1. Colonialism
Definition: political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its peoples by a foreign power
Context (1500s-1900s):
seeking sources of precious goods
empire-building, expansion of capitalism, Industrial Revolution
Goals of colonizers
appropriation of land, labor, natural resources …plantation economies
control of trade, taxation, state monopolies
expansion of markets – new infrastructure
mission civilisatrice – “civilizing mission”

2. Nations & States Nations – group identity tied to territory
States - defined territory (borders) – often from colonial era
Monopoly on legitimate use of force (armed forces)
Central government
Authoritarian?
Democratic?
Administrative structures and units (states, republics, provinces)
Management of resources
projects of “development”
issues of environment and “conservation”

3. THE NATION-STATE
This is obviously a hybrid word, linking the idea of the “nation” with the idea of “state”. While the former refers to what might loosely be termed “people”, that is, to a cultural entity often defined in terms of ethnicity, the latter refers to a set of institutions through which public authority is exercised within a particular territory….’
(Robert Holton 1998)

4. COMMUNICATIONS  STATE
State: exercise of authority on a territory (sovereignity)
Nation: cultural identity
Examples ?
Communications are essential for running a state
Benedict Anderson: communications create the state
‘Imagined communities’:
‘[the state] is an imagined political community... It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in their minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (Anderson 1983)

5. Nations & States, cont. Production of conflict Problems:
Mixing, splitting of ethnic groups (e.g. Kurds)
Colonial era policies favoring one group
How to manage ethnic diversity
Granting local autonomy
Policies of assimilation and control
Production of conflict

6. Indigenous Peoples and the State
Definition
descendants of earliest settlers
live in, but do not control gov’t of the state
Marginalization, stigmatization
State policies and conflict
intervention, control, takeover, resettlement, cultural modification

7. Indigenous Peoples, cont.
Genocide/Ethnocide/Ecocide
New diseases, killings
Disruption of subsistence economies and trade relations
Extraction of resources, damaging ecosystem
Loss of political autonomy
Direct rule/indirect rule – new power structures and categories
“Superiority” of Europeans – mental colonialism

8. Indigenous Peoples, cont.
Cultural modification
Language, schooling in dominant language
Religious conversion
Laws affecting gender & family
Laws affecting customs
ISSUE: clash between small-scale cultures and commercial cultures
mobility
extensive land use, questions of “productivity”
communal property rights
worldview
Ethnocentrism: what is progress?