Lorenzo Veracini, ‘The Other Shift: Settler Colonialism, Israel, and the Occupation’, Journal of Palestine Studies 42, 2 (2013).

 This densely argued essay offers an original approach to the study of Israel-Palestine through the lens of colonial studies. The author’s argument rests, inter alia, on the distinction between colonialism, which succeeds by keeping colonizer and colonized separate, and settler colonialism, where ultimate success is achieved when the settlers are “indigenized” and cease to be seen as settlers. Referring to the pre-1948 and post-1967 contexts, the author shows how and why Israel, itself a successful settler colonial project emerging from the British mandate, has failed to create a successful settler project in the occupied territories; indeed, and paradoxically, the occupation’s very success (in terms of unassailable control) renders the project’s success (in terms of settler integration/indigenization) impossible. Also addressed are the consequences of occupation, particularly what the author calls Israel’s “recolonization,” and the implications of the approach outlined for the Israel-Palestine conflict and its resolution.

Christopher Alcantara and Jen Nelles, ‘Indigenous Peoples and the State in Settler Societies: Toward a More Robust Definition of Multilevel Governance’, Publius (2013).

Over the past fifty years, Indigenous peoples in settler countries have mobilized to demand policy and institutional changes from their respective states. Although some scholars have employed multilevel governance (MLG) to make sense of these developments, none has examined systematically whether MLG accurately describes these phenomena. We address this lacuna by creating a more robust definition of MLG and applying it to a sample of Indigenous–settler interactions in Canada. Our findings suggest that MLG is an applicable concept for some, but not for all of the Indigenous–state interactions that are typically assumed to be instances of MLG. This conceptual clarification should help scholars from a variety of countries to use MLG more effectively to analyze the relationships between Indigenous peoples and their respective states.

Anna Maria Kowalczyk, ‘Indigenous Peoples and Modernity: Mapuche Mobilizations in Chile’, Latin American Perspectives (April 15, 2013).

The twenty-first century has ushered in a new era for the numerous social and political movements of Mapuche indigenous groups in Chile. Apart from distancing themselves from state institutionality and demanding autonomy, they have tended to reject alliances with the traditional left, considering it alien to indigenous subjectivities. Study of these various “new wave” movements paying particular attention to the relationship between indigenous and modern subjectivities suggests that, while the historical memory of Mapuche social and political organization may contribute to the creation of a powerful progressive social movement, the highly modernized Mapuche indigenous cultures are also quite compatible with an indigenous brand of neoliberalism.

El siglo veintiuno dio paso a una nueva era para los numerosos movimientos sociales y políticos de grupos indígenas mapuches en Chile. Aparte de distanciarse de la institucionalidad estatal y exigir autonomía, también solían rechazar una alianza con la izquierda tradicional, considerándola ajena a las subjetividades indígenas. Un estudio de la relación entre subjetividades indígenas y modernas sugiere que, mientras la memoria histórica de organización social y política mapuche podría contribuir a la creación de un poderoso movimiento progresista social, las modernizadas culturas indígenas mapuches son también altamente compatibles con una marca indígena de neoliberalismo.

Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, Angie Morrill, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy’, Feminist Formations 25, 1 (2013).

The article explores two intertwined ideas: that the United States is a settler colonial nation-state and that settler colonialism has been and continues to be a gendered process. The article engages Native feminist theories to excavate the deep connections between settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy, highlighting five central challenges that Native feminist theories pose to gender and women’s studies. From problematizing settler colonialism and its intersections to questioning academic participation in Indigenous dispossession, responding to these challenges requires a significant departure from how gender and women’s studies is regularly understood and taught. Too often, the consideration of Indigenous peoples remains rooted in understanding colonialism as an historical point in time away from which our society has progressed. Centering settler colonialism within gender and women’s studies instead exposes the still-existing structure of settler colonialism and its powerful effects on Indigenous peoples and settlers. Taking as its audience practitioners of both “whitestream” and other feminisms and writing in conversation with a long history of Native feminist theorizing, the article offers critical suggestions for the meaningful engagement of Native feminisms. Overall, it aims to persuade readers that attending to the links between heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism is intellectually and politically imperative for all peoples living within settler colonial contexts.

Radha D’Souza, ‘Imperialism and Self-determination: Revisiting the Nexus in Lenin’, Economic & Political Weekly vol xlvIiI no 15 (2013).

This essay examines the nexus between self-determination, imperialism and the importance of Marxist theory in Lenin’s writings. It argues that the three strands were inseparably connected in Lenin’s thinking. The breakdown of the unity of the three strands of thought has impeded our understanding of contemporary imperialism.

