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Mohamed Adhikari, Destroying to Replace: Settler Genocides of Indigenous Peoples, Hackett, 2022

16Feb22

Description: ‘This is a volume about genocide, a recurrent phenomenon in world history that, disturbingly, has created our modernity. Mohamed Adhikari equips the reader with a sound conceptual introduction, then provides four detailed yet clear accounts of genocide in the Canary Islands, Queensland, California, and German Southwest Africa. He has expertly provided the big picture as well as the specifics true to each history. Primary sources from each episode invite the reader’s participation in analysis‘. 


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On Patrick Wolfe’s work: Susan Slyomovics,  Lorenzo Veracini (eds), Race, Place, Trace: Essays in Honour of Patrick Wolfe, Verso, 2022

14Feb22

Description: This edited collection celebrates Patrick Wolfe’s contribution to the study and critique of settler colonialism as a distinct mode of domination. The book emphasises Wolfe’s militant and interdisciplinary scholarship, together with his determination to acknowledge Indigenous perspectives and the efficacy of Indigenous resistance. Racial capitalism and settler colonialism are as entwined now as they always have been, and keeping both in mind at the same time highlights the need to establish and nurture solidarities that reach across established divides.


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Systemic settler colonial genocides: Christopher R. Browning, ‘Yehuda Bauer, the Concepts of Holocaust and Genocide, and the Issue of Settler Colonialism’, The Journal of Holocaust Research, 36, 1, 2022, pp. 30-38

13Feb22

Abstract: This article examines Yehuda Bauer’s treatment of the concepts of Holocaust and genocide as well as Raphael Lemkin’s understanding of the relationship between genocide and settler colonialism. “Intent” has been central to the concept of genocide (both in Lemkin’s definition and in the UN Convention) but difficult to locate and identify in the historical practice of settler colonialism, despite the destruction of groups as such that the latter has caused. This article argues for two concepts of genocide: systematic and systemic. The former, based on the Holocaust paradigm, focuses on intent, while the latter, based on settler colonialism, focuses on outcome.


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Settler colonial Christianity: Andrew Picard, A. D. Clark-Howard, ‘The Christian settler imaginary: repentant remembrances of Christianity’s entanglement with settler colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand’ Practical Theology, 2022

13Feb22

Abstract: The British colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand and the development of nineteenth century settler society occurred within the confines of the settler imaginary. This article argues that a further specification of the Christian settler imaginary captures Christianity’s influence upon the entrenchment of whiteness in Aotearoa. Within the spheres of education, land, and war, British settlers employed distorted theo-logics to provide divine justification for their colonising strategies and legitimise their destructive forces. By examining the historic fusion of Christianity and colonisation in these arenas we seek to lay bare the truth of the Christian settler imagination as a repentant remembrance in service of a different future.


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Habitus clivé and the Aboriginal Experience: Edgar A. Burns, Julie Andrews, Claire James, ‘Bourdieu Might Understand: Indigenous Habitus Clivé in the Australian Academy, British Journal of Educational Studies, 2022

13Feb22

Abstract: Bourdieu’s concept of habitus clivé illuminates Indigenous Australians’ experiences in tertiary environments for both Aboriginal students and Aboriginal staff. Habitus formed through family, schooling and social class is also shaped by urban, regional or rural upbringing, creating a durable sense of self. Aboriginal people in Australia live in all of these places, often in marginalised circumstances. Bourdieu’s more specific concept of habitus clivé, or divided self, is less well known than habitus, but offers value in giving expression to Indigenous people’s experiences within a dominant White society. The complexity of participation and educational change is explored here through the experiences of three authors’ intersecting positionalities within the Australian academy. Developing more nuanced scholarly language reduces the imposition of perspectives that see Indigenous people as objects within western frameworks. Scholarly understanding and respect for Australia’s first peoples’ concepts and cultural practices would engage more appropriately and fairly with Aboriginal knowledge and society. Habitus clivé chronicles one version of habitus that can be changed or be reconfirmed but not easily or by fiat. Understanding the concept can be learned, however. Educational opportunity, glorified in today’s higher education, means little for Aboriginal people without long-term strategies addressing existentially and culturally split habitus.


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On the settler colonial parallax: Maggie Perzyna, Harald Bauder, ‘Threats from within and threats from without: Wet’suwet’en protesters, irregular asylum seekers and on-going settler colonialism in Canada’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2022

13Feb22

Abstract: This paper addresses the ‘immigrant-Aboriginal parallax gap’ whereby material connections between immigration and Indigenous dispossession are rarely examined in tandem by considering ways in which the Canadian media frames Indigenous protesters and irregular asylum seekers. Building on the work of previous studies of Oka/Kanasatake, Ipperwash and Caledonia and irregular boat arrivals of Fujian and Tamil asylum seekers, it identifies similarities in the ways that each group has been racialized, criminalized, delegitimized and constructed as the ‘Other’. Employing the theoretical frameworks of settler colonialism and securitization theory, it examines whether the same frames persist in contemporary representations using the case studies of Wet’suwet’en protesters and irregular asylum seekers crossing the Canada–US border at Roxham Road, Québec. A comparative discourse analysis finds that the media continues to frame Indigenous protesters and irregular asylum seekers as threats to the ‘rule of law’ and the ‘common good’. These framings discredit and delegitimize human rights claims that challenge the legitimacy of settler colonial borders – including the right to peaceful protest and to claim asylum – turning them into threats to Canada’s sovereignty, thus necessitating state action. We conclude that this discourse has the effect of reproducing the racialized injustices and inequalities of ongoing settler colonialism.


