settler colonial studies blog

Abigail Bratcher, The Transformation of the Steppe: Ecological Imperialism and Livestock-Agriculture in Kazakhstan, 1891-1964, PhD dissertation, University fo Chicago, 2025

25Aug25

Excerpt: In 1929, 7,442,000 head of cattle were spread across the vast territory of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. By 1931, the number had dropped to 2,800,000 animals.1 By 1935, only 1,830,000 animals remained, nearly an 80% reduction.2 Over the course of the First Five-Year Plan, Kazakh livestock herds—once the wealth of nomadic pastoralists and the lifeblood of Russian imperial food systems—were on the brink of collapse. Yet decades later, First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party, Dinmukhamed Kunaev would celebrate the restoration of these livestock herds in the republic as the conquering of a “second Virgin Lands [vtoraia tselina].” In the process of this tremendous destruction and resuscitation of animal life, nomadic pastoralism as a traditional mode of Kazakh animal husbandry faded away. In its place stood gigantic fields of grain monocultures, barns with the capacity to shelter hundreds of animals, and Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Caucasian cattlemen that measured their work in feed units per hectare rather than seasonal migrations across ancestral pastures. This dissertation began from a basic, awestruck question: How did this transformation occur—all in less than a century?

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Localist settler colonialism: Hannah Shepherd, ‘Japan’s local imperialists: Expansive ideas of hometown and empire within the Asia-Pacific world’, Modern Asian Studies, 2025

22Aug25

Abstract: This article focuses on a case study of one Japanese prefectural association and its monthly magazine to reassess the importance of prefectural associations (kenjinkai) beyond the diaspora communities in North America on which Anglophone scholarly focus has remained until now. It also returns an overlooked imperial dimension to Japanese language histories of domestic prefectural associations and discourse over the ‘hometown’. Arguing that the expansive ideas of the hometown, created through the networks of prefectural associations and the pages of their publications, gave rise to ideas of borderless empire and frictionless mobility, this article demonstrates how histories of prefectural associations and magazines like Fukuoka kenjin present a new, regional perspective on both empire and the idea of the hometown in pre-war Japan. Associationalism in and beyond Japan’s empire was not unique, and this article puts the history of kenjinkai in conversation with other such regional settler networks around the globe that were happening at the same time. The article then looks at the transwar continuities and ruptures felt by overseas associations in both North America and among former Japanese colonists, before contextualizing the rise of a ‘third wave’ of domestic migration and hometown discourse in the 1960s.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

The social work of settler colonialism: Paul Michael Garrett, ‘Hegemony and settler colonial subjectivities: The censure of the Israeli Union of Social Workers (IUSW) by the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW)’, Critical Social Policy, 2025

22Aug25

Abstract: In March 2018, and again in January 2025, the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) censured the Israeli Union of Social Workers (IUSW) for its failure to adhere to the profession’s ethical principles. IUSW members have been combat active during the ongoing Gaza genocide and the Israeli union has been stridently unwilling to ‘make any statement calling for peace’. This article seeks to comprehend the IUSW’s stance in light of the twinned ideological imperatives of neoliberalism and settler colonialism. Furthermore, it explores how social workers’ subjectivities are shaped within the Zionist hegemonic project.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Settler federalism: Aaron John Spitzer, ‘Contested Frontiers: Indigenous Power, Settler Rights and the Re-Constitution of Federal Territories’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 2025

22Aug25

Abstract: Australia, Canada and the United States are settler-colonial federations comprising two types of federal units. The first are states/provinces: full, permanent federal partners, securely settler controlled. The second are territories. Historically, territories were “partners in waiting,” slated for federal incorporation once settlers achieved control of the jurisdiction, outnumbering and disempowering Indigenous peoples. The “rights revolution” made achieving control by force less acceptable. Meanwhile, in Australia, Canada and the US, there remain several territories where Indigenous peoples hold significant power. I find today’s remaining territories experience a new way settlers target Indigenous power, not through force but through rights-challenges. Further, I show these rights-challenges provoke “constitutive contests,” the outcome of which are consequential, potentially “re-constituting” territories in amanner fostering settler control. Finally, I explore why territories might be especially vulnerable to re-constitution through settler rights challenges.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

