The Dictionary of Human Geography

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population stayed on to work the land

(Campbell, 1982). rms

Suggested reading

Campbell (1982).

settler society A euphemism for brutal

processes of racialized dispossession, along

with the decimation or subjugation of local

populations. Occupation through conquest

has typically been justified in terms of doc-

trines ofterra nullius(empty lands), and

assertions of progress and redemption.

Indeed, the society that is salient in the term

‘settler society’ is precisely that which excludes

racialized others. While this definition obvi-

ously encompasses huge swathes of the world,

the term is most often associated with British

colonial settlement (seecolonialism).

Celebratory versions of liberal historiog-

raphy have long been dominant in the produc-

tion of knowledge about settler societies.

Challenging this stance, one influential strand

of scholarship argues that such societies are

best understood in terms of their incorpor-

ation within the capitalistmode of produc-

tion(seecapitalism). Denoon, for example,

recognizes ‘powerful strands of commonality’

(1983, p. 122) among the societies encom-

passed by his study – New Zealand, Australia

and South Africa, as well as Argentina and

Chile, from 1890 to 1914 – based on their

integration into the internationalmarketand

relations of dependency with imperial powers

(seeimperialism).

A subsequent body of critical scholarship

insists on attention to articulations ofgender,

race,ethnicityandclassin the constitution

and transformation of settler societies. Stasiulis

and Yuval-Davis (1995), for example, bring

together studies that incorporate feminist and

post-colonial perspectives (seefeminist geog-

raphiesand post-colonialism)inorderto

‘unsettle settler societies’. Yet the range of ‘set-

tler societies’ encompassed by the book –

including the USA, Mexico, Peru, Algeria and

Israel–Palestine, in addition to Australia,

New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and

Zimbabwe – raises the question of what isnot

(or has not been) a settler society. Indeed, the

editors concede that their extremely broad con-

ception of settler society underscores the diffi-

culty of drawing a clear line of demarcation.

More recent work draws explicitly on crit-

ical conceptions ofspatiality. Where Stasiulis

and Yuval-Davis seek to unsettle, Sherene

Razack’s (2002) edited collection aims at

‘unmapping white settler society’ – in this

case, Canada. Focusing on the production of

different racialized spaces, the volume is ani-

mated by ‘the fervent belief that white settler

societies can transcend their bloody begin-

nings and contemporary inequalities by

remembering and confronting the racial hier-

archies that structure our lives’ (Razack, 2002,

p. 5: see alsowhiteness). What is missing,

however, is attention to the practices of coun-

ter-mapping through which native people in

Canada have engaged in struggles for

repossession.

Struggles for redress in situations of racia-

lized dispossession are extremely widespread,

and accelerating in some parts of the world,

including Zimbabwe, South Africa and

Aorteroa –New Zealand. They also under-

score a crucial question regarding ‘settler soci-

eties’ – namely, whether and how the initial

processes of settlement remain politically sali-

ent in the present. A key to grappling with this

question is understanding historical geograph-

ies of racialized dispossession not as an event

(or set of events) that can be consigned

to some precapitalist or early colonial past,

but as ongoing processes that remain actively

constitutive of what Derek Gregory (2004b)

calls the ‘colonial present’. mw

Suggested reading

Moore (2005); Sparke (2005).

sex The term has been used historically to

describe both sex differences – male/female –

which are assumed to flow from anatomy, and

a physical drive. Since the late 1970s both

these meanings of sex, which characterize it

as a biological given, have been problematized,

and it has been re-theorized in increasingly

complex ways. feminism (Women and

Geography Study Group, 1997) first intro-

duced, and then troubled, the distinction

between sex (biology) and gender (social

meanings ascribed to biological differences).

Foucault (1978 [1976]) identified sex and the

related concept of sexuality as discursive con-

structions that are temporally and spatially

specific. gv

sexuality Inhuman geography, there has

been considerable interest in the mutual con-

stitution of sexualities and space, so that most

studies have focused on thespatialityof the

construction of sexual identities and the sexu-

ality ofspace. The earliest work on sexuality

and geography focused on heterosexual pros-

titution. In the 1990s a significant body of

research developed, initially on the geographies

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_S Final Proof page 679 1.4.2009 3:23pm

SEXUALITY