Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States: Normalizing Dispossession and Elimination in Palestine [Hardcover]

Using Palestine as a case study,Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial Statesshows how recognition politics operate to legitimize long-standing colonial power structures.
In existing scholarship, recognition has been seen as an asset coveted by indigenous communities. This book forwards a new, theoretically ground-breaking perspective. Emile Badarin shows that in colonial contexts, settlers use recognition to legitimize and normalize the dispossession and elimination of Indigenous people. More than this, settler-colonial states themselves actively pursue recognition, employing it as a means to further the elimination of the indigenous societies they seek to replace. In making the case, the book critically examines the Euromodern categories of race, racism and racial hierarchies and draws new conclusions about the interplay between colonialism, racism and Zionism. Central to this analysis is how anti-Zionism has been strategically equated with anti-Semitism, and effectively used as a tool for the advancement of both settler-colonialism in Palestine and Israel's recognition on the international stage. The book delves into indigenous normative resistance against colonial recognition politics through the lens of the Palestinian practice of ?umud (steadfastness), extracting its philosophy of liberation as a pathway towards a decolonial futureforall in Palestine and beyond.

A ground-breaking new perspective on recognition politics in the context of settler colonialism.Emile Badarin, born and raised in Palestine, holds a PhD in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter, UK. He is the author ofPalestinian Political Discourse(2016) and has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals on international and Middle East politics and the Question of Palestine.

[Emile's] book is a timely read which dissects the imperialist politics and rightly shows that the Palestinian struggle is not just against Israel but the prevaillsÐ