Ongoing Colonial Violence in Settler States

Reconciliation in the Context of Settler-Colonial Gender Violence: "How Do We Reconcile with an Abuser?"

SOCIOLOGISTS INFORMED BY CRITICAL, anticolonial praxis are called to reflexively consider social realties as they are, while actively participating in social transformation. I write from my position as a settler in Misâskwatôminihk (Saskatoon) on Treaty 6 territory and the homeland of the Métis and as an engaged sociologist. By settler, I do not simply mean “non-Indigenous”—like many non-Indige...

Transitional Justice and Settler States

Transitional justice has become the dominant international framework for redressing mass harm and historical injustices. However, transitional justice is commonly premised on the notion of a recent point of rupture or change from violence and oppression to a ‘new dawn’, and has therefore been less attuned to accommodating the long-term effects of colonialism. Accordingly, the historical experie...

J. M. Coetzee and Colonial Violence

Ecology, Trade and States in Pre-colonial Africa

State capacity matters for growth. I test Bates’ explanation of pre-colonial African states. He argues that trade across ecological boundaries promoted states. I find that African societies in ecologically diverse environments had more centralized states. This is robust to reverse causation, omitted heterogeneity, and alternative interpretations of the link between diversity and states. Ecologi...

Functional Dissociation of Ongoing Oscillatory Brain States

The state of a neural assembly preceding an incoming stimulus is assumed to modulate the processing of subsequently presented stimuli. The nature of this state can differ with respect to the frequency of ongoing oscillatory activity. Oscillatory brain activity of specific frequency range such as alpha (8-12 Hz) and gamma (above 30 Hz) band oscillations are hypothesized to play a functional role...