settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonial ontocides? Severin Fowles, ‘Settler Ontocide’, in Gavin Lucas, Shannon Lee Dawdy (eds), Undoing Things: How Objects, Bodies and Worlds Come Apart, Routledge, 2025

11May25

Abstract: It is increasingly claimed that the global environmental crisis known as the Anthropocene is poised to universalize the experience of land dispossession, economic breakdown, and societal unworlding, leaving history’s colonizers as vulnerable as those they have colonized. The former now awkwardly look to the latter for models of how to survive collapse and to build more sustainable worlds in the aftermath of the current political order and the capitalist system that animates it. This chapter considers the growing ecological imperative to dismantle settler colonialism and its links to fantasies of “becoming indigenous.” It argues that such fantasies have historical roots in the post-World War II era among the first generation raised in the wake of the atomic bomb. Looking to the 1960s hippie communes of the American West as on-the-ground experiments in the conscious rejection of capitalism, militarism, and settler subjectivities, this chapter explores the paradoxes therein, asking what happens when our political projects of undoing themselves come undone.

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Silicon Palestine: Antti Tarvainen, Silicon Palestine: An Inquiry into the Entanglements of Innovation and Settler Colonialism, PhD dissertation, Univesrity of Helsinki, 2025

11May25

Abstract: ‘New worlds’ and new beginnings populate the dreams of both innovation and settler colonialism. In this dissertation I examine how innovation economy is made in entanglement with settler colonial expansions and struggles. The thesis takes place in ‘Silicon Palestine’: the shifting frontiers of technological innovation and risk capital that bring Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, and spaces like San Francisco and Dubai into interplay. ‘Innovation’ appears in this dissertation not as a universal economic form but as a site of political struggle and creativity. Innovation is a gathering of heterogenous and contradictory forces, actors and imaginaries in which the purity of settler colonialism and capitalism is lost. The conceptual framework of the thesis bridges settler colonial and relational theory. Through the perspective of ‘entanglements’ — a relation that is not determined but inherently dynamic and heterogenous — I examine the relations between settler colonialism and innovation economy through four analytical lenses: political myth, temporality, spatiality, and embodiments. The research material is collected through an explorative and ethnographic research design between 2019 and 2023, during a total of 13 months of fieldwork in the urban spaces of innovation. Most data come from the Palestinian occupied territories: Ramallah, Rawabi, and East Jerusalem – but also from places such as Tel Aviv/Jaffa and San Francisco. Key materials include 140 interviews with Israeli and Palestinian innovation elites, photographs and fieldnotes from innovation hubs, and popular innovation literature. The empirical chapters interrogate the entanglements of innovation and settler colonialism in their various constellations ranging from histories to political myths, from urbanities to practices of tech-outsourcing, and from peace- to genocidal war-making. The work contributes to discussions on the relationships between settler colonialism and global capitalism, the critical analyses of innovation, and the global approaches on Palestine/Israel. Two key arguments are central to the work. First, Silicon Palestine shows that the settler colonial state plays a defining role in the global constitution of innovation economy. The study decenters both the neoliberal and the techno-universalist notions of violence to make space for a more colonially informed reading. Second, Silicon Palestine productively destabilises both the categories of ‘innovation’ and ‘settler colonialism’ by departing from the unidirectional dramas of capitalist expansion and the contained geographies and binaries of settler colonialism. Rather than a periphery or a passive object of capitalist and settler colonial expansion, Palestine emerges as a crucial site of global theory. Silicon Palestine shows power in its violence and in its irresolvable heterogeneity and fragility.

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Replanning the settler city: Nadeem Karkabi, Eilat Maoz, ‘Decolonizing Haifa: Urban Transformation and the Politics of Return’, Palestine/Israel Review, 2025

