settler colonial studies blog

Archiving settler colonialism: Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, ‘Settler colonialism and the archives of apprehension’, Current Sociology, 2022

28Jun22

Abstract: The ‘archival turn’ has prompted historical scholarship to reevaluate the positivist sourcing of knowledge, especially in contentious contexts. The archive’s configuration, and attendant mechanisms of classification, apprehension, and attribution indicate colonial governance just as much as inscribed histories and discourses. Scholarship on the Zionist movement in early-20th century Palestine has been slow to adopt the analytical shift from archive as source to archive as subject. This article examines archiving, forms of classification, and the organization of settler colonial history in the context of the Zionist movement’s leftist pole. Cases from the author’s fieldwork are used to introduce the term archives of apprehension: how the informational practices and anxiety over territorial reversibility that settler colonial archives are built upon in fact preserve the collective indigenous presence that colonization tries to marginalize. The article concludes by considering how historical sociology can better instrumentalize such archives to learn about the emergence and endurance of entangled settler/native socialites.

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Islamophobic settler colonialism: Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Islamophobia, Antisemitism, Zionism, Settler Colonialism’, Islamophobia Studies Journal, 7, 1, 2022, pp. 96-107

27Jun22

Abstract: This article discusses Islamophobia and its relationship with antisemitism in the
context of the radical European right’s recent shift towards pro-Israel positions and away from
its traditional antisemitism. Whereas this shift also has US and Australian manifestations, this
article suggests that current Islamophobic utterances can be seen as surrogate antisemitism.

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Environmental settler colonialism: Robert Christensen, Worlds in Conflict: Indigenous Peoples, Environmental Challenges, and the ‘Conquista del Desierto’ in the Making of Argentina, 1870-1900, PhD dissertation, Georgetown University, 2022

27Jun22

Abstract: From their first encounter in 1536, armed conflict between Indigenous groups and settlers of European and African descent in Argentina (who referred to themselves as cristianos, or Christians) was a constant menace to both. At the best of times, the two groups engaged in mutually beneficial trade, cultural interchange, and intermarriage. At the worst of times, each stole livestock from the other, burned each other’s homes, and killed noncombatants. The 1879-1885 Campaña del Desierto, or Desert Campaign, changed this equilibrium: in a series of short campaigns, the Argentine army broke the political power of the confederacies that had governed Indigenous society, killing or confining survivors in prisoner camps before relocating them to distant areas. I argue that the momentous changes of this era were often mediated by or articulated through human-environmental relationships. Dispossession and resettlement in far-away lands forced Indigenous people to make creative adaptations to these environmental relationships and many other facets of their lives. This dissertation follows the rise of the Indigenous confederacies of Pampas-Patagonia by focusing on the Catriel lineage of Buenos Aires. It deploys archaeological and historical sources toward understanding the ecology of the Indigenous agropastoral and commercial system, emphasizing its complementarity with cristiano economies in Argentina and Chile. It also depicts the structural shift undergone by cristiano society in Argentina that undermined the broadly stable interethnic relationships of the prior century prior. Using a combination of historical and paleoclimatic sources, it exposes the effects of a famine that impeded Indigenous peoples’ ability to engage in collective action. The catastrophic El Niño of 1877-1878 and a smallpox epidemic were vital in shaping Indigenous communities’ preparedness for and response to the military campaign. As the military phase of the campaign drew to a close in 1880, the Argentine government struggled to find a place for the thousands of Indigenous people they held in prisoner camps. I trace their stories through a series of case studies, following a series of agricultural colonies, a group sent the sugar cane fields of Tucumán, and dispersed communities in northern Patagonia living on public lands to which they lacked legal title.

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Emotional settler colonialism: Crystal McKinnon, Claire McLisky, ‘Settler-Colonial Emotions: Fear, Desire and Romance in Nineteenth-Century Historical Representations of the William Buckley Story’, in Katie Barclay, Peter N. Stearns (eds), The Routledge History of Emotions in the Modern World, Routledge, 2022

27Jun22

Abstract: This chapter considers the role of emotions in settler-colonial history writing, using as a case study colonial historians’ depictions of the story of William Buckley, a British convict who spent 32 years living with the Waddawurrung people of south-western Victoria, Australia. In these histories, Buckley’s story was portrayed as a Romance, an exotic narrative full of excitement and affect, with an unlikely hero moving towards a redemptive goal. It was also marked by the settler-colonial emotions of desire for, and fear of losing, land and legitimacy. By paying attention to the emotional underpinnings of foundational mythologies, particularly contemporarily persistent ones like Buckley’s, we gain insight into the ways that emotion is used to create, build and maintain the settler-colonial state.

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Cold climate settler colonialism: Jonathan Adsit, From Orthodoxy to Enlightenment: Discourse, Territory, and Settler Colonialism in Siberia, 1670-1740, MA dissertation, The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2022

21Jun22

Abstract: Though many scholars argue that settler colonialism did not firmly come into practice until the late 18th century in Russia, through an analysis of both 17th century historical chronicle narratives and 18th century explorer accounts, I argue that settler colonial discourses and knowledges are already present, laying the groundwork for later settler practices. In the 17th century, chronicle narratives portrayed Siberian territory as a darkened wasteland turned radiant paradise by the presence of Russian Christians and the expulsion of indigenous non-Christians. In the 18th century, discourse changed to produce the increasing view of Siberia as an object of knowledge, great potential, and riches to be extracted and utilized for the state as naturalists and explorers began to describe Siberia in their accounts. Maps, too, produce this shift in knowledge as Russian maps change from traditional and river-oriented in the late 1600s to mathematical and ‘rational’ western mapping by the 1730s. In addition, recent scholarship on settler colonialism has provided greater nuance and context to settler colonies and their character, supporting the conclusion that some aspects of Russian colonialism from 1670-1740 were indeed settler colonial in nature, though unlike more intense western versions. Through discourse analysis of historic chronicles of the late 17th century and traveler accounts of the early 18th century, I argue that settler colonial discourses were present in narratives about Siberian territory since the 17th century and are governed by the epistemes that allowed these discourses to flourish.