More food for settler colonial thought: Mehroosh Tak, Sardar Babur Hussain, Haris Zargar, Lauren Jessica Blake, ‘Settler colonialism de-develops food systems in protracted crises’, Nature Food, 6, 2025, pp. 751-756

22Aug25

Abstract: Prevalent policy responses to food systems in protracted crises adopt a dichotomous lens of either humanitarian aid or economic underdevelopment, while ignoring the key role of colonialism and/or settler colonialism. Here we propose a framework to enable us to better comprehend food systems in protracted crises by paying attention to the role of colonial and settler colonial regimes and their use of slow violence and land dispossession in de-developing food systems. Investigation and acknowledgement of these structural drivers of food systems change is critical for policy success due to the role of the state in the perpetration of violence against Indigenous or native peoples’ food systems in protracted crises.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Urban resistance against settler colonialism: Giorgia Ciccocioppo, ‘Permanent Battlespaces: Military Landscapes as a Lens of Israeli Settler Colonialism in Hebron, West Bank’, Crime, Law and AI, 06/08/25

19Aug25

Excerpt: Architecture in Hebron, West Bank, presents such a complex array of colonial strategies that the following analysis covers only partially. Since the establishment of Israeli settlements, military presence has gradually intensified to protect the latter from the alleged threat that Palestinian communities represent. Palestinian individuals are therefore subjected to a violent military regime that impacts their bodies, through physical persecution by the IDF and algorithmic profiling; their communal spaces, destroyed through targeted demolition or fragmented by checkpoints and settler-exclusive infrastructure; and their homes, through intensive surveillance and military raids. Life as a Palestinian resident in Hebron is deprived of collectivity, civic participation, and social life. The attempt to neglect Palestinians is materialized in the establishment of two differential temporal regimes. However, despite the clear-cut separation into enclaves and archipelagos, Israelis and Palestinians still inhabit the same spaces. The lives of both communities are still inevitably and violently intertwined. Despite the State of Israel’s justifications of such conditions based on a felt security threat posed by Islamist terrorism, a deeper look into how daily life unfolds in Palestinian communities in Hebron reveals a further settler colonial agenda. Building on the theoretical framework of security and military landscapes (Minghi, 1986; Pearson, 2012), and urban warfare (Coward, 2009), this paper aims to examine the goals and impact of military penetration into urbanity through the qualitative method of case study. Subsequent to the presentation of the literature’s framework applied to the case of Hebron, the following sections will disentangle the question of the blurred lines between military and civilian, war and peace, security and oppression: specifically, the differential mobility questions established by military checkpoints are highlighted, to further move into a reflection over the use of high-tech biometric surveillance systems as a disciplinary tool. The work concludes with a critical reflection on the role of architecture in perpetrating violence and in finalizing a settler colonial project.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Municipal resistance against settler colonialism: Margaret Ellis-Young, ‘Urban transformation and Indigenous-settler reconciliation: Discursive (dis)connections between municipal reconciliation strategies and area redevelopment plans in five Canadian cities’,Cities, 167, 2025, #106350

