settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonialism is about reproduction! Sigrid Vertommen, ‘From the pergonal project to Kadimastem: A genealogy of Israel’s reproductive-industrial complex’, BioSocieties, 2016

17Jan16

Abstract: In the Israeli ‘start-up nation’ biotechnology has emerged as one of the most thriving knowledge-intensive industries. Particularly the med-tech and repro-tech sector are widely regarded as world class in their ability to develop experimental therapies and medicines based on topnotch ‘pioneering’ biomedical research. These developments have rightly been attributed to the neoliberal turn of the late seventies when Israel started to position itself as significant player in the global health and research market. By exploring the (dis)continuities between Pergonal, a fertility drug developed in the late 1950s by the Israeli scientist Bruno Lunenfeld and the Swiss-Italian pharmaceutical company Serono, and the experimental stem cell therapies that are currently being developed by the Israeli biotech company Kadimastem, this article argues, however, that a much older, but still ongoing history of Zionist settler colonial warfare in Palestine/Israel also lies behind the emergence of Israel’s flourishing reproductive-embryonic industry. A Zionist demographic logic that aims to consolidate a Jewish majority in a Jewish state has created fertile conditions for the emergence of a reproductive-industrial complex in which the interests of a pronatalist Jewish state and a biomedical establishment – consisting of academic entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, biotech companies and pharmaceutical giants – have coalesced. The bodies of Israeli women play a pivotal role in this process, not only as reproducers of the settler nation but also as providers of the raw biological materials that are needed to produce experimental research results and to generate surplus bio-value.

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On the challenges of settling in a plagued world: William Cavert, ‘At the Edge of an Empire: Plague, State and Identity in New Caledonia, 1899–1900’, Journal of Pacific History, 2016

17Jan16

Abstract: This paper examines colonial discourses on race, environment and global identity that arose during an outbreak of bubonic plague in the French Pacific settler colony of New Caledonia between December 1899 and April 1900. The outbreak of plague brought to the forefront colonial anxieties over living on the periphery of empire, definitions of what it meant to be white, the health menace posed by peoples the dominant colonial society categorised as non- white, and the danger the plague posed to the salubrious island environment that had just begun to attract free settlement after the end of the penal colony four years previously. These discourses were linked by the threat, real and imagined, posed by the bubonic plague, intersecting with the ambiguous place held by the outlying colony within the webs of a modern global commercial community and the Pacific world.

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On the impossibility of settling in a settler world: Adrian Howkins, The Polar Regions: An Environmental History, Wiley & Sons, 2016

17Jan16

Description: The environmental histories of the Arctic and Antarctica are characterised by contrast and contradiction. These are places that have witnessed some of the worst environmental degradation in recent history. But they are also the locations of some of the most farsighted measures of environmental protection. They are places where people have sought to conquer nature through exploration and economic development, but in many ways they remain wild and untamed. They are the coldest places on Earth, yet have come to occupy an important role in the science and politics of global warming.

Despite being located at opposite ends of the planet and being significantly different in many ways, Adrian Howkins argues that the environmental histories of the Arctic and Antarctica share much in common and have often been closely connected. This book also argues that the Polar Regions are strongly linked to the rest of the world, both through physical processes and through intellectual and political themes. As places of inherent contradiction, the Polar Regions have much to contribute to the way we think about environmental history and the environment more generally.

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Some settlers would not dream of doing the things they dream of doing: Daisy Dumas, ‘Survival Island 3: Australia Story 3D game that encourages players to bludgeon Aboriginal Australians to death causes outrage’, The Age, 16/01/16

16Jan16

Check this videogame out: Survival Island 3: Australia Story 3D game that encourages players to bludgeon Aboriginal Australians to death causes outrage.

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On the settler colonialism of disaster relief: Jen-Jen Lin, Wan-I Lin, ‘Cultural issues in post-disaster reconstruction: the case of Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan’, Disasters, 2015

15Jan16

Abstract: Most members of Taiwan’s indigenous communities live in areas that are prone to natural disasters. Yet, due to their marginalised cultural, economic and political status, each time such calamities strike, any assistance they receive is usually provided without considering their actual needs. The areas hardest hit by Typhoon Morakot in August 2009 were the indigenous villages in the southern and eastern parts of the island. After the initial emergency relief efforts had been completed, there remained the highly challenging task of reconstruction and the resettlement of those who lost their homes and livelihoods. This paper examines the cultural conflicts that arose during the reconstruction process, with special emphasis on the participation of Taiwan’s indigenous communities and their capacity for resilience. It was found that community participation and identification are key issues in effective disaster governance.

