Colonial State Research Articles

Tiaki Taoka, designing a Kāi Tahu Māori organisation to work with child protection

In 2019 Aotearoa New Zealand added an amendment to the child protection legislation that required the state to partner with Māori. This paper looks at a case study of the development of one of the services developed under the legislative amendment. Section 7 AA, Tiaki Taoka. Tiaki Taoka was designed as a Māori service response for Kāi Tahu, the iwi, tribe of the greater area of Te Waipounamu (the South Island). The service was mandated by Kāi Tahu and funded through the state to provide partial child protection services devolved from the state. The design was “by Māori, for Māori and of Māori” culturally nuanced in Kāi Tahu knowledge and experience. The co-design of the service model, Te Rereka Toroa, with Kāi Tahu community is shared alongside important relational work with the child protection system, Oranga Tamariki. Tensions in Māori and state relationships are provided with a critique on the maintenance of power and control by the colonial state and the current political challenges.

Colonial Recognition? The Appropriation of Dutch Land and Population Registers as Legal Documents in Eighteenth-Century Sri Lanka

Abstract This paper considers the utilisation, appropriation, and renegotiation of colonial knowledge in the form of land and population registers by local litigants in eighteenth-century Dutch colonial Sri Lanka. Using a database compiled from thirty-three civil court cases held before the Landraad rural council of Colombo, I highlight how Lankan litigants frequently used the colonial thombo registers as evidence to have their property recognised. Moreover, I show that these registers were not just utilised but also altered through this process, particularly through the promotion of alternative knowledge in the form of local witness testimonies and ola palm leaf documents during court cases. I subsequently argue that we should reconsider how we view colonial knowledge. Rather than a static, top-down view from a foreign bureaucracy on a colonised society, this knowledge could be appropriated and even altered through the acts of local agents, in turn changing what was known by the colonial state and thus creating a “looping effect” of knowledge production.

Anticolonial co-design: a methodology for including agricultural workers in the development of new AgTech

ABSTRACT Collaborative design (co-design) is becoming a popular method for including end-users in the design process of technologies which may affect them. The research in this paper emerges from an agricultural technology (AgTech) co-design project located in settler colonial state of Aotearoa New Zealand. Inspired by methodological insights from anticolonial science and technology studies (STS), the paper details the authors’ experiences with attempting to include local and migrant agricultural workers within the AgTech co-design project in a way that did not perpetuate colonialism (i.e. was anticolonial). Based on these experiences, the authors identify four practices that can support other researchers wanting to engage in anticolonial co-design: (1) understand the historical context of your research; (2) create a place –and community-based guidelines for technology development; (3) build and maintain strong relationships with collaborators; and (4) be prepared to slow-down or to stop innovation. These practices offer methodological insights into how to do anticolonial co-design within the uneven power relations of settler colonialism and within projects not necessarily designed to engage in anticolonial co-design.

From Displacement to Marginalization: Tonga-Goba Wartime Experiences in the Mid-Zambezi Valley, 1976–1979

In the 1970s, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) opened its bases in the mid-Zambezi Valley, at Paradise and Mayovhe, under Chief Mola’s territory. This move by ZIPRA was motivated by a variety of reasons. The most important fact was that the Tonga-Goba people of this region were ready to support the war because they wanted to regain control of the riverscape from which they were displaced by the colonial state during the late 1950s when the Kariba dam was constructed. This paper examines how the colonial displacements of the Tonga-Goba people, their marginalization as well as the colonial regime’s “broken promise” all shaped their participation in the Zimbabwe War of Liberation in the 1970s. To explore this history of war from below, our study builds largely from the local Tonga-Goba narratives.