19Aug25

Abstract: Municipalities in settler colonial states are currently engaged in seemingly conflicting projects of urban redevelopment and Indigenous-settler reconciliation, given the role the former plays in reproducing colonial dispossession. However, state-led reconciliation itself can also reinforce the settler colonial relationship through its selective recognition of colonial violence, Indigenous presence, and new pathways forward. In response to these tensions, this article examines how emerging municipal reconciliation discourses are reproduced, transformed, or ignored within new area redevelopment plans, and the extent to which this “dialogue” indicates discursive shifts to settler planning norms and ideals. A textual analysis of reconciliation documents and redevelopment plans in five Canadian cities – Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina, Hamilton, and Montréal – reveals that reconciliation discourses of relationship-building, Indigenous presence, and unity and inclusion are consistently translated in ways that maintain the settler planning status quo. Crucially, these concepts are transformed in interaction with planning discourses of urban authority, redevelopment as capital accumulation, and the inclusive city, underlining the need to challenge both capitalist planning norms and unnuanced ‘inclusion’ as a response to inequitable development outcomes.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Domestic resistance against settler colonialism: Umayma Diaba, Amal Jamal, ‘Homemaking as everyday resistance: the settler colonial context of Palestinians in Israel’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2025

19Aug25

Abstract: This article examines homemaking as an important, yet understudied, response to settler colonialism. While there is growing interest in settler colonialism, defined by the colonial settlers’ drive to replace the Indigenous population, existing literature does not adequately address the response of its victims. This article highlights the resistance patterns of an Indigenous society facing a unique form of differential settler colonialism. Settler colonial projects adapt to their contexts, employing various means to facilitate the replacement of the Indigenous society. Exploring how Indigenous peoples engage in homemaking provides valuable insights into their resistance strategies. We outline three dimensions of homemaking as resistance: Return versus Displacement, Preservation versus Erasure, and Authentication versus Appropriation of Indigeneity. These dimensions do not encompass all strategies of resistance to all forms of settler colonialism. However, they contribute to a deeper understanding of its dynamics and promote a new theoretical model of homemaking as a resistance strategy.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Water is Indigenous and settler life: Kevork Murad, David M. Chambers, ‘Formations of Central Valley Thought’, Nature and Culture, 20, 2, 2025

18Aug25

Abstract: This essay addresses the objectification facing the Central Valley region of California in the context of settler colonialism and of native ways of life which characterized it prior to settlement. The region was once famous for its wetland ecosystem and has since seen the entirety of its water rerouted for agricultural use. Environmental and political factors defining the region’s contemporary condition are inherited from settler attempts to mitigate the effects of the natural ecosystem on the identity of the native peoples that lived there, particularly by undermining the living relation with water once held by these communities. Various aspects of the ecosystem continue to exert an unsettling effect on local peoples. Educational institutions in the region ultimately reinforce the separation between the local communities and their ecosystem, reestablishing settler structures.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

The art of settler being: Victoria Adams, British Art for British Tastes: The British Art Section at the 1906-1907 New Zealand International Exhibition, PhD dissertation, University of Auckland, 2025

18Aug25

Abstract: Organised under the aegis of New Zealand Premier Richard Seddon (1845–1906), the 19061907 New Zealand International Exhibition was held to demonstrate the colony’s progress to the world and its achievements as a ‘Better Britain’. There were many different facets to the Exhibition, however this thesis examines the British Art Section, an art exhibit arranged by the British government and paid for by the New Zealand government, and its place in New Zealand art history. Featuring almost 2,000 artworks shipped directly from London for the occasion, it remains the largest exhibition of British art in New Zealand’s history. A principal motivation of the exhibit was to educate colonial viewers on what ‘good’ art was within the Empire, and to cater to a market of middle-class art buyers nostalgic for ‘Home’. The exhibition of popular British artists left an indelible impression on visitors, along with a substantial contribution to New Zealand art collection development. Nearly 600 artworks were purchased, with over £17,000 spent by art societies and galleries in Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland and Dunedin, by the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Gallery of South Australia, and by numerous private collectors. Although these acquisitions are of considerable significance for the development of public art collections in Australasia, their impact has been little explored in recent New Zealand art history literature. This thesis addresses this gap in current scholarship, providing an in-depth examination of the British Art Section from its inception to conclusion, arguing that it played a pivotal role in shaping both public and private taste and nascent art collections, and reinforced the desire to have British art in New Zealand.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

what’s new

contribute