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Playing Indian at home! Frank Usbeck, Fellow Tribesmen The Image of Native Americans, National Identity, and Nazi Ideology in Germany, Berghahn, 2015

13Jan16

Description: Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Germans exhibited a widespread cultural passion for tales and representations of Native Americans. This book explores the evolution of German national identity and its relationship with the ideas and cultural practices around “Indianthusiasm.” Pervasive and adaptable, imagery of Native Americans was appropriated by Nazi propaganda and merged with exceptionalist notions of German tribalism, oxymoronically promoting the Nazis’ racial ideology. This book combines cultural and intellectual history to scrutinize the motifs of Native American imagery in German literature, media, and scholarship, and analyzes how these motifs facilitated the propaganda effort to nurture national pride, racial thought, militarism, and hatred against the Allied powers among the German populace.

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Settler colonialism as the ‘geopolitical production of disablement’: Laura Jordan Jaffee, ‘Disrupting global disability frameworks: settler-colonialism and the geopolitics of disability in Palestine/Israel’, Disability & Society, 2015

13Jan16

Abstract: In recent years, Israel has seen an increase in disability studies scholarship and disability rights activism. At the same time, critical disability studies scholars have begun calling attention to the role of colonization and neocolonial powers, too often obscured in disability studies work, in disabling oppressed nations. This article brings these critiques in conversation with disability studies scholarship regarding Occupied Palestine to argue that disability is inextricably intertwined with the settler-colonial project of the Israeli state. By highlighting the geopolitical production of disablement, this work suggests that social approaches to disability have largely effaced disability injustice rooted in geopolitical power imbalances.

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On Athenian settler colonialism: W. M. U. I, Weerakoon, ‘Athenian ‘Cleruchies’ of the 5th century BCE: An analytical study of colonization as a political and military strategy of the Athenian imperial administration’, Proceedings of the International Postgraduate Research Conference, University of Kelaniya, 2015

13Jan16

Abstract: ‘Cleruchies’ are generally defined in scholarship as special Greek colonies in which the settlers received a plot of land and retained their original citizenship. The epigraphs of Classical Athens indicate a widespread popularity of the imposition of ‘cleruchies’ by Athens in the territories of the rebellious subject-allies towards the middle and the late 5th century BCE. However there is no intricate separate study in scholarship on ‘cleruchies’ and their importance in the Athenian imperial administration in the 5th century BCE. This research is intended to identify the factors that led to the widespread imposition of ‘cleruchies’ and their strategic importance in the Athenian empire. Moreover this study examines the nature of relations between Athens and the subjects upon which ‘cleruchies’ were imposed. The information for this qualitative research is gathered by the analytical study of the epigraphs and numismatics of the particular period and by the critical examination of the primary and the secondary sources. The findings of the research suggest that the allotments of the land received by the settlers in the cleruchies contributed to the ascendency in their property classes which thereby increased the Athenian citizens‘ eligibility for military service. The geographical locations of the cleruchies indicate the strategic importance of the settlements in securing the corn-routes and the sea trade routes of the Athenian empire. Moreover the cleruchies with permanently resident settlers acted as political and military defense during the Peloponnesian Wars against Sparta as well as the non-Greek communities. The findings of this study have helped to identify the political and military strategies implemented in the earliest western empire to control the autonomy and the sovereignty of the allies. This inquiry also shed light on the manner in which the earliest western empire strengthened her political stronghold while advancing her socio-economic interests at the expenses of the subjects.

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On the poverty of settler colonialism: Julius, Wilm, ‘Poor, white, and useful: settlers in their petitions to US Congress, 1817–1841’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2016

10Jan16

Abstract: This article examines the multilateral negotiation of aggressive white settler identity and practice in the USA during the 1820s and 1830s. Drawing upon a large sample of petitions to Congress from the records of the Senate, it shows how white US Americans from the western states and territories addressed frontier relations when calling for a more accommodating land policy. Petitions framed requests for free land and preferential purchasing rights as efforts to remake white frontier inhabitants as market producers and patriots who would direct their energies towards the common wheal. As entitled landowners, petitions claimed, settlers would help to incorporate the frontier-space into the white social and economic order of the USA. White frontier settlements would lower government expenditures on American Indian wars, because entitled whites would by their own actions and motivated by their self-interests help to displace Indigenous groups.

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Indigenous hunger as settler colonial violence: Anne O’Brien, ‘Hunger and the humanitarian frontier’, Aboriginal History, 39, 2015, pp. 109-134

10Jan16

Abstract: Within a few days of settlers’ arrival in Eora country in 1788, disruptions to the ecological balance between population and food supply were set in train. The first conflicts were over fish and the officers soon observed that the local people were ‘very hungry’. Over the next century and a half as settlement spread across the continent, so too did these disruptions. Their rate and extent was not everywhere the same. Different economic modes and different demographics varied their impacts, and bush food continued to be important. Indeed, recent research shows that in some contexts settlers embraced and depended on Indigenous foodways. But while such insights are important in variegating the larger story, disruption to food supplies was one of colonialism’s irrefutable consequences.

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