settler colonial studies blog

The abolition of settler colonialism: Kyla Simone Piccin, ‘Taking Settler Colonialism Seriously in Abolition Ecologies: Centring Indigenous Dispossession in Geographies of Carceral Power, Ecocide, and the Abolitionist Ecological Imagination’, Antipode, 2025

13Mar25

Abstract: Scholarship increasingly examines international social movements advocating for the abolition of the prison-industrial complex. Within this landscape, Abolition Ecologies has emerged as a generative intellectual space for examining the intersections of carceral power, environmental exploitation, and racial-capitalist violence. However, there are opportunities to address the material dynamics of settler coloniality and Indigenous dispossession in this literature. Amid debates concerning the compatibility between abolition and anti-colonialism, this article asks: What insights emerge when we centre Indigenous dispossession and settler coloniality in Abolition Ecologies? How might these insights complicate how solidarity is conceptualised and activated in the literature? This article identifies three under-explored frictions that arise in centring Indigenous dispossession and settler colonialism in Abolition Ecologies. These frictions reveal complex challenges for the field. However, this article ultimately argues that Abolition Ecologies offers creative analytical and methodological tools to engage with these frictions. Rather than foreclosing solidarity, these frictions spark new opportunities for analysis.

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Not all settlements are settler settlements: Olukunle P. Owolabi, The Divergent Legacies of Forced Settlement and Colonial Occupation in the Global South, Oxford University Press, 2023

13Mar25

Description: An examination of the divergent developmental legacies of forced settlement and colonial occupation on both sides of the Black Atlantic world. The European powers that colonized much of the world over the last few hundred years created a variety of social systems in their various colonies. In Ruling Emancipated Slaves and Indigenous Subjects, Olukunle P. Owolabi explores the divergent developmental trajectories of Global South nations that were shaped by forced settlement, where European colonists imported African slaves to establish large-scale agricultural plantations, or by colonial occupation, which resulted in the exploitation of indigenous non-white populations. Owolabi shows that most forced settlement colonies emerged from European domination with higher levels of education attainment, greater postcolonial democratization, and favorable human development outcomes relative to Global South countries that emerged from colonial occupation after 1945. To explain this paradox, he examines the distinctive legal-administrative institutions that were used to control indigenous colonial subjects and highlights the impact of liberal reforms that expanded the legal rights and political agency of former slaves following abolition. Spanning three centuries of colonial history and postcolonial development, this is the first book to systematically examine the distinctive patterns of state-building that resulted from forced settlement and colonial occupation in the Black Atlantic world.

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A city on the (Martian) hill? Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith, A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? Penguin, 2025

13Mar25

Description: The bestselling and hilarious investigation into space settlement. Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away – no climate change, no war, no Twitter – beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of original research, and interviews with leading space scientists, engineers and legal experts, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea. Space tech and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the deep knowledge needed to have space-kids, build space-farms and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create a nightmare, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. With deep expertise, a winning sense of humour and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself – whether and how to become multiplanetary.

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Still, settler Puritans: Abram Van Engen, ‘Resisting Puritans’, American Literary History, 37, 1, 2025, pp. 94-109

11Mar25

Abstract: This essay lays out five stages in the development of Puritan studies over the past three decades: Freestanding Puritanism, Diverse Puritanisms, Transatlantic Puritanism, Settler-Colonial Puritanism, and Persistent Puritanism. These categories map onto similar movements in early American studies more broadly. Having surveyed these developments, the essay spells out a few ways forward, looking specifically at Anne Bradstreet for inspiration (one of the oldest subjects in Puritan literary studies). Finally, the essay turns to the dominant paradigm of oppression and resistance, which guides early American studies more generally and Puritan studies in particular. The essay argues that this paradigm, while important and useful, could be nuanced and made even more useful if it took into consideration how the Puritans themselves understood and applied such categories—resisting and oppressing often in one and the same act. The Puritans set up constitutional constraints to limit and oppose authoritarianism, for example in their actions with the 1629 Charter of Massachusetts Bay. Yet in resisting authoritarianism, they also opened floodgates to white settler colonialism. The essay argues for understanding both aspects together and thinking through the legacies of each.

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The gravity of outer space settler colonialism: Werner Grandl, ‘A Mars habitat inside the Martian moon Deimos: the ultimate human outpost with 1 g simulated gravity’, Space Renaissance International, 2025

11Mar25

Abstract: One of the most fascinating goals in human spaceflight is to land humans on Mars and to establish an initial human outpost on the red planet. Visionaries like Elon Musk propose to build human settlements for thousands of people on Mars and even to “terraform” the planet into an Earth-like “Planet B”. But there are some serious doubts about these projects. Mars has just about 38% of Earth´s gravity, which can cause in the long run danger to human health, especially critical bone and muscle loss. Because of the thin atmosphere the human body is exposed to cosmic rays and micrometeorites. But there is an alternative solution for a safe Martian settlement: building habitats inside the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos. The two moons are supposed to be former asteroids which have been captured by Mars long ago. We choose Deimos, the smaller one, to demonstrate the construction of a rotating space habitat with 1 g simulated gravity. Initially a space station is docked to Deimos´ surface, which will be enlarged step by step becoming a mining and industrial facility. After digging a central tunnel into Deimos big caves are excavated and the ore is processed into building material. Water and oxygen can be extracted from the polar ice of Mars. Finally one or more rotating human habitats can be built inside the caves, providing a safe environment for some hundreds or even thousands of settlers, who will exploit the natural resources of Mars and even the asteroid belt for the future benefit of mankind.

