Abstract:
Missions were not simply sites of modernity, they were also the source of key data for the modernist theories of human progress. The idea that so called “primitive peoples” provided a window to the origins of human institutions seemed axiomatic to nineteenth-century theorists of human society who sought evidence for these ideas from settlers, administrators and particularly missionaries. The 1870s and 1880s were the high point of missionary engagement with study-bound anthropologists, as questionnaires and letters were sent from the centres to the edges of empires. Missionary responses, augmented with settler and explorer observations, became the footnotes in early anthropological texts on “primitive” societies. These analyses were then mined for the foundation texts of the other social sciences in the late nineteenth century. Along with many other scholars, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels read the anthropology of the period and slotted the findings into their analyses of human society.
Filed under: Australia, Scholarship and insights | Closed
john french on the construction of self and other in south africa, australia and the united states
Abstract:
A new theory is presented which uses the work of Michel Foucault to link the appearance of national identity to the development of the modem state. Drawing on thinkers like Hilary Putnam and Ian Hacking, it is suggested that national identities must be understood in terms of everyday practices, and that state policies in particular are important for understanding how such identities develop. The concept of “enactment” is developed to draw out the connections between practice and identity.
This theory is explored using three case studies: the United States, Australia, and South Africa. It is argued that by looking at native policies in such “settler societies,” we can see more clearly the ways in which state policies work to enact national identities. The three cases can be characterized in terms of the role that native peoples play in the developing self-conceptions of the settlers. This role varies across the cases along a spectrum from absence to presence. Various reasons for the differing outcomes, including economic structures and differences in the relationship between colony and metropole, are explored.
Filed under: Australia, Scholarship and insights, Southern Africa, United States | Closed
Contents:
Introduction
1. Demography – Trends and Composition
Karin Amit, Sergio Della Pergola and Allan Borowski
2. Immigration Laws
Na’ama Carmi and Susan Kneebone
3. Integration into the Labor Market of Host Societies
Yitzhak Haberfeld and Anne Daly
4. Immigrants and Civil Society
Olena Bagno, Majid Al-Haj and Andrew Jakubowicz
5. Attitudes/Public Opinion
Rebeca Raijman and Andrew Markus
6. The Second Generation
Haya Steir and Siew-Ean Khoo
7. Conclusion
Filed under: Australia, Israel/Palestine, Scholarship and insights | Closed
Abstract:
The imperial government had the ability to disallow New Zealand colonial ordinances that were “repugnant to the laws of England”. “Repugnancy” did not operate as a clear legal criterion; the British government could take into account a range of political factors. Instructions to governors were sometimes used to avoid potential legal questions about the impact of disallowance. Henry Samuel Chapman’s judgment in Lloyd’s case (1844) provides a basis for exploring the legal, administrative and political practices surrounding the disallowance of colonial laws. Judges’ and officials’ views on how disallowance took effect show the interaction between political authority, political communication, and legal institutions in a Crown Colony. Lloyd’s case, and Chapman’s extra-judicial writing about repugnancy, help illustrate changing colonial views of the British imperial constitution across the mid-nineteenth century.
Filed under: Empire, law, New Zealand, Scholarship and insights | Closed
Carl J. Guarneri, ‘Mapping the Anglo-American Settler Empire’, Diplomatic History 35, 1 (2011).
In the nineteenth century, British imperial spokesmen routinely referred to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa as “settler colonies,” where Britons migrated in large numbers, dominated indigenous peoples, and successfully transplanted European ways. The term distinguished these “white dominions” from colonial possessions like India, where a small cadre of British officials governed a vast non-European majority, and local cultures remained relatively intact. In recent decades, scholars from several disciplines have revisited the settler-society paradigm. Political scientists compare the dynamics of federal polities and legal regimes among British-origin settler societies. Anthropologists and postcolonial scholars take a critical approach to “settler colonialism” by examining the rhetoric and actions of European newcomers who pushed aside native peoples. Environmental historians trace the wholesale biological transfers that remade the New World temperate-zone ecologies into “Neo-Europes,” a term that was coined by Alfred Crosby in 1986
Filed under: Scholarship and insights | Closed
fire
Filed under: Israel/Palestine | Closed
maori origins
A New Zealand historian says the idea of Maori being indigenous may need to be reconsidered.
Research led by Janet Wilmshurst from New Zealand’s Landcare Research, and Atholl Anderson, from the Australian National University, suggests Maori first settled in New Zealand between 1210 and 1385 AD.
That is in contrast to Maori genealogy, which traces the first arrivals back to 800 AD.
The research, published in the American journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, claims previous studies used radio carbon-dated materials that carried a high level of error. It says the research it has done on radio carbon-dated plant fossils dramatically shortens the “chronology for the colonisation of East Polynesia”.
Professor of History at AUT, Paul Moon, said the evidence uncovered is based on 1400 radiocarbon dates from 47 Pacific Islands.
“There are some academics who’ve said that Polynesians first arrived here in 800AD and that figure now looks to be unlikely,” Moon told ONE News.
He said if Maori reached New Zealand just 300 years before Europeans, there may be questions from some quarters over the idea of Maori being indigenous.
“Some people will say if they’ve ‘only’ been here for 700 years, 600 years, some people might say ‘well they’re not really indigenous’, and that’s a dangerous argument,” said Moon.