State of Reciprocity: The “Looping Effect” in the Circular Production of Colonial Knowledge, Social Customs, and Tax Policy in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Indonesia

Abstract This article traces Hacking's “looping effect” in colonial policies and practices of taxation, coerced labour, and governance in Indonesia. It argues that knowledge production for the purpose of taxation was a two-way, interactive process which was in particular influenced by complexes of local indigenous social organization, institutions, mentalities, and behaviour as expressed through adat (Indonesian systems of political-social norms and customary law). Such patterns and systems, the article reveals, were internalized into and started working reciprocally with colonial policy, knowledge production, and administrative practices. Taxation made up and changed people, but underlying strategies to categorize and “make known” subjects were also recognized and actively used, evaded, or influenced by these subjects and by local intermediaries. Consequently, colonial knowledge created an institutional framework that reoriented the self-perception of these subjects and intermediaries, which then changed and reconditioned popular responses to the colonial state. Systems of colonial knowledge were thus modified to eventually fit the realities they were supposed to describe, influence, and legitimize, creating a looping effect between colonial, “made up,” and actual social realities.

Revolution and Resistance: An Exploration of the Looping Effect in the Moluccas in 1817

Abstract This article explores three instances of the looping effect by studying colonial resistance in the Moluccas in 1817. It focuses on the relations between Dutch colonial officials and the sultan of Ternate in the North Moluccas, and between Dutch officials and the regents of Ambon in the Central Moluccas. The first instance of the looping effect revolves around how Ambonese regents, who adhered to Calvinism, used Christian principles to contest Dutch rule within the Moluccas. This became evident in 1817 when a revolt broke out against the reestablishment of Dutch rule within the Moluccas. The leaders of this revolt used religious precepts of Calvinism, previously introduced by the Dutch, to argue that the reestablishment of Dutch rule should be rejected. The article continues with a second instance of the looping effect, reconstructing how Ambonese rulers used instructions issued by the colonial state in 1818 to mitigate claims from the colonial government. Finally, a third instance of the looping effect can be perceived in how the sultan of Ternate used contracts, signed with the Dutch colonial state in 1817, to request Dutch military assistance against internal uprisings and thereby increased his authority throughout the region.

Cabecitas Blancas: settler colonialism, racial capitalism and the (im)mobility of borders for Yucatecan migrant families

In this paper, I analyse the intersection of settler colonialism, racial capitalism and border violence by examining Cabecitas Blancas a project run by the Yucatecan government to reunite families divided by the US-Mexican border. A unique program in Mexico, Cabecitas Blancas helps elders who have not seen their children living in the United States for at least 10 years, due to their children’s precarious immigration status, reunite for a short period of time. I have developed the term tramitología to show the way the settler colonial state monitors and restrict Indigenous mobility by designating who is “worthy” of government support. I demonstrate how the flow of mostly Maya elders via Cabecitas Blancas between borders is facilitated only because they become state commodities that sustain racial capitalism via tourism and multicultural policies. Ultimately, I argue that reform programs such as Cabecitas Blancas enable and (re)produce exploitation, settler colonialism and border violence. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with government officials as well as YouTube videos and online news articles depicting different stages of the program.

The coloniality of internationalization: towards a power-conscious framework for studying the experiences of international students in Western contexts

ABSTRACT While existing scholarship has demonstrated that the experiences of international students in Western contexts are shaped by colonial power relations undergirding higher education internationalization, there remains a dearth of a comprehensive and nuanced perspective on international students’ relationships to colonial forms of power. To address the research gap in question, this paper proposes the development of a power-conscious framework to elucidate the international student–colonial power entanglement. Developed through a systematic literature review, the framework foregrounds three interrelated themes – subjugation, submission, and subversion – capturing the multifaceted interplay between international students and colonial forms of power. By emphasizing the complexities of the interplay, the framework challenges static portrayals of international students vis-à-vis colonial forms of power, highlighting the dynamics among the students’ vulnerability to, complicity in, and potential to resist the paradigm of otherness rooted in colonial forms of power. The framework also underscores the importance of situating inquiries on international students within the broader context of the lived realities of marginalized communities in settler colonial states, emphasizing the need to critically examine the responsibilities and agency of international students in unsettling ongoing colonial legacies of domination and oppression. Based on the development of the power-conscious framework, this paper contributes to advancing a transformative understanding of international student experiences and the (im)possibilities of engaging with internationalization in a more equitable and inclusive manner.

