settler colonial studies blog

Ecological imperialism is settler colonialism: Grace Moore, ‘Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Reptiles: Anthony Trollope and the Australian Acclimatization Debate’, in Laurence W. Mazzeno, Ronald D. Morrison (eds), Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture, Palgrave, 2017, pp. 65-82

26Feb17

Abstract: This chapter considers Trollope’s examination of the tensions between indigenous and introduced species in his travelogue Australia and New Zealand (1873). Examining his engagement with “ecological imperialism,” it discusses his representation of Australian native animals, which Trollope frequently depicts as lacking in vigor, and the difficulties that they often faced when confronted with predatory species introduced from Europe. The chapter addresses what it means to be a “pest” in nineteenth-century Australia, while considering how discussions of native animals became conduits for wider debates surrounding invasion and guilt. The chapter considers the animal as a commodity, while engaging with questions of exoticism and domestication, seeking to situate Trollope in relation to the work of regional Acclimatization Societies within Australia.

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A ‘programmatic settler colonial document’: Pekka Pitkänen, A Commentary on Numbers: Narrative, Ritual, and Colonialism, Routledge, 2017

24Feb17

Description: This book provides a new reading of the biblical book of Numbers in a commentary form. Mainstream readings have tended to see the book as a haphazard junkyard of material that connects Genesis-Leviticus with Deuteronomy (and Joshua) and that has been composed at a late stage in the history of ancient Israel. In contrast, this book reads Numbers as part of a wider work of Genesis-Joshua, a carefully crafted programmatic settler colonial document for a new society in Canaanite highlands in the late second millennium BCE that seeks to replace pre-existing indigenous societies. In the context of the tremendous influence that the biblical documents have had on the world in the last two to three thousand years, the book also offers pointers towards reading these texts today.

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How exactly does colonialism contribute to indigenous (lack of) health? Yin Paradies, ‘Colonisation, racism and indigenous health’, Journal of Population Research, 33, 1, 2016, pp. 83-96

24Feb17

Abstract: In settler-colonies such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, the historical impacts of colonisation on the health, social, economic and cultural experiences of Indigenous peoples are well documented. However, despite being a commonly deployed trope, there has been scant attention paid to precisely how colonial processes contribute to contemporary disparities in health between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in these nation-states. After considering pertinent issues in defining indigeneity, this paper focuses on operationalising colonisation as a driver of indigenous health, with reference to emerging concepts such as historical trauma. Conceptualisations of coloniality vis-à-vis health and their critiques are then examined alongside the role of racism as an intersecting and overlapping phenomenon. To conclude, approaches to understanding and explaining Indigenous disadvantage are considered alongside the potential of decolonisation, before exploring ramifications for the future of settler-indigenous relations.

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On indigenous health and ongoing colonialism (introducing a special issue): Per Axelsson, Tahu Kukutai, Rebecca Kippen, ‘The field of Indigenous health and the role of colonisation and history’, Journal of Population Research, 33, 1, 2016, pp. 1-7

24Feb17

The paper is available here.

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On the population of a place that lies beyond (i.e. beyond the Amur river): Victor Zatsepine, Beyond the Amur Frontier Encounters between China and Russia, 1850-1930, UBC Press, 2017

24Feb17

Description: Beyond the Amur describes the distinctive frontier society that emerged in the Amur, a river region that shifted between Qing China and imperial Russia as the two empires competed for resources. Official histories depict the Amur as a distant battleground caught between rival empires. Zatsepine, by contrast, views it as a unified natural economy populated by Chinese, Russian, Indigenous, Japanese, Korean, Manchu, and Mongol people who crossed the border in search of work or trade and who came together to survive a harsh physical environment. This colourful account of a region and its people highlights the often overlooked influence of frontier developments on state politics and imperial policies and histories.

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On the logic of elimination: Kelly Lytle Hernández, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–196, UNC Press Books, 2017

22Feb17

Description: Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world’s leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernandez documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest, namely its settler colonial form, and the eliminatory capacities of incarceration.

But City of Inmates is also a chronicle of resilience and rebellion, documenting how targeted peoples and communities have always fought back. They busted out of jail, forced Supreme Court rulings, advanced revolution across bars and borders, and, as in the summer of 1965, set fire to the belly of the city. With these acts those who fought the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles altered the course of history in the city, the borderlands, and beyond. This book recounts how the dynamics of conquest met deep reservoirs of rebellion as Los Angeles became the City of Inmates, the nation’s carceral core. It is a story that is far from over.