10May25

Excerpt: Late in the summer of 2024, one of the authors of this introduction (EM) boarded a bus from the neighborhood of Bat Galim to Hadar HaCarmel in Haifa. Sitting across from her was an elderly Jewish woman who, clearly seeking conversation, began complaining about changes to the bus’s schedule, her neighborhood, and the city in general. “It’s all Arabs here now,” she said without reservation, “we always lived with them. I grew up with the Arabs who live by Saint George’s church, but now . . . now they are everywhere.” She linked Palestinian growing presence to the loss of the city’s Jewish character, pointing to loud music played on Shabbat and disregard for Yom Kippur observances. It was nighttime. The bus climbed through old Stanton Road, now called Shivat Tsion (literally: Zion’s Return). The road was built during the British Mandate to connect Palestinian downtown with the Jewish settlement up the mountain. “Look!” the woman gestured out the window, “Here was the mayor’s house, and we lived down there.” The mayor’s house belonged to Abed Al-Rahman Al Haj, Palestinian mayor of Haifa between 1920 and 1929. Today, it is one of the only remaining structures of Palestinian Wadi Salib and was recently sold to Jewish speculators. “You know, Arabs bought all the houses up here, and even in the Carmel,” the woman continued. “This is dangerous since, you know, Haifa used to be Arab”. This brief encounter, mundane as it is unsettling, highlights significant changes unfolding in Haifa over recent decades. A historically diverse city, from which almost all of the Palestinian population was expelled in 1948 (Manna 2022; Morris 2004), Haifa is slowly regaining a prominent Palestinian presence. This is evident in the growing number of Palestinian residents in many of the city’s neighborhoods, in the growing power of Palestinian capital in processes of urban development, and, perhaps most importantly, in growing Palestinian claims on urban space, history, and identity. For the Jewish woman cited earlier, these changes appear threatening, as they upend longstanding power dynamics between ethnonational collectives. What worries her, it seems, is less the mere fact of having Palestinian neighbors, and more the changing relations between rulers and ruled, “homeowners” and “guests,” or, indeed, between settlers and natives. Hence, her assessment that “Arabs bought all the houses here,” which, if not entirely false, is certainly exaggerated, and hence her concerns about the growing influence of Palestinians over the city’s public character. Yet, what is particularly troubling to her is how contemporary changes conjure up historical specters, as they recover a city that “used to be Arab” before the ethnic cleansing of 1948. She clearly identifies Palestinian life in Haifa with a kind of collective return, a prospect she views as dangerous and tangible. Perhaps this is because she, like many others raised on colonial dread, fears that the Palestinians will do to the Zionists what they did to them.

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French settler colonialism in action: Rahoui Fatna, ‘French Colonial Policy in Algeria: Integration and Naturalisation Policies as a Model’, Science, Education and Innovations in the Context of Modern Problems, 8, 3, pp. 625-642

10May25

Abstract: The policies of integration and naturalisation are among the most significant strategies that French colonialism sought to implement in the Algerian territory as part of a comprehensive colonial project. Its primary aim was to assimilate and dissolve Algerian identity within the French colonial entity politically, religiously, and culturally to extend its influence over the region and seize its wealth and resources, thereby attempting to subject the Algerian people to eternal rule. Within the framework of this integration policy, colonial France implemented various political, administrative, and judicial laws and legislation in Algeria. This paper seeks to present the most prominent laws before addressing the French naturalisation laws applied in colonial Algeria under successive governments and examining the position of Algerians, both elites and the general populace, towards these measures.

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Replanning the settler city: Kaila Fely Escleto Tawera, Charting the Journey: Indigenous Kinship, Identity and Replanning the Settler-Colonial City, MA dissertation, University of Otago, 2025

