‘Been to the Nation, Lord, but I Couldn't Stay There’

Byrd, Jodi A.

doi:10.1080/1369801x.2011.545576

Cited by 23 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…. claimed by any marginalized group.” It turns “American Indians into a minority within a country of minorities” leading to the “ fait accompli of the colonial project that disappears sovereignty, land rights and self-governance as American Indians are finally, if not quite fully, assimilated into the United States” ( Byrd 2011 , 43–45).…”

Section: How and Why Do Colonialism And Imperialism Become Synonymous?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonialism versus Imperialism

Arneil

2023

Political Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Contemporary scholars routinely argue colonialism and imperialism are indistinguishable. In this essay, I challenge this argument. While it is true the “colonial” and “imperial” overlap and intersect historically, I argue there is a central thread of modern colonialism as an ideology that can be traced from the seventeenth century to mid-twentieth century that was not only distinct from—but often championed in explicit opposition to—imperialism. I advance my argument in four parts. First, I identify key ways in which the colonial can be distinguished from the imperial, including most importantly the specific kind of productive power inherent in colonialism. Second, I examine how colonialism and imperialism evolve in meaning and are redefined by both champions and critics, in relation to each other in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. Third, I examine the historical moment when colonialism and imperialism fully conflate after WWII through the UN process of decolonization as the “salt water thesis” delimits colonialism to mean foreign racialized domination, and it thus becomes synonymous with imperialism. I conclude with an analysis of why the distinction still matters in both theory and practice.

show abstract

Section: How and Why Do Colonialism And Imperialism Become Synonymous?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonialism versus Imperialism

Arneil

2023

Political Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Domestic Colonies in Canada: Rethinking the Definition of Colony

Arneil

2018

Can J Pol Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

What is a colony? In this article, I reconsider the meaning of colony in light of the existence of domestic colonies in Canada around the turn of the twentieth century. The two case studies examined are farm colonies for the mentally disabled and ill in Ontario and British Columbia and utopian colonies for Doukhobors in Saskatchewan. I show how both kinds of colonies are characterized by the same three principles found in Lockean settler colonialism: segregation, agrarian labour on uncultivated soil and improvement/cultivation of people and land. Defining “colony” in this way is theoretically interesting as it is different from the definition found in most dictionaries and post-colonial scholarship. There is also an inherent contradiction within domestic colonies as they both support state power over indigenous peoples, Doukhobors and the mentally ill and disabled but also challenge the principles of domination, individualism, private property and sovereignty upon which the Canadian settler state was founded.

show abstract

Origins: Colonies and Statistics

Arneil

2020

Can J Pol Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this address, I examine the lexical, geographic, temporal and philosophical origins of two key concepts in modern political thought: colonies and statistics. Beginning with the Latin word colonia, I argue that the modern ideology of settler colonialism is anchored in the claim of “improvement” of both people and land via agrarian labour in John Locke's labour theory of property in seventeenth-century America, through which he sought to provide an ideological justification for both the assimilation and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. This same ideology of colonialism was turned inward a century later by Sir John Sinclair to justify domestic colonies on “waste” land in Scotland—specifically Caithness (the county within which my own grandparents were tenant farmers). Domestic colonialism understood as “improvement” of people (the “idle” poor and mentally ill and disabled) through engagement in agrarian labour on waste land inside explicitly named colonies within the borders of one's own country was first championed not only by Sinclair but also his famous correspondent, Jeremy Bentham, in England. Sinclair simultaneously coined the word statistics and was the first to use it in the English language. He defined it as the scientific gathering of mass survey data to shape state policies. Bentham embraced statistics as well. In both cases, statistics were developed and deployed to support their domestic colony schemes by creating a benchmark and roadmap for the improvement of people and land as well as a tool to measure the colony's capacity to achieve both over time. I conclude that settler colonialism along with the intertwined origins of domestic colonies and statistics have important implications for the study of political science in Canada, the history of colonialism as distinct from imperialism in modern political thought and the role played by intersecting colonialisms in the Canadian polity.

show abstract

‘Been to the Nation, Lord, but I Couldn't Stay There’

Cited by 23 publications

References 17 publications

Colonialism versus Imperialism

Colonialism versus Imperialism

Domestic Colonies in Canada: Rethinking the Definition of Colony

Origins: Colonies and Statistics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About