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Settler colonialism in the steppes: John B. Seitz, ‘Learning the Steppes: Climate Adaptation and Agriculture on the Kazakh Steppe in the Russian Empire, 1880s-1917’, The Russian Review, 2025

11Mar25

Abstract: This article analyzes how three different groups (settlers, agricultural scientists, and Kazakhs) attempted to adapt their agricultural practices to the arid Kazakh Steppe. For the settlers and scientists, this meant an attempt at adaptation to a new unfamiliar environment. However, for the Kazakhs, the adaptation was to a new political and economic reality of Russian settler colonialism. In examining how these adaptations were created, deployed, and understood, this article explores the ways that climate, politics, and technology intersected in the context of the late Russian Empire.

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Multiculturalism to assimilation: Katherine Smits, ‘Indigenous peoples and multiculturalism’, Political Science and Publuc Policy, 2025, pp. 155-174

11Mar25

Abstract: Legislation and policy supporting multiculturalism in ethnically diverse societies, implemented from the 1970s, have emerged concomitantly with claims for recognition and self-determination by Indigenous peoples. In the settler societies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, there has been an uneasy relationship between polyethnic and Indigenous claims and agendas, with the state often perceived as favouring the interests of polyethnic groups over Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples have tended to reject multiculturalism as irrelevant to their situation at best, or at worst, as a strategy to deflect their claims to self-determination. This chapter examines state multiculturalist policies towards Indigenous and polyethnic groups in these three cases, and Indigenous responses to them. Over time and in the globalised context, those responses trace the development of Indigenous political views on their relationship to their diverse national communities, and to the expression, deployment, and appropriation of Indigenous culture in national identity construction.

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Holidaying to assimilation: Beth Marsden, ‘Media Representations of School Holiday Programmes for Aboriginal Children in 1950s and 1960s Australia’, History of Education, 2025

11Mar25

Abstract: This paper examines media representations and surrounding discourse of holiday programmes developed for Aboriginal children in 1950s and 1960s Australia. Using a series of case studies and print media reports, this paper examines how white settler organisers and newspapers constructed narratives about holiday programmes as part of broader settler processes that sought to position education as central to assimilation. This discourse was used to legitimise the involvement of white settlers in the school holidays of Aboriginal children, in ways that rendered the role of their families and homes invisible, and that misrepresented and misrecognised the participation of the children themselves. In doing so, this paper unpicks holiday programmes – as charitable, educational and participatory assimilatory exercises – to examine some of the stories that white Australians have told themselves about the relationship they think they have with Aboriginal people: that they are best placed to make decisions about Aboriginal children’s education.

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Settler colonial pollution? Liudmila Listrovaya, ‘Environmental injustice in Russia: internal and settler colonialism in the 21st century extractivist empire’, Environmental Sociology, 2025

10Mar25

Abstract: This review explores the colonial land practices employed by Imperial and Soviet Russia and
their enduring influence on environmental inequality in contemporary Russia. Drawing on
secondary histories and academic literature in Russian and English, it situates Russian environmental issues within global patterns of colonial ecological violence, emphasizing the historical
and ongoing exploitation of Indigenous lands, the marginalization of ethnic minorities, and centralized governance reliant on extractive industries. By employing the decolonial lens, this paper bridges the macro-historical processes of Russian imperialism with micro-level research on resource extraction and pollution. In so doing, it contributes a nuanced perspective on how enduring colonial structures and centralized governance perpetuate environmental inequalities. By synthesizing insights from Environmental Sociology and Russian Area Studies, this paper addresses existing gaps in understanding how colonial legacies shape the contemporary unequal distribution of pollution and environmental harm. The review calls for a decolonial environmental justice lens to analyze these systemic inequalities and to challenge state-promoted narratives of equality, prosperity, and the denial of colonialism in Russia’s history.

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Indigenous engagements with colonialism and against settler colonialism: Owen R. Brown, Arturo Chang, ‘Negotiating racial subjection: analysing Black and Indigenous resistance from within colonial orders’, International Theory, 2025

10Mar25

Abstract: This article addresses recent work on empire and colonisation which calls for a reappraisal of how agency and resistance manifests among groups responding to structural marginalisation. We argue that approaching these questions from within the colonial order reveals important idiosyncrasies regarding how groups understood resistance, agency, and popular organising as possible responses that emerged from within imperial landscapes. Using the example of race as a central regulatory category and practice of colonial power, we analyse two cases which we suggest benefit from an account of agency and resistance within colonial order: the Black Loyalists in English America and the Indigenous royalists of New Granada, two groups which pursued emancipation by choosing to remain under colonial rule. The resulting analysis produces a more dynamic account of resistance and emancipation which responds to the far-reaching influence of colonial order for resistance movements at local, national, and international levels. This account contributes to recent debates which call for theoretical analysis of “middle actors” and popular thinking as it relates to international politics, postcolonial movements, and studies of empire.

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