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With a section on ‘Settler colonialism and the transformation and regulation of water’: Kate A. Berry, Sue Jackson, Teresa Cavazos Cohn, Kenichi Matsui, ‘Indigenous water histories II: water histories and the cultural politics of water for contemporary Indigenous groups’, Water History, 2017

22Feb17

Excerpt: This second special issue extends coverage to additional Indigenous groups and further examines water histories associated with: the Lumbee and Tuscarora Indians of North Carolina, U.S., as researched by William Maxwell; the Andean people of Tabacundo, Ecuador, as researched by Juan Pablo Hidalgo, Rutgerd Boelens, and Jeroen Vos; the Ngai Tahu (Maori) of the Waitaki River basin, South Island, New Zealand, as researched by Gail Tipa and Kyle Nelson; the Puyallup Tribe of the Pacific Northwest, U.S., as researched by Amory Ballantine; and the Yaqui people of Sonora, Mexico, as researched by Raquel Padilla Ramos and Jose Moctezuma Zamarron. While paying close attention to the significance of rivers, swamps, estuaries, irrigation, and other water systems for these Indigenous communities, each of the authors also stress the dynamics of settler colonialism within which conflicts over water arose and Indigenous resistance and re-appropriation took place. In other words, these articles examine the cultural politics of water from a historical perspective.

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More colonial and settler colonial engagements: Andy Clarno, Neoliberal Apartheid Palestine/Israel and South Africa after 1994, Chicago University Press, 2017

19Feb17

Description: In recent years, as peace between Israelis and Palestinians has remained cruelly elusive, scholars and activists have increasingly turned to South African history and politics to make sense of the situation. In the early 1990s, both South Africa and Israel began negotiating with their colonized populations. South Africans saw results: the state was democratized and black South Africans gained formal legal equality. Palestinians, on the other hand, won neither freedom nor equality, and today Israel remains a settler-colonial state. Despite these different outcomes, the transitions of the last twenty years have produced surprisingly similar socioeconomic changes in both regions: growing inequality, racialized poverty, and advanced strategies for securing the powerful and policing the racialized poor. Neoliberal Apartheid explores this paradox through an analysis of (de)colonization and neoliberal racial capitalism.

After a decade of research in the Johannesburg and Jerusalem regions, Andy Clarno presents here a detailed ethnographic study of the precariousness of the poor in Alexandra township, the dynamics of colonization and enclosure in Bethlehem, the growth of fortress suburbs and private security in Johannesburg, and the regime of security coordination between the Israeli military and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The first comparative study of the changes in these two areas since the early 1990s, the book addresses the limitations of liberation in South Africa, highlights the impact of neoliberal restructuring in Palestine, and argues that a new form of neoliberal apartheid has emerged in both contexts.

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Colonial and settler colonial engagements: Ethan B. Katz, Lisa Moses Leff, Maud S. Mandel (eds), Colonialism and the Jews, Indiana University Press, 2017

19Feb17

Description: The lively essays collected here explore colonial history, culture, and thought as it intersects with Jewish studies. Connecting the Jewish experience with colonialism to mobility and exchange, diaspora, internationalism, racial discrimination, and Zionism, the volume presents the work of Jewish historians who recognize the challenge that colonialism brings to their work and sheds light on the diverse topics that reflect the myriad ways that Jews engaged with empire in modern times. Taken together, these essays reveal the interpretive power of the “Imperial Turn” and present a rethinking of the history of Jews in colonial societies in light of postcolonial critiques and destabilized categories of analysis. A provocative discussion forum about Zionism as colonialism is also included.

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Greenland’s postcolonialities (on the Reconciliation Commission and Self-Government Act): Kirsten Thisted, ‘The Greenlandic Reconciliation Commission: Ethnonationalism, Arctic Resources, and Post-Colonial Identity’, in Lill-Ann Körber, Scott MacKenzie, Anna Westerståhl Stenport , Arctic Environmental Modernities: From the Age of Polar Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene, Palgrave, 2017, pp. 231-246

19Feb17

Abstract: This chapter addresses the Greenlandic Reconciliation Commission established in 2014. Examining the different agendas and political positions that have shaped the debate around reconciliation, the author shows how the political processes that led to the Act on Greenland Self-Government in 2009 ran parallel to the UN negotiations on the rights of indigenous peoples, while the term “indigenous peoples” is not mentioned anywhere in the act. She argues that the Greenland public discourse of indigeneity is currently being transformed from a language of resistance to a language of independent governance, providing a model of global significance in terms of postcolonial identity and ethnonationalism. The Reconciliation Commission negotiations furthermore address Greenland’s interest in establishing itself as an Arctic resource extraction economy while recognizing its colonial and postcolonial dependency on Denmark.

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