of Europeans, rangatiratanga over every aspect of life, including the economy, lay with the rangatira of hapū and iwi. Now there are other sites of power to contend with. The state and those who control capital have significant influence over the lives of Māori, including the capacity for self-determination. Māori have long asserted rangatiratanga against the state through various campaigns to change New Zealand’s constitution to reflect the agreements between rangatira and the Crown in te Tiriti o Waitangi. The most recent effort is spearheaded by Matike Mai Aotearoa, the independent working group on constitutional transformation. Matike Mai focuses on the legal and political dimensions of constitutional transformation, including the construction of a new governance system in which a ‘rangatiratanga sphere’ (under Māori leadership) would govern in partnership with a kāwanatanga sphere (under the Crown). Little attention is paid, however, to the economic implications of constitutional transformation or to the role of capitalism in constraining rangatiratanga. I argue that for rangatiratanga to be fully realised, radical economic transformation is required to the same degree as constitutional transformation. Indigenous Marxist conceptions of the political economy highlight the relationship between the state and capitalists in the construction and perpetuation of settler capitalism. In posing the question, ‘can the rangatiratanga sphere be built within settler capitalism?’ this thesis aims both to draw attention to how settler capitalism has shaped Māori economies and to explore the role of Māori economies in restoring rangatiratanga. I develop a theoretical framework by drawing on Marxist scholarship, alongside contemporary literature on Māori economies, to help interpret the interview data from my research. A thematic analysis of the interviews suggests that the assertion or restoration of rangatiratanga is a central concern to participants in Māori economies. Far from being straightforward, however, rangatiratanga must be negotiated with the state and in the capitalist market, the very forces that have historically constrained it. I refer to this as the rangatiratanga paradox. Building the rangatiratanga sphere may be possible within settler capitalism, but it will always have to contend for power with the state and owners of capital.

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Again on the limits of settler colonialism: Martin Mühlheim, ‘”Black But Comely”: Settler-Colonial Identity, African Whiteness, and Intertextuality in James L. Sims’s Travel Narrative “Scenes in the Interior of Liberia” (1858)’, UZH, 2022

16Jan23

Abstract: Constructing a coherent sense of communal identity was far from easy for early Americo-Liberian settlers. They felt the need (a) to distinguish themselves from a racist ‘white civilisation’ while nevertheless claiming to be among the ‘civilised’; (b) to set themselves apart from black Americans in the U.S. while remaining equally committed to anti-slavery and abolition; and (c) to emphasise their superiority over indigenous ‘heathens’ while at the same time staking their own claim to ‘true Africanness.’ From previous studies, we know a great deal about the material challenges of life on the shores of West Africa. But how did Americo-Liberians grapple with the ideological and psychological complexities of their contradictory position as black anti-slavery settler-colonists? This essay argues that mid-nineteenth-century narratives of exploration into the black republic’s hinterland are a particularly promising source for scholars interested in examining how Americo-Liberians sought to contain the conflicting push and pulls that threatened to unravel their attempts at self-definition. More specifically, the essay demonstrates that in one such travel narrative – J. L. Sims’s “Scenes in the Interior of Liberia” (1858) – intertextual references are not merely ornamental, but instead deployed strategically, in an attempt to stabilise the disconcerting volatility of Americo-Liberian settler identity.

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Again on the built structures of settler colonialism: Michele L. Jennings, Ecology of a Myth: Landscape, Vernacular, and Settler Colonialism at the Sea Ranch, MA dissertation, Ohio University, 2023

16Jan23

Abstract: The Sea Ranch is an architecturally significant resort community on the north coast in California’s Bay Area, with a master plan and aesthetic that is renowned for its treatment of the local site conditions and rural built environment. This study seeks to demonstrate that the Sea Ranch can be understood through the lens of settler colonialism in the United States not in spite of its ecological and site-specific credo, but indeed precisely because of it. In untangling the relationship between architecture, landscape, and vernacularity at the Sea Ranch, so too does the relationship between its visual and cultural antecedents begin to unravel the myth of the place. In reading the Sea Ranch’s environmental and aesthetic citations through the experiences, histories, and means of survival of the land’s original stewards, the Kashaya Pomo, the settler colonial framework undergirding the project complicates the ways in which the Sea Ranch’s utopian beginnings were conceived of and are recounted in architectural history.

