H15 - Internal Colonies, Indigenous Alternatives
Date: Jun 4 | Time: 08:45am to 10:15am | Location:
Chair/Président/Présidente : Leonard Halladay (Carleton University)
Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Dimitrios Panagos (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Jeremy Bentham, John Sinclair and Johannes van den Bosch : Domestic Colonies and Panopticons: Barbara Arneil (University of British Columbia)
Abstract: Domestic colonies in Europe have been dated back to 1818 and the Benevolence Colonies of Johannes van den Bosch in Drenthe in the north of the Netherlands. These colonies are currently under consideration by UNESCO as world cultural heritage sites as they represent, from the point of view of the Dutch government, the first origins of the European welfare state. In this paper, I will argue that the idea of domestic colonies and internal colonization may be dated back earlier, that is to the 17th century in writings by both John Sinclair, the Scottish MP and first President of the British Board of Agriculture who proposed colonies in Caithness Scotland and his correspondent Jeremy Bentham, who at Sinclair's request develops a grand model for solving poverty in Britain under the title 'Pauper Management Improved'. This massive plan built around the inspection principle and agrarian labour is similar to but dwarfs his Panopticon model for prisoners - indeed Bentham suggests the Panopticon could be a pilot project for his more ambitious pauper management plan. Like Sinclair, Bentham describes this plan built around massive industrial houses rooted in agrarian labour for the idle poor as a form of 'domestic colonization' and he argues for them in direct opposition to emigration and imperial/settler colonies.
Edmund Wakefield, the Durham Report, and ‘Primitive Accumulation’: Daniel Sherwin (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Edmund Wakefield was a leading figure in the “Colonial Reform” movement, which played an important role in shaping Britain’s policy toward its settler colonies in the nineteenth century. Best known for his involvement with the colonization of Australia and New Zealand, Wakefield travelled to Canada and contributed to Lord Durham’s Report in 1839. He was also, famously, the object of Marx’s critique in chapter thirty-three of Capital. Marx and his followers focus their critique on Wakefield’s scheme to produce a landless proletariat in the colonies by enforcing an artificially high price on land. For Marx, this scheme lays bare the coercion at the heart of capitalism which he terms “primitive accumulation”.
In Red Skin, White Masks, Glen Coulthard develops an analysis of primitive accumulation as a colonial and not only capitalist relationship, and pays particular attention to the primitive accumulation of land through Indigenous dispossession. In this essay, I build on the critical apparatus developed by Coulthard and others to consider Wakefield’s proposals for land reform in Appendix B of the Durham Report as an example of primitive accumulation not only of labour but of land.
These proposals should be read, I argue, in the context of a developing settler state premised upon Indigenous dispossession. Such a reading draws attention to the multi-sided character of primitive accumulation, which relies on coercion to transform land into capital, and producers into landless labourers. In developing this analysis, this essay contributes to ongoing efforts to theorize colonial capitalism (Ince 2018, Maile 2019).
Traditionality in the Study of Indigenous Political Thought: Sophie Major (University of California, Berkeley)
Abstract: Political theorists are increasingly undertaking projects aimed at decolonizing the discipline. Nonetheless, political theorists have, with few exceptions, failed to take diverse Indigenous political concepts, principles, and values seriously, with most treatments of Indigenous political thought simplistically universalizing certain political ideas as broadly Indigenous. Both for the decolonization of the political theory discipline and for projects of reconciliation within Canada that seek to build mutual understanding and trust, a more nuanced engagement with the diversity of Indigenous political thought is requisite. Within this context, this paper discusses and assesses the possible objects of study for political theorists interested in Indigenous political thought, and some of the theoretical challenges involved in this line of study. Some Indigenous scholars and anthropologists have written about what they consider the worldview or philosophy of their tradition or community, yet there are many First Nations communities in Canada from which no members have published such written accounts. First, this paper discusses how theorists should conceive of traditionality in their engagement with written or oral communications of indigenous political theory. This paper argues that traditionality may be a valid explanation of a political theory, but that tradition is not an appropriate object of study. Second, this paper considers how theorists studying written documentation or conducting ethnography might determine what accounts of Indigenous political thought to engage with. This paper argues that what constitutes an authoritative or valuable political theory should be determined by Indigenous peoples themselves, rather than externally imposed measures of value and authority.
Beyond Recognition, Beyond the State: Towards a Supranational Conception of a Pluriversal Canada: Aaron Service (Carleton University)
Abstract: The politics of recognition have long since been centralized in the Canadian state, with multiculturalism and inclusion standing as core tenants of the Canadian identity. However, as we head into the second term of Trudeau’s Liberal government, skepticism surrounding the federal government’s domestic agenda in areas such as ecology, sovereignty, and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples needs to be at the fore. Following from Glen Coulthard’s (2014) critique of recognition-based projects and the reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian state in Red Skin, White Masks, this paper will advance the notion that the theoretical justification for a liberal state ultimately relies on the subjugation of Indigenous peoples and knowledges. Liberal multicultural frames obscure the political reality of Canada, which I will contend is that of a supranational political body, upon which the scaffolding of a colonizing nation-state was established and then maintained by the everyday relations of a settler colonialism. Through using the emergent decolonial literature on the Pluriverse, this paper will address the impact of acknowledging this supranationality along with tensions that may arise in valuing different life-worlds and knowledges in the Canadian state. The process of de-hierarchicalizing knowledges and accounting for different life-worlds and experiences, I argue, has the potentiality of surpassing recognition and reconciliation based approaches, while fostering a respect for Indigenous peoples, to which Canadian Liberal multiculturalism could only aspire.