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Filed under: media, New Zealand, Scholarship and insights | Closed
7th Annual Conference
5- 6 March | Brunei Gallery | School of Oriental and African Studies – London
organised by
SOAS Palestine Society
and hosted by the
London Middle East Institute
Day One: Saturday, 5th March
Registration and Refreshments: 9.00-9.30
Opening and Keynote: 9.30-10.15
Hassan Hakimian – London Middle East Institute
New Jews for Old: Eliminationist Zionism and the Peopling of Palestine
Patrick Wolfe – La Trobe University
Session One – Empire, Settler Colonialism and Zionism: 10.15-11.45
Chair: Nelida Fuccaro
Playing the Zionist Card: The British Empire and the Middle East
John Newsinger – Bath Spa University
Literature of Settler Societies: Albert Camus, S. Yizhar, and Amos Oz
Gabriel Piterberg – University of California, Los Angeles
The Settler Colonialism Paradigm and its History in Revolutionary Palestinian Resistance Literature: Poetry and Politics
Naseer Aruri – University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Refreshments: 11.45-12.00
Session Two – Zionism Destroys to Replace: 12.00-13.30
Chair: Laleh Khalili – School of Oriental and African Studies
The Palestinian Labour Market and the Politics of Zionist Settler Colonialism
Gershon Shafir – University of California, San Diego
The Erasure of the Native
Ilan Pappe – University of Exeter
The Second Phase of the Settler Colonial Conquest of Palestine: The 1967 Allon Plan and the Search for a Zionist ‘Settlement’
Gilbert Achcar – School of Oriental and African Studies
Session Three – Zionism Controls the Native: 14.30-16.00
Chair: Ruba Salih – School of Oriental and African Studies
Chronicles of a Cultural Destruction: The Appropriation of Palestinian Knowledge during the 1948 War
Gish Amit – Ben-Gurion University
Indigenous Citizens and the Contradictions of Status amongst Palestinians in Israel
As’ad Ghanem – Ibn Khaldun, The Arab Association for Research and Development
Frontier Wars and Robotic Colonisation
Eyal Weizman – Goldsmiths College
Session Four – A Political Economy of Settler Colonialism: 16.15-18.00
Chair: Elisa van Waeyenberge – School of Oriental and African Studies
A ‘Bad Lot’? Palestinian Businessmen and the British Colonial State
Sherene Seikaly – American University of Cairo
The Exploitation of the Palestinian Economy by Israel
Shir Hever – Alternative Information Center
Palestinian Capitalism, Regional Accumulation Processes and Implications for Liberation Strategy
Adam Hanieh – School of Oriental and African Studies
Day Two: Sunday 6th March 2011
Registration and Refreshments: 10.30-11.00
Keynote: 11.00-11.45
Letter from Gaza: On Colonialism, Capitalism and Resistance
Rabah Mohanna – Palestinian Legislative Council, Gaza
Counterfeit Citizenship: On the Politics of Property in Nahr El-Bared
Monika Halkort – Queen’s University, Belfast
Ethnic Cleansing in the Naqab: The Razings of the Bedouin Village of
Al-‘Araqib
Mansour Nsasra – University of Exeter
Policing, Self-Policing and Indigenous Collaboration
Mouin Rabbani – Institute of Palestine Studies
Lunch: 13.15-14.15
Session Six – Overcoming Zionism, Dismantling Settler Colonialism: 14.15-15.45 Chair: Jan Jananayagam – Tamils Against GenocideDecolonising Settler Colonialisms
Lorenzo Veracini – Swinburne University of Technology
The Power and Pitfalls of a Support Movement: Campaigning Against the Jewish National Fund
Selma James – International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
Towards Common Liberation
Mezna Qato – University of Oxford
Refreshments: 15.45-16.00
Roundtable – Unsettling (Settler) Colonialism: 16.00-18.00
Tickets
Please note SEATS ARE LIMITED – book in advance
Price: £30 (£20 concessions, and £40 organisations) – all tickets include lunch and refreshments
To buy your tickets
Online – www.soaspalsoc.org
By cheque: Send cheques payable to SOAS Palestine Society with attached note of email address to: SOAS Palestine Society, Thornhaugh Street, London, WC1H 0XG
Location
SOAS Brunei Gallery
Thornhaugh Street
Russell Square
London, WC1H 0XG
Filed under: Israel/Palestine, Scholarship and insights, Seminar | Closed
Bryan Fischer, from the American Family Association, freaking out about the UN-DRIP:
Perhaps he figures that, as an adopted Crow Indian, he will be the new chief over this revived Indian empire.
But for the other 312 million of us, I think we’ll settle for our constitutional “We the people” form of government, thank you very much.
For more on Obama’s transformation from Muslim radical to land-seizing Crow, see here.
Hat tip, Dave G.
Filed under: media, Political developments, United States | Closed
mars society
The Purpose of the Mars Society
- Broad public outreach to instill the vision of pioneering Mars.
- Support of ever more aggressive government funded Mars exploration programs around the world.
- Conducting Mars exploration on a private basis.
Check it out here; heck, even join the ‘task force’.
Filed under: outer space, wacky, Website | Closed
