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When settlers disappear entirely as settlers: Renata Andressa Poderoso, Nivaldo Peroni, Natalia Hanazaki, ‘Gender Influences in the Perception and Use of the Landscape in a Rural Community of German Immigrant Descendants in Brazil’, Journal of Ethnobiology, 37, 4, 2017, pp. 779-797

24Dec17

Abstract: People interact with the landscape and use its resources on a daily basis. An ecotope is the smallest ecological place culturally recognized within a landscape. Many ecotopes reveal the interaction between local communities and the environment and perceptions about ecotopes are based on the experiences of their observers. We studied local perceptions of ecotopes recognized by rural men and women, in order to understand the decision-making processes related to ecotope management and the use of plant resources in these landscapes. The study area was in Ribeirão Taquaras (Ibirama municipality, Santa Catarina, Brazil), a region populated with descendants of German immigrants. Through 91 interviews (41 men and 50 women) and four participatory workshops, two with women and two with men, we identified 12 ecotopes. The interaction between people and the environment determines their knowledge about plant resources and the environment and this varies according to their social roles. These interactions occur with cultivated and harvested plant resources and in ecotopes under different intensities of management. The perception of the environment reflects this interaction, social roles and relationships, and the historical context reflected in the environment. The different perceptions of men and women reveal features and complementarities in decision-making and daily tasks on rural properties.


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Native space is the limit of settler colonialism: Natchee Blu Barnd, Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism, Oregon State University Press, 2017

20Dec17

Description: Native Space explores how indigenous communities and individuals sustain and create geographies through place-naming, everyday cultural practices, and artistic activism, within the boundaries of the settler colonial nation of the United States. Diverging from scholarship that tends to treat indigenous geography as an analytical concept, Natchee Blu Barnd instead draws attention to the subtle manifestations of everyday cultural practices—the concrete and often mundane activities involved in the creation of indigenous space.

What are the limits and potentials of indigenous acts of spatial production? Native Space argues that control over the notion of “Indianness” still sits at the center of how space is produced in a neocolonial nation, and shows how non-indigenous communities uniquely deploy Native   identities in the direct construction of colonial geographies. In short, “the Indian” serves to create White space in concrete ways.  Yet, Native geographies effectively reclaim indigenous identities, assert ongoing relations to the land, and refuse the claims of settler colonialism. 

Barnd creatively and persuasively uses original cartographic research and demographic data, a series of interrelated stories set in the Midwestern Plains states of Kansas and Oklahoma, an examination of visual art by contemporary indigenous artists, and discussions of several forms of indigenous activism to support his argument. With its highly original, interdisciplinary approach, Native Space makes a significant contribution to the literature in cultural and critical geography, comparative ethnic studies, indigenous studies, cultural studies, American Studies, and related fields.


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Industrialising settler colonialism: Ian Phimister, Victor Gwande, ‘Secondary Industry and Settler Colonialism: Southern Rhodesia before and after the Unilateral Declaration of Independence’, African Economic History, 45, 2, 2017, pp. 85-112

20Dec17

Abstract: The causes, course and consequences of the unilateral declaration of independence [UDI] by Southern Rhodesia have generated a large scholarly literature. Less frequently accounted for is the growth of the Colony’s secondary industrial sector, for a time the most sophisticated in Africa north of the Limpopo. Almost entirely lacking is analysis of the relationship, structural and political, between the two. Without an already existing secondary industrial base, UDI would have been impossible if not unthinkable. While some attention has been paid to the political attitudes of industrialists, no serious attempt has been made to identify the composition, capitalization, ownership, or product range of the manufacturing sector in the first half of the 1960s. In placing the two side by side, this article seeks to cast new light on the business and political dynamics shaping Central Africa during the era of decolonization.


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Settler colonialism is independence without decolonisation: Benoit Trepied, ‘Decolonisation Without Independence? Breaking with the Colonial in New Caledonia (1946–1975)’, in Ed Naylor (ed.), France’s Modernising Mission, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 59-84

20Dec17

Abstract: A settler colony which has remained under French sovereignty, New Caledonia was integrated into the French Union in 1946 before joining the generic category of ‘Overseas territory’ under the Vth Republic. Throughout this period, local political leaders made various attempts to overcome the fundamental double tension underlying the Caledonian colonial situation: the relationship between the archipelago and France (a political link between territories) and the relationship between settlers and the colonised Kanaks (a social link between populations). One of the most notable examples was the Union Caledonienne (UC), a political party that held office between the 1950s and 1970s, whose founders conceived it as a local embodiment of the French Union project. They envisaged the decolonisation of the archipelago within the French state, via the 1956 loi cadre, in the name of a ‘Caledonian people’ unifying former settlers and the indigenous population. It was only after the Gaullist shift of the 1960s towards a recentralisation of power around the French nation-state that local usage of the term ‘decolonisation’ changed: henceforth it came to refer to the independence demands of the ‘Kanak people’. The example of New Caledonia raises questions about the meaning of decolonisation, or ‘breaking with the colonial’, in specific historical contexts: in this case, a form of settler colonialism that resembles the Anglo-Saxon settler states (North America, Australia and Canada) as much as that of the wider French empire.