10May25

Abstract: Urban environments worldwide are dynamic spaces symbolising progress and innovation. However, these sites of human significance are also commonly steeped in rich histories of genocide, displacement, and dispossession of Indigenous populations. Contemporary settler-colonial cities not only occupy Indigenous lands but effectively alienate the notion of Indigeneity that inherently exists within them. Aotearoa New Zealand cities are no exception. In Aotearoa, cities continue to reinforce colonial narratives through the fragmentation, dilution, and exclusion of Indigenous Māori geographies and identities (Puketapu-Dentice et al., 2017). Colonialism and urbanisation in Aotearoa have engendered the atrophy of everyday Māori traditions, practices, and social structures, resulting in disproportionately negative health, education, and economic impacts (Ryks et al., 2014). Urban spaces profoundly impact the identity and experiences of the people occupying them. In Aotearoa, New Zealand, our urban milieu might reasonably be expected to reflect the Treaty-based biculturalism shared between New Zealand Māori and non-Māori cultures. However, urban spaces, alongside policy and decision-making, continue to deliver a one-sided Western narrative that does not reflect the diversity in the nation (Akena, 2012). This research critiques such Western oversight within settler-colonial cities. It does so by exploring the experiences of New Zealand Māori young people, both those living within and beyond their tribal territories, in two urban locations: Ōtepoti (Dunedin) and Tūranga (Gisborne). These small cities offer unique case studies distinct from larger urban areas. Focusing on the smaller urban centres, the research articulates potential opportunities and insights to inform more inclusive and equitable approaches to urban planning in a settler-colonial context on the periphery. In addition, exploring how Māori young people perceive and encounter their respective urban environments provides insights into identity and sense of belonging for Indigenous citizens. This investigation contributes to a nuanced understanding of Indigenous experiences within place and how place attributes can be conducive to facilitating aspects of identity and contemporary placemaking. A Kaupapa Māori methodology (Smith, 2012) has been used to ensure that the research, from its inception to its dissemination, is firmly grounded in Māori philosophy, epistemology, and ontology. Upholding a Kaupapa Māori perspective provides an avenue to mainstream Indigenous knowledge and aspirations alongside Western-based research while also ensuring that the study is conducted by Māori, with Māori, and for the potential benefit of Māori.

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Social memory against settler colonialism: Viviana Huiliñir-Curio, ‘Mapping memories: tracing Mapuche mobilities beyond borders’, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2025

08May25

Abstract: This work explores how Mapuche social memory expands understanding of Indigenous territoriality based on mobility in the southern Andes borderland. Social memory offers historically meaningful and rich insights into understanding Indigenous territorial demands and environmental conflicts rooted in settler colonialism. I underline the importance of examining Mapuche memories through historical routes in the Trankura Valley of Chile, located in the southern Andes Mountains, for two reasons: First, Mapuche narratives about mobility question visions of authenticity based on static and ahistorical ideas of an Indigenous community confined in land enclosures. Second, studying Mapuche routes opens possibilities for mapping Mapuche territorialities beyond nation-state narratives and settler colonial spatial formations that have historically disrupted Indigenous land relations. Therefore, this work considers the importance of historical and critical analysis of Mapuche mobility as constellations to expand debates about Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice on the Andes borderlands.

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Nuclear settlers: Joseph MacKay, Jamie Levin, ‘Firearms analogies and settler colonialism in US nuclear deterrence strategy’, Security Dialogue, 2025

08May25

Abstract: Nuclear strategy has long been formulated through analogies. We focus on one in particular: guns. Early nuclear strategists in the United States used multiple analogical comparisons to make sense of the new, apparently unprecedented technology that confronted them. They compared nuclear deterrence to gun dueling and the nuclear revolution itself to the rise of gunpowder on European battlefields. Both analogies invoked empire, in the form of American settler frontier gunfights and the impact of firearms on European expansion. This article offers a critical reading of them. We show both analogies were historically flawed, relying on outdated accounts of how firearms shaped military-political change. Our argument proceeds in three stages. First, we document the role of gun analogies in early US nuclear strategic writing. Second, we critically evaluate the analogy, showing its historical and analytical limits. Drawing on firearms literatures in history, sociology, criminology, and economics, we show that much of what we now know about firearms diverges from nuclear theory and history. Third, we develop an alternative interpretation, contrasting these analytical fictions with the actual history of nuclear colonialism.

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German ‘Indianthusiasm’ and settler colonialism: Judy L Fisher, German Indianthusiasm and Settler Colonialism: Pernicious Continuities, PhD dissertation, Purdue University, 2025