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Photographs of erasure: Megan K. Friedel, ‘The Indians are Quiet: White Supremacy in the First Photographs of Native Peoples in Oregon’, Oregon Historical Quarterly, 123, 2, 2022, pp. 134-169

21Jun22

Abstract: Can White violence toward Indigenous peoples be perpetuated in a photograph? Between 1857 and 1861, U.S. Army officer Lorenzo Lorain photographed the people and landscapes of Fort Umpqua, an isolated military outpost on the southern Oregon coast. Stationed there to enforce the removal of regional Indians to the nearby Umpqua Reserve, Lorain’s salt prints, now held by the Oregon Historical Society’s research library, include thirteen portraits of Coos, Lower Umpqua, Siuslaw, Klamath, and Modoc men and women. Today, these are the earliest known photographs of Oregon’s Indians. They are also the earliest photographs documenting the Army’s role in the genocide and erasure of Native peoples’ lifeways and communities in Oregon during the mid-nineteenth century. Viewed through Lorain’s personal letters and military records, we come to understand how the photographer’s beliefs in colonialism and White supremacy contributed to erasing the identities and histories of the people in his images.

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Is Indigenous sovereignty ‘creationism’? Robert Geroux, ‘Science and White Supremacy (Part 1): Evaluating Elizabeth Weiss’s polemic against NAGPRA’, The Unmuted Posthorn, 24/05/22

21Jun22

Excerpt: In a recent legal case, Professor Elizabeth Weiss argued that the limitations imposed by NAGPRA (and the California state equivalent) represent an infringement on her First Amendment rights. More specifically, she contends that NAGPRA represents a subtle but nevertheless real attempt at imposing religion, which of course would be problematic under the establishment clause. That clause states that the state isn’t supposed to establish, or even prefer, a certain religious position or stance as it regulates the various actions that take place as part of the process of scientific research. NAGPRA does this, or so Weiss argues, in its imposition what she calls “Creationism” …

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Instagrammable settler colonialism: Laura Rodriguez Castro, Barbara Pini, ‘The “White middle-class farming woman”: Instagram and settler colonialism in contemporary rural Australia’, Journal of Rural Studies, 94, 2022, pp. 83-90

20Jun22

Abstract: In nations where colonialism persists such as Australia, scholars have identified the hegemony of a morally infused white farming imaginary. While this construction has traditionally been invested in heteropatriarchal ideologies our aim in this paper is to demonstrate how, in recent years, white middle-class farming women have been woven into this narrative through settler colonial logics. We take up this contention in the Australian context examining 100 posts to two major institutional Instagram accounts that feature farming women: @invisfarmer and @agrifuturesau. Using the lens of settler colonialism, and a visual and textual analysis, we identify how the “white middle-class woman farmer” is framed by discourses of white feminism and invisibility/visibility. We reveal the emergence of a narrow farming woman aesthetic which is bolstered by narratives which celebrate the “successful female farmer” and the “successful female farm leader”. In concluding the paper, we discuss the implications of the gendering of the white farming imaginary, and make a call for gender and rural studies scholars to de-centre and disaggregate the “white middle-class settler farming woman” subject position, through attending to settler colonialism and Indigenous scholarship in understandings of Australian rurality.

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Wakefield the settler mobiliser: Matthew Birchall, ‘Mobilizing stadial theory: Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s colonial vision’, Global Intellectual History, 2022

20Jun22

Abstract: Edward Gibbon Wakefield articulated one of the most influential theories of settler colonialism in the nineteenth century. Although his writings have attracted considerable attention from scholars, the content of his ideas remains disputed. He has been claimed as both the prophetic voice of a reformed British Empire and the architect of indigenous dispossession, while others have called into question his self-professed originality. This paper explores the place of global mobility in Wakefield’s writings, and it does so by tracking his engagement with stadial theory. While Wakefield’s adaptation of the progressive view of history initially excluded Aboriginal Australians from its analysis, it paradoxically enlarged when put into colonial practice. The article contends that this shift in Wakefield’s theoretical perspective was linked to his role as a colonial agent.

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Vaccine settler colonialism: Mark Muhannad Ayyash, ‘Vaccine apartheid and settler colonial sovereign violence: from Palestine to the colonial global economy’, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 2022

20Jun22

Abstract: This article examines the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine both in Palestine and globally through a decolonial lens. In dominant Euro-American discourse, the invention, production, and distribution of the vaccine is largely judged as an indicator of sophisticated and advanced health care systems and economies. The underlying premise being that the advanced, wealthy, and capable nation-states have endogenously earned the position of power and prosperity. The world’s poor nation-states are posited as the recipients of charity from these rich states only after the latter have sufficiently inoculated themselves. The entire discourse turns the question of vaccines into a series of technical questions about capabilities, facilities, infrastructure, economic purchasing power, and so on. Concealed in this discourse is a settler colonial foundation – an aspiration towards omnipresent and absolute power – which not only creates the contrast between Palestinians and Israelis, rich and poor, colonizer and colonized, but also seals a forcefully imposed settler colonial contract in which colonizing populations ensure their ability to inoculate themselves by debilitating the colonized.

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