Call for Papers: Settler Colonialism

Modernity and colonialism are intimately linked, and colonialism has mobilised people in unprecedented ways. While in many places processes of bloody or incremental decolonisation meant that the invaders returned home; in other settings they stayed. In countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, Taiwan, and others, the settlers stayed, and remained the dominant power group. In other countries, locales as diverse as Brazil, Hong Kong and South Africa, the colonial settlers (or at least one set of them) were displaced from political power, but maintained considerable economic power. This volume explores the nature and consequence of settler colonialism. We are especially interested in considering the consequences of a system that aims to replace the indigenous inhabitants of a given place: that is, where at least in principle indigenous people are to ‘disappear’ by one means or another.

Amongst other possibilities we encourage contributions that address the implications of the neo-assimilation that seems implicit in the recent ‘Intervention’ into Aboriginal communities in Australia.

In general our focus is on the present, neo-assimilation and displacement.

This issue of Arena Journal will also be published as a book.

Introduction

Part 1. The Embodiment of Settler Colonialism

• What are the consequences of the politics of hybridity?
• How are embodied markers of identity lived and politically contested?
• What happens in those singular cases when the ‘white settlers’ lose their power but stay as a residual colonial population in a postcolonial setting?
• What happens when colonised peoples that were resettled in the context of global displacements find themselves in a postcolonial setting?
• What are the implications of the DNA revolution in understandings about ethnic genealogies and embodied difference?

Part 2. The Time of Settler Colonialism

• How are histories of ‘settlement’ being written and contested?
• What does it mean to have different senses of history (and different ideas about the future) for indigenous and settler peoples in the one nation-state?
• What are the consequences for indigenous peoples of the dominance of modern notions of progress?
• In what ways does it complicate issues of belonging that a generation or more of settlers have been born into a country since the first colonial ‘settlement’?

Part 3. The Space of Settler Colonialism

• How is sovereignty over land legally organised and culturally legitimised?
• How is land and place related to power?
• What happens to indigenous identity when land as a primary source of identity is displaced?

Considerations

• We do not want a series of straight country-by-country, period-by-period, or even comparative studies that just describe the circumstances in different locales.
• We need to distinguish colonialism, postcolonialism, and settler colonialism as related but inherently different global phenomena.
• We want to focus on the present and the recent past. We are interested in using historical references for their consequences for the present.

Submission Date: 30th September, 2010 or by negotiation

information available as a PDF

Lorenzo Veracini, John Hinkson and Paul James
Arena Journal
2 Kerr Street, Fitzroy
Editors: journal@arena.org.au