Virtual Library

Rights in Rebellion examines the global discourse of human rights and its influence on the local culture, identity, and forms of resistance. Through a multi-sited ethnography of various groups in the indigenous communities of Chiapas, Mexico—from paramilitaries to a Zapatista community, an indigenous human rights organization, and the Zapatista Good Governance Councils—the book explores how different groups actively engage with the discourse of rights, adapting it to their own individual subjectivities and goals, and develop new forms of resistance to the neoliberal model and its particular configurations of power.

Far from being a traditional community study, this book instead follows the discourse of human rights and indigenous rights through their various manifestations. The author offers a compelling argument for the importance of a critical engagement between the anthropologist and her "subjects," passionately making the case for activist research and demonstrating how such an engagement will fortify and enliven academic research.

The White Possessive explores the links between race, sovereignty, and possession through themes of property: owning property, being property, and becoming propertyless. Focusing on the Australian Aboriginal context, Aileen Moreton-Robinson questions current race theory in the developed world and its preoccupation with foregrounding slavery and migration. The nation, she argues, is socially and culturally constructed as a white possession.

This essay seeks to consider Anna Stilz's Territorial Sovereignty: A Philosophical Exploration in light of settler and nonsettler colonialism and their contemporary legacies. In particular, it examines the intergenerational claims of Indigenous communities and the extraterritorial claims of colonial and neocolonial subjects. The broad aim of this effort is to consider how centering the imperial roots of our contemporary nation-state system transforms our understanding and justifications of territorial sovereignty.