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Settlers move back as they move forward: Susan Arthure, ‘Australia’s first clachan: Identifying a traditional Irish settlement system in Nineteenth century South Australia’, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, 45, 2017, pp. 19-30

20Dec17

Abstract: In the mid-nineteenth century, the Great Famine altered the Irish landscape forever, triggering mass migration and the creation of the Irish diaspora. Many Irish migrated to Australia, some to the new colony of South Australia. Here, historically, the Irish have tended to be invisible in the landscape, the predominant view being that, with the exception of religion, they were mainly indistinguishable from their British counterparts. Recent research, however, focusing on an Irish settlement near Kapunda known as Baker’s Flat, indicates that this particular community was distinctively Irish and operated as a clachan, a traditional Irish settlement system characterised by clusters of houses and co-operative farming methods. This article examines the history and archaeology of this Irish community, the first clachan settlement to be recognised so far in Australia.


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Settler colonialism in unexpected places: Sami Mahmoud Tayeb, Manufacturing the McCity: a case study of the Rawabi urban development project in Palestine, MA Dissertation, American University of Beirut, 2017

17Dec17

Abstract: This thesis is a case study of the Rawabi urban development project that is currently in progress in the West Bank. Rawabi is the first master-planned Palestinian city that first broke ground in early 2010 and is the largest private sector project ever carried out in Palestine. Once the city is complete, it is expected to house more than 40,000 residents and cost more than $1 billion. Therefore, this thesis will investigate what recent political, economic, and social changes in Palestine have impacted urban development in the West Bank in ways that have made the emergence of Rawabi possible. Moreover, it seeks to answer what are the social relations that have produced the space that Rawabi occupies and what kind of urban form has materialized as a result. Finally, it hopes to explain what are the main drivers of the new type of urban space that Rawabi embodies, how have they come together to make Rawabi a reality, and what goals do they hope to achieve through the realization of Rawabi. To address these questions, a framework for analysis on urban development in the West Bank that merges spatial theory with political economy will be used to explain how the coalescence of urban spatial production, neoliberalism, Israeli settler-colonialism, and the reconstitution of political-economic networks at local, regional, and transnational levels have made the realization of Rawabi possible. The thesis argues what has emerged out of these processes is a new urban form, which it calls the McCity. Accordingly, this argument will be unpacked in the following chapters. Chapter two consists of two parts where the theoretical framework presents the concepts of conceived space, abstract space, and neoliberalism, while the literature review explores recent political, economic, and social transformations that have occurred in the West Bank – all within the context of Israeli settler-colonialism. Chapters three and four are a socio-spatial analysis of Rawabi that focuses on the project’s urban form […].


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Erasing qualifications is erasure: Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder, ‘The biopolitics of declassing Palestinian professional women in a settler-colonial context’, Current Sociology, 2017

17Dec17

Abstract: This article argues that the biopolitics of declassing Palestinian professional women in Israel, which constitutes part of the logic of eliminating the native, is mediated by colonial violence that secures labor market class sovereignty for settlers. In this context, the term declassing refers to rendering this class invisible by disregarding the women’s presence and/or value in the labor market. The study unpacks the logic of elimination through the racialized, everyday lived experience of middle-class professional women in Bedouin society who succeeded in entering the Jewish workplace. These women face sophisticated erasure tactics, paralleling various manifestations of the direct politics of fear that discipline the body, will and mind, as well as indirect opposition reflected in the settler-colonial reinforcement of patriarchal power against women. This article reveals concealed violent forms of power practiced by the colonialists to declass Palestinian women and preserve colonialist class superiority in the labor market.


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Settlers must be armed (reviewing Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Loaded): Patrick Blanchfield, ‘The Brutal Origins of Gun Rights: A new history argues that the Second Amendment was intended to perpetuate white settlers’ violence toward Native Americans, New Republic, 11/12/17

13Dec17

Excerpt: What the Second Amendment guarantees is […] something else: “the violent appropriation of Native land by white settlers … as an individual right.”


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Settler colonialism is an ancient mode of domination: Pekka Pitkänen, ‘Ancient Israelite Population Economy: Ger, Toshav, Nakhri and Karat as Settler Colonial Categories’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 2017

13Dec17

Abstract: This article looks in detail at the often-studied categories for aliens and foreigners, together with thekarat (‘cutting off from his people’) command in the Pentateuchal legal materials from the perspective of ancient Israel as a settler society. In conversation with previous approaches to these categories, this study explores how relating them to concepts of population economy in settler colonial societies can help us better understand the text. Issues such as the tripartite division into settler community, indigenous population and exogenous others are considered, while comparisons with other corresponding societies are also made. This article then also looks at how these categories could fit in with various potential settings in ancient Israel, including pre-exilic and postexilic times.


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Food insecurity as settler colonialism: Megan Mucioki, Jennifer Sowerwine, Daniel Sarna-Wojcicki, ‘Thinking inside and outside the box: local and national considerations of the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR)’, Journal of Rural Studies, 57, 2018, pp. 88–98

13Dec17

Abstract: The Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) provides a monthly box of U.S. Department of Agriculture foods to low-income, rural Native Americans and is a vital component of food security for recipient households. While the origin of government food annuities dates back hundreds of years to treaties between tribes, pueblos, and nations and the United States Government, FDPIR in its current form and function is 40 years old. The FDPIR food package has faced increasing scrutiny in recent years over the quality, nutritional value, and cultural appropriateness of foods included. Using data collected from three Tribes in the Klamath River Basin as well as national institutions that govern FDPIR, we investigate opportunities and challenges of FDPIR to achieve food security for its clientele, and the extent to which integration of traditional foods can enhance Native American food security, food sovereignty and wellbeing. We conclude with a set of policy recommendations on how to improve Native American food security and food sovereignty outcomes for FDPIR clients.


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