Racial Capitalism: From British Colonialism to the Settler Colonial Apartheid State

This article explores the development of capitalism in Palestine under British colonialism and the Zionist settler colonial project. It examines first, Israel's internal and external capitalist dynamism, including its treatment of its non-European citizens, namely indigenous Palestinians, and non-Ashkenazi (Arab) Jewish settlers. Second, it explores the state's interdependent relationship with Western, especially US imperialism. The article argues that the British colonial state was crucial in enabling the Zionist project to materialize, leading to weakening the socio-economic fabric of the Palestinians in their own lands and homeland, creating a favourable condition for the Zionist project to gradually penetrate the land of Palestine and dispossess its population. As a European (Jewish) settler colonial movement, Zionism, founded on racism and racialization, aimed at establishing a new Jewish enclave separate and independent from the indigenous Palestinians. This separateness made it resemble apartheid South Africa, yet the historical specificity of Palestine, where the Zionist settlers did not just alienate, exclude and when needed, use and exploit the Palestinians, but also expelled the indigenous Palestinians and claim Palestine as a ‘pure’ Jewish state.

The India League and the Condition of India: Agnotological Imperialism, Colonial State Violence and the Making of Anticolonial Knowledge 1930–4

Abstract This article explores the 1932 visit to India of a delegation of Labour party figures associated with the India League, a prominent anticolonial organisation based in London, charged with investigating the colonial state violence unleashed by ‘Ordinance Rule’. It also examines efforts taken by the Government of India, India Office and Indian Political Intelligence to suppress their findings, through which it explores a dialectic between anticolonial knowledge-making and agnotological imperialism, which often took the form of the latter ‘exceptioning’ examples produced by the former of excessive colonial state violence. It offers the conclusion that the contradictions between liberal imperialism and the rule of colonial difference and repression in the age of mass nationalism in India and mass democracy in Britain meant that liberal imperialism in India increasingly flowed, paradoxically, from illiberalism in Britain.

Apartheid in the Twenty-first Century: Racial Capitalism and the Struggles in Palestine

Apartheid has become an increasingly important framework for understanding and challenging Israeli rule in Palestine. The Apartheid Convention states apartheid is a crime against humanity. We contend what is missing from this definition of apartheid is an economic and ontological link. Although the current legal definition focuses solely on the political regime, it does not provide a strong basis for critiquing the economic aspects of a settler colonial state embedded in apartheid. To address this concern, we propose a more comprehensive definition of apartheid which grew out of the struggle in South Africa during the 1970s that gained support among revolutionaries due to the limits of decolonisation in South Africa after 1994 — highlighting the reality(ies) that apartheid is intimately connected to capitalism. This conceptualisation was termed racial capitalism. This article argues that racial capitalism provides a more thorough understanding of the destructive dynamics of the Israeli settler colonial project, one that insists that the struggle against Israeli domination must confront both the apartheid state and the racial capitalist system if Palestinians ever hope to achieve liberation.

Colonial status and income inequality in developing countries

This paper assesses the effect of the colonial status of ex-colonies, settler’s mortality rate, and duration of colonization on income inequality using a dataset comprising 78 developing countries over the period 1990 to 2019. We run Ordinary Least Square regressions on the cross-sectional data and subsequently test for sensitivity of the baseline model to historical, geographical as well as sociocultural factors. For robustness checks, we re-estimate the baseline model on a panel data setting using the Hausman Taylor estimator and a GMM linear dynamic panel data model that factors-in time-invariant historical and cultural variables. Results suggest that: (a) average increase in Gini income inequality for ex-settler’s colonies was higher when compared to ex-peasant colonies; (b) an extra year of the duration of colonization augmented typical overall income inequality and (c) the middling rise in income inequality of ex-British colonies was less than the other ex-colonies whilst ex-Spanish colonies posted an average increase in inequality that was higher than the other former colonies. Results were unaltered when we undertake sensitivity and robustness tests. Furthermore, colonial status mediates the relationships between Gini income inequality and settler’s mortality rate as well as Gini income inequality and duration of colonization. Thus, institutions established since colonization and perpetuated after independence have been more or less prone to incorporating redistribution (inequality) issues.

