Nearly 2 million high school students worldwide are taking Advanced Placement tests this May, hoping to impress college admissions counselors with high scores and, perhaps, earn a few college credits. But one test question citing the late Palestinian-American scholar and activist Edward Said on the theme of exile is prompting protests from some Jewish students.
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“I was really startled to see that quote because both of the practice questions didn’t mention the writers’ nationalities,” said a senior at New York’s Bronx High School of Science. “For me including this one clearly had political implications.”
The Said quote on the AP test reads: “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and its native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.”
“I’m in a public school and most students here have the impression that Israel is the one attacking [the Palestinians],” the 17-year-old said. “To put a quote in like this subconsciously reinforces the idea that Israel’s the antagonist, the aggressor, the one in the wrong.”
More from the Jewish Daily Forward here.
Filed under: Israel/Palestine, media, Political developments, Quote, United States | Closed
abstract
To test claims that postcolonial civil violence is a common legacy of colonialism, we create a dataset on the colonial heritage of 160 countries and explore whether a history of colonialism is related to indicators of inter-communal conflict, political rebellion and civil war in the years 1960-1999. The analysis provides evidence against sweeping claims that colonialism is a universal cause of civil violence but finds that some forms of colonialism increase the risk of some forms of civil violence. Specifically, the findings support claims that inter-communal violence is a common legacy of colonialism – especially of British colonialism and colonialism by minor colonial powers – but suggest that a history of colonialism has only a limited impact on political rebellion and civil war.
some results:
Our models on level of communal conflict provide strong support for the colonial hypothesis, as all but two of the variables measuring different aspects of colonialism are strongly and consistently related to level of communal conflict 1960-1999. The lone exceptions are the measures of European settlement, which are negatively and significantly related to communal conflict in one of three models and might be better measures of pre-colonial conditions than colonialism. Our findings therefore support claims that communal violence is a common legacy of colonialism, with settler colonialism being a potential exception.
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[I]f one adds the number of non-natives living in British colonies at their respective dates of independence, nearly 27 million people of non-indigenous origins lived in the British Empire. Of these, nearly 13 million were of European origins, 3 million were descendants of African slaves, 4.5 million came from China, and more than 4 million migrated from the Indian sub-continent. And, communal violence between peoples of indigenous and non-indigenous origins has afflicted several former British colonies. Our findings, however, provide evidence that colonies with European settlement had levels of communal conflict that were either the same as or lower than non-colonies, thereby suggesting that European settlement does not explain relatively high levels of communal conflict among former British colonies. Similarly, communal conflict was relatively low in former British colonies with African migrants.
What an interesting article, which suggests – among many other things about the effects of nineteenth century imperialism – that violence in settler colonial locales is not only lower than other colonial places, but also that it is fairly unexceptional in comparison to non-colonial domains.
The data is fascinating, and the study is huge; though one can not help but think that pre-colonial population figures would need to play a bigger part in the statistics, and that population proportions within a particular colonial geography would help too. Of course, there are many potential determinants here that we might think about (like what makes a coloniser, and how many types of colonised were there in a single colonial space, and so on). That this article encourages us to do think about this stuff is surely a merit, not a blemish. But the topic could and should sustain many thousand pages.
Check it out as an entry point.
Filed under: Africa, Asia, Australia, Éire, Canada, Empire, Genocide, Hawaii, Israel/Palestine, Latin America, Scholarship and insights, Southern Africa, United States | Closed
In 1973 Canada instituted a land claims negotiation policy. Records reveal that the government felt reasonably confident that Indian bands, on average, represented defined political actors with whom the federal government could engage in a negotiation policy. By contrast, New Zealand’s Maori claims negotiation policy was soon challenged by the cabinet’s lack of confidence in key aspects of the average Maori negotiating party. New Zealand’s policy response was to require Maori claimants to engage in a group certification process as a precursor to negotiation. Why did one government feel that indigenous claimants were transparent, while the other did not? Through an analysis building on James Scott’s concept of legibility, I examine historical processes of group formalization which led to different average indigenous claimant legibility in Canada and New Zealand. My analysis shows that negotiation policies can be considered an important contemporary process which has important implications for indigenous group life.
Filed under: Australia, Canada, law, Scholarship and insights | Closed
Abstract
The emergence of whiteness studies as a discrete field of academic enquiry has had important implications across a range of fields, including history. In particular, insights drawn from whiteness studies can be fruitfully applied to the study of immigration history. American scholars have shown that, in their country, whiteness was a crucial marker used in order to exclude certain immigrant groups and the white status of immigrants was tenuous and conditional. In Australia, historians across a range of fields have embraced whiteness studies. And yet, historical studies of the shifting racial status of continental European immigrants – particularly those from Southern and Eastern Europe, whose whiteness was most frequently questioned – have been fewer in number and less extensive than American studies. This article considers that North American and Australian scholarly work which examines the role of whiteness in the historical experience of continental European immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It suggests that whiteness studies can offer Australian immigration history a useful frame for historical analysis; however, Australian work will inevitably reflect different preoccupations to that of American scholars, and some caution should be exercised in importing American approaches wholesale.