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Does settler colonialism lead to drinking? Jenna Lee Hardin, Spirits Of Settler Colonialism: The Luck Of Jesse Fish, MA dissertation, William & Mary, 2022

16Jan23

Abstract: Spirits of Settler Colonialism: Alcohol Consumption and the Temperance Movement in Irish and Indigenous Communities in Nineteenth-Century AmericaThis paper contends that excessive alcohol consumption in Irish and Native communities was a cultural remnant of the violence, erasure, and poverty created by the mechanisms of settler colonialism, rather than a reflection of any moral or genetic weakness. Like all other elements of colonization that their people were combatting, alcoholism was opposed through tactics of resistance and subversion, including the temperance movement. The commitment of Native and Irish people to eradicating intemperance in the nineteenth century demonstrates strength in communal, cultural, and familial survivance. While Native peoples were the original inhabitants of North America, it will be necessary to examine Irish circumstances in both Ireland and Irish America, as the Spirits of Settler Colonialism will also argue that Ireland had longer and more dire issues with alcohol and a failure of temperance movements due to the persistent burden of settler colonialism, particularly surrounding the Great Famine. The Luck of Jesse Fish: The ‘Hispanicized’ Englishman of Colonial St. Augustine A protean businessman, rumored to be British or Spanish spy depending on who was asked, and a self-proclaimed “Hispanicized” Englishman, Jesse Fish’s complex life is exemplary of the powerful capabilities of the Atlantic World to mold men of hybrid identities, and to both shape opportunity and utterly destroy it. His involvement in numerous financial ventures with assorted levels of success (and seemingly with little concern for their moral integrity) indicates the shrewd, upwardly-mobile motivations of a man in the colonial borderlands. Jesse’s identity and outlook was uniquely Atlantic – an amalgamation of British, Spanish, New Yorker and Floridian. Though Fish appeared as a cultural chameleon, a British Protestant by birth and Spaniard in culture and community, his run-ins with both empires indicate a personality willing to take significant risks and switch alliance at a whim. Born with privileges not available to its other citizens, the ambitious Fish navigated the vibrant city of St. Augustine during all three of its supposedly distinctive eighteenth-century periods. He lived through the War of Jenkins’ Ear, the Seven Years’ War, and the American Revolution, survived pirate attacks, and (largely) got away with treason. Despite this, Fish found at the end of his life that his carelessness had caused his luck to run out.

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The limits of settler colonialism: Jackson Wood, Perceptions, Promises, And Power: Anna Maria Falconbridge, The Sierra Leone Company, And The Development Of Freetown, 1791-1802, MA dissertation, William & Mary, 2022

16Jan23

Abstract: Suppression, Representation, and Bias: The Sierra Leone Company, Anna Maria Falconbridge, and Portrayals of Indigenous Africans, 1791-1802This paper examines the first decade of Freetown, a British colony in Sierra Leone. Specifically, it analyzes relations between the Sierra Leone Company, the colony’s administrative and governing body, and indigenous Africans in areas surrounding the colony. Although the Sierra Leone Company officially expressed a desire to establish friendship with indigenous Africans (especially the Temne), the Company’s writings betrayed its intent to control and suppress the Temne. This intent becomes amplified when one compares portrayals of the Temne in the Company’s reports to portrayals of the Temne in Anna Maria Falconbridge’s travel narrative, Two Voyages to Sierra Leone (1794). Falconbridge depicted the Temne in much more respectful ways and even included their perspectives on certain events. For Whom and For What? Promises, Perceptions, and the Trajectory of the Settler Colony of Freetown, 1791-1800This paper analyzes relations between the Sierra Leone Company and Freetown’s Nova Scotian settlers. The paper takes as its focal point the journey of two Nova Scotian settlers, Cato Perkins and Isaac Anderson, to London in 1793 to present a petition of grievances to the Sierra Leone Company. Upon careful investigation of this event, this paper argues that the Sierra Leone Company’s belief in its financial generosity played a significant role in its decision to reject Perkins and Anderson’s petition and that the rebellious sentiments which culminated in the attempted Nova Scotian rebellion of September 1800 began during Perkins and Anderson’s journey. Furthermore, this paper claims that Freetown was a settler colony and identifies significant issues surrounding Perkins and Anderson’s journey to London that scholars of settler colonialism should consider when studying settler colonies. Three such issues are promises made to settlers, the opinions of observers, and the perceptions that colonial administrators have of settlers.

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Islanding settler colonialism: John Scott, Zoe Staines, ‘Invasion’, in John Scott, Zoe Staines, Island Criminology, Bristol University Press, 2023, pp. 60-79

16Jan23

Abstract: This chapter explores islands as locations that have been shaped, but also created, through processes of human invasion. It considers the role of (neo-)colonial forces in moulding the spaces and places of islands, broadening previous theorizing of island spaces to incorporate islands situated on terra firma and bounded by desert. In respect of the latter, the chapter focuses primarily on the example of remote Indigenous communities scattered across Australia’s sparsely populated ‘outback’ as islands in the desert. These islands have been created and shaped under violent settler colonialism as carceral reserves, thereby producing distinct crime histories and patterns. This enables an exploration of how island spaces can be created and mobilized as part of a broader array of governing techniques for dealing with deviance, which are interlinked with racialized Othering, including bordering of spaces, places, and bodies. ‘Islanding’ is in this case co-opted as a socio-political technique to maintain and perpetuate the white settler state’s legitimacy and claims over stolen Indigenous lands: a sort of ‘islanding as erasure’. The chapter draws comparisons to settler colonies elsewhere and demonstrates the importance of weaving together socio-political and spatial histories to enable a fuller understanding of how islands can inform criminological theorizing.

