Colonialism, Labor, Ecologies

This panel talk is a part of an event series: Land Justice and Climate Futures, presented by Sujatha Fernandes. The series brings together Indigenous and people of colour scholars, writers, and activists to explore land justice at a time of climate crisis and mass labour migration.

The Jamaican writer and philosopher Sylvia Wynter tells us that the story of colonialism begins in 1420, in the archipelago of Madeira. The Portuguese cut down the evergreen laurel forests to build sugar plantations, worked by Indigenous Gaunches and then North African slaves. The plantation, later taken to the Americas and the Asia-Pacific, involved the transplanting of people, plants, and animals across the globe – a model that drove the profound remaking of planetary life and ecological systems. In this panel, we will explore how colonialism and settler colonialism have shaped ecologies and movements – forced and unforced – of refugees, laborers, diasporas. We will rethink the political economy of colonialism across different contexts of South Asia, Palestine, and Australia. As the unfettered spread of plantation capital is reaching its limits, the panel will also explore alternative futures of social organization, movement, and liberation

SPEAKERS
Ihab Shalbak is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Sydney. His research examines the relation between dominant forms of knowledge and politics and interrogates the politics of institutional knowledge production. Along these lines, he has written on think tanks, human rights NGOs, Palestinian self-determination and international law. In addition, Ihab has published a number of public articles and presented papers on the Palestine question, for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Arena Magazine and others.

Suvendrini Perera is John Curtin Distinguished Emerita Professor at Curtin University. Her recent publications include Mapping Deathscapes: Digital Geographies of Racial and Border Violence coedited with Joseph Pugliese.

Sujatha Fernandes is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Sydney. She is currently doing research on migrant workers and histories of extraction in Sydney, Mumbai, and New York City, including with PALM-scheme workers in Sydney – supported by an Australia Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project grant. She is working on a new book based on this research, entitled Staying Afloat: Migrants and Work in Global Cities.

Co-sponsored by the Discipline of Sociology and Criminology, the Discipline of Anthropology, and the Powerful Stories Network.