06May25

Abstract: The figure of the “Indian” upholds and perpetuates U.S. settler colonialism in ways not confined within U.S. borders. Instead, fascination with “Indians” has been a global phenomenon that can help us better understand the movement of settler colonial ideologies. Regarding the specific relationship between the “Indian” and Germany, scholars have argued that the fascination and love for all things “Indian”, or German Indianthusiasm, allows Germans to situate themselves alongside the victims of history rather than perpetrators specifically in regard to the Holocaust (Hartmut Lutz 2006). However, little attention has been given to how German Indianthusiasm connects with German settler colonialism in German South West Africa (DSWA). “German Indianthusiasm and Settler Colonialism: Pernicious Continuities” situates U.S. settler colonialism and German settler colonialism in DSWA as constitutive of a transnational settler colonial project, rather than distinct nationalist endeavors. Whereas representations of “Indians” in Wild West shows, Völkerschauen, and colonial exhibitions enabled Germany to position itself as a colonial power alongside other European nations during the German colonial period, contemporary iterations of Indianthusiasm allow German audiences to ignore their history of settler colonialism in DSWA and deflect responsibility for addressing this history. Exposing the simultaneity of “Indian” and “African” displays with the German colonial project in DSWA, and contemporary Wild West spaces juxtaposed by efforts to address Germany’s colonial legacy, this project tracks the pernicious continuities of colonial logics across geographic space and time. I suggest that Indianthusiasm allows a guilt-free realm to talk about decolonization, solidarity, and cross-cultural sharing with “Indians” without foundationally challenging the settler colonial ideologies inherent in the figure. For Germans to truly address their colonial heritage, and to make concerted efforts to address the representation of “Indians” in Germany, there must be an acknowledgement of how such ideologies are connected and persist over time.

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The settler still in the bedroom: Ayah Omran-Randall, Maryam Al-Khater, ‘Executing Sharia court decisions in the dissolution of marriages between Jerusalemites with different identity cards: implications for the Israeli settler colonial project’, Journal of Gender Studies, 2025

06May25

Abstract: While significant scholarly attention has focused on the Israeli state’s efforts to control Palestinian intimate lives, a notable gap remains regarding the legal mechanisms, particularly the fragmented legal systems impacting Palestinian women in marriages involving holders of different identity cards in East Jerusalem and the broader political and ideological objectives of Israeli settler-colonialism. Accordingly, this study bridges the gap by investigating the enforcement of Sharia court judgements in these marriages, highlighting how such legal processes expose Palestinian women to the Israeli settler colonial project. It argues that mechanisms for executing Sharia court rulings – primarily concerning alimony and custody – establish five distinct relationships: (1) between J1 Jerusalemite women and Israeli authorities; (2) between J1 Jerusalemite women and the Palestinian Authority; (3) between J2 Jerusalemite/West Bank women and the Palestinian Authority; (4) between J2 Jerusalemite/West Bank women and Israeli authorities; and (5) between J1 and J2 Jerusalemite/West Bank women. The study asserts that these relationships regulate Palestinian women’s intimate lives and gendered roles, contributing to patterns of Israelization and Judaization, undermining Palestinian statehood, and fostering apartheid-like conditions among Palestinians of similar racial and cultural backgrounds. These dynamics fragment the Palestinian social fabric, advancing the elimination of Palestinians and the dominance of Jews.

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The settler in the bedroom: Sivuyisiwe Wonci, ‘The Ontology of the “Swart Gevaar”: Decolonising Black Women’s Wombs in South Africa’, in Mtisunge Isabel Kamlongera (ed.), Decoloniality in Gender Discourse and Praxis, Routledge, 2025

06May25

Abstract: The history of South Africa is publicly commemorated as a process of dispossession of people from the land, massacres and cultural and linguistic attempted erasures. This public commemoration hardly recognises intimate geographies of settler colonialism in which Black women’s wombs were subjected to violent reproductive health technologies which had the intention of reducing Black fertility. This chapter asks how did the ontology of the ‘swart gevaar’, which is the fear of White people being swamped by Black people, institutionalised by settler colonial administrators and the apartheid government managed to wage war on Black women’s wombs. Inequalities of reproductive healthcare system in this post-apartheid moment are examined, and how they continue to send Black women to shallow graves. This chapter also reflects on ways in which Black women resisted settler colonial reproductive violence and developed their own reproductive health agencies, intimate freedoms and maintained indigenous reproductive health systems. It proposes that decolonial feminist project in South Africa should begin by exhuming Black women’s bodies from shallow of settler colonial reproductive violence and publicly commemorate them as radical sites of liberties, desires, names, songs, resistance, community and human dignity. Decolonising women’s wombs in South Africa will also require birthing new cultures of intimacy, building new homes of agency, reproductive liberties and dignified reproductive health services.

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