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Space settlements! Thomas Cheney, ‘Universe Exploration and Colonization’, in Yanal Abu Failat, Anél Ferreira-Snyman (eds), Outer Space Law: Legal Policy and Practice, Globe Law and Practice, 2022

13Feb22

Abstract: This chapter deals with exploration and colonization. This is done predominately from the prospective of the legal framework governing human activities in outer space. However, it also attempts to take a broader view of these topics, pulling in ethical, political, and historical understandings of the issues under discussion. Law is representative of the society that produces it therefore it is important to have that broader understanding, especially when trying to peer into the future. Space settlements and exploration are popular topics. They have long been popular among science fiction fans and ‘visionaries’ but as the commercial sector develops increasingly plausible capabilities for conducting mass space transportation many in the space community feel that the age of space settlement is upon us. This is not exactly unprecedented, and the journey to Mars will undoubtedly prove more difficult than many realise or are willing to accept. Some of those difficulties will stem from governance challenges, and the existing legal framework for outer space activities. However, particularly with the topics this chapter explores the broader context needs to be understood. Neither the terms exploration and colonization nor the concepts behind them exist in an intellectual vacuum. The weight of the legacy of European imperialism cannot be ignored. Particularly as many discussions of a human future in outer space too closely mirror the arguments of European imperialists. This will be addressed initially but it is also an issue which will be woven throughout the chapter. The chapter will also look at the reach of space law, does the Outer Space Treaty (OST) apply to the entire universe? Before looking at the concepts of use, exploration and settlement through the prism of the Outer Space Treaty. Finally, the chapter will discuss terraforming and its links to the concept of ‘Ecological Imperialism’. As a single chapter it can only serve as an introductory overview for many of these issues, but they are important aspect for anyone giving serious consideration to the future of humanity in outer space.


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Space is uneven under settler colonialism: Branwen Spector, Uneven ground: an ethnographic study of Palestinian and settler mobility in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, PhD dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2021

13Feb22

Abstract: This thesis looks at the experiences of and controls over mobility among Palestinian refugees (in Dheishe refugee camp) and Israeli settlers (in Efrat settlement) in the south-central region of the Occupied West Bank. It explores how road, internet, and human networks serve as infrastructures through which the safe mobility of these groups and their respective states is generated, limited, and manipulated. I emphasise the “slipperiness” (Edwards 2003: 2) of infrastructure to show how the flows of people, goods, and ideas are differentially applied to different groups in a colonial setting. I begin by exploring the notion of the multi-sited fieldsite, extending the concept across the discontinuous physical spaces of the West Bank. I then extend this notion of discontinuity to the ways I mobilised my positionality as a researcher in order to gain access and establish relationships among settlers and Palestinians. By drawing attention to the ways that positionality can be differentially rendered according to who we work with, I highlight how this impacts the wellbeing of the researcher and therefore informs the anthropological knowledge it generates. I contextualise the historical mobilities of Jews and consequently Palestinians that have shaped the region, centring each group’s relation to and expression of their right of return. In tracing these histories I highlight the ways that these rights are expressed through visible and invisible means, reflected in the “underneath-ness” and invisibility of infrastructures themselves. I show how Zionist ideologies have informed the occupying Israeli state’s design and use of infrastructures in the West Bank to reflect its aims of expansion, segregation, and erasure. Infrastructures replicate the political orders from which they emerge. In exploring road infrastructures, I show how separate and shared spaces enable Palestinians and Israelis to impact each other’s mobility. Internet infrastructures offer opportunities for creative resistance and regional mobility. Refugees and settlers themselves function as human infrastructures that perpetuate each group as it challenges the other, while still facilitating individual and group mobility.


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What do settlers commemorate? Bronwyn Carlson, Terri Farrelly, ‘Monumental upheavals: Unsettled fates of the Captain Cook statue and other colonial monuments in Australia’, Thesis Eleven, 2022

13Feb22

Abstract: Monuments and statues are forms of commemoration. They typically pay tribute to people or events and aim to serve as a permanent marker, a link between present and past generations, committing them to memory and assigning them with importance and meaning. While commemorations can be beneficial in terms of recognising a legacy of the past and helping foster relationships between opposing groups, they can also be divisive and painful, failing to acknowledge other dimensions of historical fact and further hardening the boundaries between groups in conflict. Essentially, what we choose to commemorate reflects what we as a society actually value. This paper focuses on the unsettled fates of the Captain Cook statue that stands with prominence in Hyde Park, Warrane, and other colonial monuments in Australia. It also discusses the emotionality surrounding such commemorations. We question whether Cook’s actual achievements constitute the notoriety that has been bestowed upon him. A range of commentators have put forward ideas around what to do about the Cook statue which we discuss while also considering what the future might look like if the truth of colonial history is known and open conversations can be had.


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Restitution against settler colonialism: Vanessa Tünsmeyer, Repatriation of Sacred Indigenous Cultural Heritage and the Law: Lessons from the United States and Canada, Springer 2022

11Feb22

Description: Offers models for legally structuring the repatriation of indigenous heritage Extensively incorporates human rights standards into repatriation frameworks Builds on the extensive repatriation experience gathered in US and Canadian law, including NAGPRA.


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