Mapping Women’s Memories of Britain’s Forced Resettlement Scheme in Late Colonial Kenya, c. 1953–1960

Abstract This article maps the memories of Gĩkũyũ women and girls who were forcibly concentrated during the 1950s emergency period in Kenya. Using Britain’s strategy of ‘villagization’, it considers the unique forms of surveillance and violence deployed against women understood as the ‘backbone’ of the anti-colonial Mau Mau movement. By analysing colonial records and women’s oral testimonies, the article examines civilian relationships to coercively designed counterinsurgency environments. It situates these ‘villages’ into a longer tradition of Britain’s carceral landscape across colonial states, offering fresh insights to established histories of violence, gender, and colonialism.

Indigenous dance, sport-for-development, and settler colonial (de)choreographies in the Indian Residential School System

ABSTRACT The Department of Indian Affairs and church counterparts who administered Canada’s Indian Residential School System promoted Euro-Canadian physical activities to reform and replace traditional Indigenous physical culture practices like the Sundance and the potlatch. Administrators used Western forms of movement to compel obedience to Euro-Canadian culture, including spirituality. An observer wrote that the students ‘must not sing, dance, beat a drum, or pray in the Indian way. They may dance in the manner of the White people …’ (Sheridan, ca. 1930s). The use of sport for such social engineering, usually by colonial state and church missions, has been called sport-for-development. This paper examines how these institutions conceptually framed, and put into practice, their interventions into Indigenous physical cultures using the terrain of the body. I argue that the Indian residential school system imposed ‘settler colonial choreographies’ in a domestic sport-for-development process.

From Securing the Border to Securing Nature: Homeland Security as an Emerging Environmental Actor in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands

Hundreds of miles of barriers span the U.S.–Mexico border, not only blocking the migration of people, but also crisscrossing National Parks and Wildlife Refuges and bifurcating important wildlife corridors in the process. Despite their location within federally protected places, the past and present construction of these barriers has progressed unencumbered by federal oversight given the waiver of dozens of environmental regulations. This shift in regulation amid increased border militarization has not been fully evaluated for its environmental effects, as federal conservation agencies tasked with managing public borderlands are increasingly prohibited from studying how barriers will affect the landscape in the long term. This research examines how the state is shaping environmental governance and knowledge politics in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands, an environmentally significant and hyperpoliticized region integral to the maintenance of the United States as an imperial border-making institution. Bringing together theories on political ecologies of the settler colonial state with the racialization of nature, this article demonstrates how (1) the Department of Homeland Security has emerged as an environmental actor produced through a reconfiguration of settler state power; (2) knowledge claims about the environment are produced in ways that elide the ecological consequences of border barriers; and (3) racialized discourses of migrants are codified in environmental governing documents that support increased border militarization. I conclude with a discussion of how settler colonial technologies of environmental governance create new geographies of militarization and conservation in federally protected places along the U.S.–Mexico border.

