This chapter will contribute to an emerging “ecological turn” in genocide studies that places the material “extra-human environment” at the core of the biological and cultural integrity of social groups such as Indigenous peoples and territorially dependent placed-based groups. Such social groups are often the victims of an array of ecological and culturally genocidal coercive practices which we will discuss herein. From land grabs in the service of economic development projects in Australia (Crook and Short, 2019) to perversely, “conservation” and the “environmental” protection projects in Uganda (Lyons and Westoby, 2014) and Kenya (Crook and Short, 2020). For many Indigenous and place-based peoples, their historical narrative and their practises, rituals and traditions are necessarily bound up with their land base. In this chapter we identify a political economy of ecologically induced genocide, in which the modality of eco-genocide is conditioned by the changing structure and imperatives of a settler or neo-colonial economy and society, coupled with symbolic violence of discourses, biopolitics, forms of governmentality and what we term ‘racial spatialisation’. In addition to the structuring dynamic of the ecocidal logic of capital is added the settler colonial logic of elimination, the latter dialectically conditioned by the former and vice-versa. It is this dialectic, in addition to the political economy of genocide more generally, which has hitherto been under-theorised and under-researched in the genocide studies field.
Online Publication Date
Oct 24, 2024
Publication Date
Oct 24, 2024
Deposit Date
Mar 4, 2025
Publisher
Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Peer Reviewed
Peer Reviewed
Series Title
Routledge Advances in Criminology
Book Title
Criminological Connections, Directions, Horizons Essays in Honour of Nigel South
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