Critics of Israeli pinkwashing in the United States and Canada have increasingly engaged in comparative critiques of settler colonialism. Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in Toronto has invoked this critique for many years. Pinkwatchers across Canada also draw ties between Palestinian and Indigenous solidarity that are heightened by the recent emergence in Canada of the Indigenous people’s movement Idle No More. Today, scholars and activists ask how homonationalism and pinkwashing perform settler colonialism in Palestine, Canada, and the United States, and how settler colonialism in each state impacts their work. I write this piece to encourage such questions, and to invite questioners to address their relationship to Indigenous solidarity. As a white queer critic of United States and Canadian settler colonialism, my experience with Indigenous solidarity in these states informs how I engage Palestinian solidarity. Queer / trans Indigenous critiques and allied work by non-Natives already model a critique of settler colonialism and sexualization in Canada and the United States. Their potential synergy with critiques of Israeli pinkwashing can explain the forms of power we face and can expand and deepen our alliances.

Scott Lauria Morgensen, ‘Settler Colonialism and Alliance: Comparative Challenges to Pinkwashing and Homonationalism’, Jadaliyya. 

Bain Attwood, ‘Returning to the Past: The South Australian Colonisation Commission, the Colonial Office and Aboriginal Title’, Journal of Legal History 34, 1 (2013).

In the closing decades of the twentieth century many scholars sought to both address and redress the ways in which indigenous people’s rights in land had been treated historically by colonisers in Anglophone settler societies. More recently, this work has been criticised by a new generation of legal historians who have sought to delineate more carefully the role that the law actually played in the treatment of aboriginal title in the past. In keeping with the latter approach, this article seeks to recover the manner in which the indigenous people’s interests in land were treated in the British colony of South Australia at the time it was founded in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. It emphasises the manner in which the colonisers, the South Australian Colonisation Commission, rather than the British Colonial Office, deployed a range of legal arguments, especially in the context of political negotiations between these two parties. It concludes that the imperial government’s treatment of indigenous interests in land was primarily determined by its perception of the relationships of power on the ground between the colonial state, the settlers and the Aboriginal people rather than by its application of any particular legal principle or norm.

Iyko Day, ‘Tseng Kwong Chi and the Eugenic Landscape’, American Quarterly 65, 1 (2013)

My essay examines Tseng Kwong Chi’s photographs of US and Canadian landscapes as a queer parody of the Western conventions associated with landscape art of the early twentieth century. Exploring the influence of Ansel Adams, Gutzon Borglum, and the Canadian Group of Seven landscape artists, I argue that Tseng’s photographs parody the eugenic ideals projected onto the settler colonial landscape.

Sam Moyo & Walter Chambati (ed.), Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe: Beyond White-Settler Capitalism (Dakar, CODESRIA & AIAS, 2013).

This book is a product of CODESRIA National Working Group on Zimbabwe

The Fast Track Land Reform Programme implemented during the 2000s in Zimbabwe represents the only instance of radical redistributive land reforms since the end of the Cold War. It reversed the racially-skewed agrarian structure and discriminatory land tenures inherited from colonial rule. The land reform also radicalised the state towards a nationalist, introverted accumulation strategy, against a broad array of unilateral Western sanctions. Indeed, Zimbabwe’s land reform, in its social and political dynamics, must be compared to the leading land reforms of the twentieth century, which include those of Mexico, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Cuba and Mozambique.

The fact that the Zimbabwe case has not been recognised as vanguard nationalism has much to do with the ‘intellectual structural adjustment’ which has accompanied neoliberalism and a hostile media campaign. This has entailed dubious theories of ‘neopatrimonialism’, which reduce African politics and the state to endemic ‘corruption’, ‘patronage’, and ‘tribalism’ while overstating the virtues of neoliberal good governance. Under this racist repertoire, it has been impossible to see class politics, mass mobilisation and resistance, let alone believe that something progressive can occur in Africa.

This book comes to a conclusion that the Zimbabwe land reform represents a new form of resistance with distinct and innovative characteristics when compared to other cases of radicalisation, reform and resistance. The process of reform and resistance has entailed the deliberate creation of a tri-modal agrarian structure to accommodate and balance the interests of various domestic classes, the progressive restructuring of labour relations and agrarian markets, the continuing pressures for radical reforms (through the indigenisation of mining and other sectors), and the rise of extensive, albeit relatively weak, producer cooperative structures.

The book also highlights some of the resonances between the Zimbabwean land struggles and those on the continent, as well as in the South in general, arguing that there are some convergences and divergences worthy of intellectual attention. The book thus calls for greater endogenous empirical research which overcomes the pre-occupation with failed interpretations of the nature of the state and agency in Africa.