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The built structures of the settler structure: G. A. Bremner, Building Greater Britain: Architecture, Imperialism, and the Edwardian Baroque Revival, 1885 – 1920, Yale University Press, 2023

16Jan23

Description: This innovative study reappraises the Edwardian Baroque movement in British architecture, placing it in its wider cultural, political, and imperial contexts. The Edwardian Baroque was the closest British architecture ever came to achieving an “imperial” style. With the aim of articulating British global power and prestige, it adorned civic and commercial structures both in Britain and in the wider British world, especially in the “white settler” Dominions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. Evoking the contemporary and emotive idea of “Greater Britain,” this new book by distinguished historian G. A. Bremner represents a major, groundbreaking study of this intriguing architectural movement in Britain and its empire. It explores the Edwardian Baroque’s significance as a response to the growing tide of anxiety over Britain’s place in the world, its widely perceived geopolitical decline, and its need to bolster confidence in the face of the Great Power rivalries of the period. Cross-disciplinary in nature, it combines architectural, political, and imperial history and theory, providing a more nuanced and intellectually wide-ranging understanding of the Edwardian Baroque movement from a material culture perspective, including its foundation in notions of race and gender.

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Historical Chinese settler colonialism: S. M. Leung, ‘Chinese Settler Colonialism and the Borderless National Imagination in Late Qing Utopian Fiction: A Case Study of Lü Sheng’s A Madman’s Dream’, Asian Studies Review, 2023

12Jan23


Authors	Leung, SM
Issue Date	2023
Publisher	taylor and francis. The Journal’s web site is located at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/10357823.asp
Citation

Abstract: Studies on Chinese nationalist discourse in the late Qing era rarely consider the role of settler- colonialism in the development of nationalism, instead assuming that anti-colonialism was the dominant ideological source. This article transcends the traditional binary discourse of the colonised and the coloniser by exploring how settler-colonialism helped to project a borderless China in late Qing utopian fiction. I argue that this body of literature, as exemplified by Lü Sheng’s A Madman’s Dream, is a useful lens for exploring how Chinese settler-colonialism developed a (trans)national imagination. China, as a non-Western settler-colonist, had a dual identity: its experience of being colonised by the West resulted in its acting as a settler-colonist, while its efforts to promote a ‘new China’ overseas were intended to create solidarity with others who had suffered from colonisation. This article thus contributes to the growing body of scholarship about Qing expansionism as an instance of colonialism by demonstrating the internal tensions within Chinese discourse on colonialism in that era. I illustrate that Chinese settler-colonialism displayed a unique blend of discourse about expansion in the past, the experience of suffering in the present, and imagining the future.

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Interrupting settler education: Nikki Moodie, Aleryk Fricker, ‘Applying Decolonising Race Theory to the Aboriginal Voices project’, The Australian Educational Researcher, 2023

12Jan23

Abstract: The Aboriginal Voices project has sought to understand how Aboriginal students and parents tackle pervasive discourses that largely characterise these students as failures, disinterested in education, or without aspiration. This paper presents the conceptual and methodological approach to a multi-site case study of six whole-school communities, adding to the 10 systematic reviews of literature provided in the first phase of this project. Working through Moodie’s Decolonising Race Theory framework, we describe the methodology, research questions and methods adopted in this empirical extension of the project. This paper emphasises the perspectives of Aboriginal students and their communities on schooling structures, common pedagogical and curricula practices, as well as the importance of cultural activities and connection. Moodie’s framework enables us to provide a holistic analysis of daily classroom discourses, how these discourses impact young people and their families, and contributes to the interruption of settler colonialism in Australian schooling systems.

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The gendered violence of settler colonialism: Sarah Shamash, ‘Sovereign Bodies: From Turtle Island to Abya Yala’, Studies in World Cinema’, 2023

12Jan23

Abstract: Women’s bodies, spirits and struggles all intermingle, as underscored in a comparative, and intersectional analysis of a Brazilian and Canadian film. I put into dialogue the film Teko Haxy, Being Imperfect (2018) with the film The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019). I investigate what these films communicate about their worlds; what alternative lifeways they propose; how these diverse women’s struggles interlink across ethnicities, cultures, and hemispheres. My focus is on the encounters, confrontations, and convergences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women; between two Indigenous women from distinct class backgrounds and between intersecting Indigenous women’s struggles. Both films are representative of distinct subject positions, geo-politics, colonial processes, and cinematically divergent languages, genres, and production budgets. Nonetheless, I discuss how both films creatively make use of documentary strategies to underscore the sovereignty of Indigenous and women’s bodies as sites of power and resistance to heteropatriarchy, capitalism, and settler colonialism.

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