Filed under: Australia, Scholarship and insights, United States | Closed
The discourse of hospitality is widely used as a way of making sense of the relationships between ‘natives’ and ‘newcomers’ established by immigration. While at first glance this seems a generous and benign system of meaning to apply to relations of immigration, the reality is more complex than this initial view suggests. Relations of hospitality are power relations in which the sovereignty of the host and their possession of the national ‘homeland’ are asserted over new arrivals. These relationships are complicated further in the case of settler societies, such as New Zealand, where the role of host has been usurped by the settler community. Drawing on the analysis of interview data with young white New Zealanders, in this article I highlight the power relations of hospitality and draw attention to both the value and limitations of this discourse in making sense of relations of immigration in the longer term.
Filed under: New Zealand, Scholarship and insights | Closed
Ex-colonial countries share not only the experience of repression of indigenous populations, but also the formation of new non-indigenous identities. Across the former colonised world, there appear to be common elements in the development of nationalism. But there are also important differences, particularly in regard to indigenous peoples. As a platform for dialogue, how well does settlerism facilitate better understanding across the South? Can it extend beyond English-speaking countries to include other regions, such as Latin America? Is there more to be said of the comparison between Australia and New Zealand? People planning to attend this seminar might wish to read some of the pieces on settler colonialism in the March 2010 issue of Postcolonial Studies. James Belich is Professor at the Stout Research Centre, University of Wellington. His two volumes on New Zealand history, Making Peoples and Paradise Reforged, are considered comprehensive and engaging. His recent publication Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1780-1930 is described in the TLS as “one of the most important works on the broad processes of modern world history to have appeared for years.” Kate Darian-Smith is Professor of Australian Studies and History at the University of Melbourne. She has written widely on Australian history and on the British world. Her works include, as co-editor, British Abroad: Transnational Movements and Imperial Cultures (Melbourne University Press, 2007) and Text, Theory, Space: land, literature and history in South Africa and Australia (Routledge, 1996). She is currently working on an ARC-funded project (with Penny Edmonds and Julie Evans) on Conciliation Narratives in British Settler Societies in the Pacific Rim. Lorenzo Veracini is a Senior Research Fellow at Swinburne University and holds a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship. He is the author of Israel and Settler Society (Pluto Press 2006) and Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (forthcoming). He is currently writing a global history of settler colonialism and is on the editorial board of the new journal, settler colonial studies.
Filed under: Australia, Scholarship and insights, Seminar | Closed
In this major re-interpretation of American history, John Rennie Short argues that until now, both writing about and popular understanding of, the exploration and mapping of the New World has largely ignored the pivotal role played by indigenous people. European mapping of the New World was the product of an exchange of information, a ‘cartographic encounter’ between newcomers and indigenous peoples. This encounter allowed Native Americans to parlay their deeper and wider knowledge of the land into a strong bargaining position, but in this very exchange lay the roots of the ultimate loss of their land.
Based on extensive research, Cartographic Encounters will appeal to a general readership, specialists and students in the field of cartography, and those interested in the history of indigenous peoples. Both readable and considered, this new account of America’s exploration will also force a radical change in how we view Western exploration and discovery in general.
Filed under: Political developments, Scholarship and insights, United States | Closed
Marjory Harper and Stephen Constantine, Migration and Empire (OUP: forthcoming 2010).
Migration and Empire provides a unique comparison of the motives, means, and experiences of three main flows of empire migrants. During the nineteenth century, the proportion of UK migrants heading to empire destinations, especially to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, increased substantially and remained high. These migrants included so-called ‘surplus women’ and ‘children in need’, shipped overseas to ease perceived social problems at home. Empire migrants also included entrepreneurs and indentured labourers from south Asia, Africa, and the Pacific (together with others from the Far East, outside the empire), who relocated in huge numbers with equally transformative effects in, for example, central and southern Africa, the Caribbean, Ceylon, Mauritius, and Fiji. The UK at the core of empire was also the recipient of empire migrants, especially from the ‘New Commonwealth’ after 1945.
These several migration flows are analysed with a strong appreciation of the commonality and the complex variety of migrant histories. The volume includes discussion of the work of philanthropists (especially with respect to single women and ‘children in care’) as well as governments and entrepreneurs in organising much empire migration, and the business of recruiting, assisting, and transporting selected empire migrants. Attention is given to immigration controls that restricted the settlement of some non-white migrants, and to the mixture of motives explaining return-migration. The book concludes by indicating why the special relationship between empire and migration came to an end. Legacies remain, but by the 1970s political change and shifts in the global labour market had eroded the earlier patterns.
Filed under: Empire, Scholarship and insights | Closed