African Entrepreneurship in urban colonial Zimbabwe: The case of Highfield, 1953–1965

Abstract This paper examines the importance of Highfield to the African entrepreneurship history of colonial Zimbabwe, then known as Southern Rhodesia. The Southern Rhodesia colonial state established the township of Highfield in its capital city, Salisbury (now Harare), in 1936 as part of its spatial and racial segregation policy. The policy made Africans temporary residents in the urban areas. However, the post-Second World War industrial growth forced the colonial state to revisit its stance on African urbanisation. Seen as critical for the expanding manufacturing sector, African labour now had to be accommodated in the urban areas, which triggered the colonial state to expand the township of Highfield in 1956. That very year, enterprising Africans responded by taking up the expanded township’s entrepreneurial opportunities. This response and the subsequent evolution of African entrepreneurship in Highfield township are the focus of this paper. The paper provides a historical kaleidoscope of Highfield as a place of African entrepreneurship, which thus far has been occluded and separated from the dominant literature on the township’s role in the rise of African nationalism and anti-colonial struggles. Highfield emerged as a cultural milieu hosting an African Renaissance in food, fashion and lifestyle inspired by a mix of modernity and indigenous ethos. Thus, the paper argues that Highfield was the entrepreneurial centre of various businesses and startups. These colourful stories of African entrepreneurship are gleaned from handwritten business stand applications by African traders, archival documents, and newspapers in piecing together an urban history of African entrepreneurship in the township of Highfield in colonial Zimbabwe.

Resisting carceral confinement in Guyana: Legacies of a colonial state

AbstractPrisoners in Guyana have been protesting about living conditions and an overtly punitive environment since British colonial rule (1814–1966). Drawing upon official investigations, colonial records and newspaper reports, this article analyses some of the key features of resistance, including uprisings, escapes and everyday breaches of prison rules from the 19th century to the present day. It argues that Guyanese society is still impacted by the punitive nature of colonial plantation society which compels and informs prisoner experiences and responses in the nation's prisons today.

Shuddhi and The Nav-Hindu in Goa: Dynamics of Identity Politics

In a much-publicised event in 1928, a section of the Goan Catholics of tribal origin reconverted to Hinduism. In this highly charged political context, the act of shuddhi framed the event as a straightforward homecoming, masking conflicting underlying interests. Analysing the palpable tensions around this event allows better understanding of how shuddhi was made possible and perceived at the local level, appreciating specifically the vulnerability of the Christian Gauda tribal population. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, this article rethinks shuddhi in Goa through the changing dynamics of politics, in which new definitions of Hindu identity were being worked out by the Hindu elite. Examining the relationships between the Portuguese colonial state, the local Hindu elite, the reconverts and multiple trans-local connections, the article identifies the formation of a new identity of the reconverts within the broader context of caste and community relations.

State Categories and Their Afterlives: The Politics of “Tribalisation” in Eastern India

This article examines the afterlives of state classificatory categories in everyday engagements between state and society. It examines how a community of cultivators in eastern and central India, the Kudmi-Mahatos, have reshaped their group identity through categories of the state. They have oscillated between not wanting to be labelled as “tribal” by the colonial state to seeking to be recognised as “Scheduled Tribes” by the post-colonial state. Using ethnographic and historical methods, this article investigates the shifting claims of the Kudmi-Mahatos with respect to “tribal” status. It argues: (i) that communities use state categories of classification to remake their identities vis-à-vis both the state and other communities they live with; and (ii) tribalisation as a strategy of claiming recognition reworks the tribe-caste continuum in India. The article builds on historical and anthropological scholarship that looks at political contestations over classification in modern states.

Why do they stay? A spatial perspective on settler colonialism, decolonization and the case of Kosovo Serbs

ABSTRACT This study offers a new perspective on settler colonial theory through the case of Serbia/Kosovo. It develops two hypotheses: (1) settler colonial projects in neighboring territories differ markedly from those overseas, necessitating a revised conceptualization called here ‘contiguous settler colonialism,’ and (2) these projects may prompt settlers to remain amid decolonization despite adverse conditions. The empirical analysis identifies three key factors leading to this outcome: the 'Serbianization' of the physical environment, the (im)mobility arrangements of Kosovo Serbs, and Serbia's coercive cooptation system, resulting in a 'settler colonial make-believe space' between the former colonial state and the emerging decolonizing polity.