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Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation

Evelyn Nakano GlennView all authors and affiliations

Volume 1, Issue 1

https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649214560440

Abstract
References
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Abstract

Understanding settler colonialism as an ongoing structure rather than a past historical event serves as the basis for an historically grounded and inclusive analysis of U.S. race and gender formation. The settler goal of seizing and establishing property rights over land and resources required the removal of indigenes, which was accomplished by various forms of direct and indirect violence, including militarized genocide. Settlers sought to control space, resources, and people not only by occupying land but also by establishing an exclusionary private property regime and coercive labor systems, including chattel slavery to work the land, extract resources, and build infrastructure. I examine the various ways in which the development of a white settler U.S. state and political economy shaped the race and gender formation of whites, Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Chinese Americans.

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Biographies

Evelyn Nakano Glenn is professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies and Founding Director of the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. Her teaching and research focus on race, gender, immigration, labor, and citizenship. She is the author of Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America (Harvard University Press); Unequal Freedom, How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Harvard University Press); and Issei, Nisei, War Bride: Three Generations of Japanese American Women in Domestic Service (Temple University Press). She served as 2009–2010 President of the American Sociological Association.

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