Date & time: 16 October 2019 (16:30-18:00)
Location: Roeterseilandcomplex B1.02, Amsterdam

In this seminar Barbara Arneil presents her research based on her book published in 2018 ‘Domestic Colonies: The turn inward to colony’.

Professor Arneil will examine three important examples of 19th century civil society organizations who saw themselves (rather than the state) as key to solving domestic social problems (petty crime, unemployment, poverty, vagrancy) produced by the urbanization and industrialization of major cities.  Ultimately she argues that this historical examination of philanthropists and civil society organizations seeking to solve poverty via non state colonies provide both a new way of thinking about the meaning of colonies and colonialism as well as a cautionary tale for contemporary actors seeking to create similar kinds of more humane solutions today. Creating such rural colonies beyond the gaze of society and the state for vulnerable populations often resulted in abuse as people within these colonies could act in the name of engineered improvement and with impunity. 

Barbara Arneil (Ph.D, London) is Professor in Political Theory at the University of British Columbia. She is interested in the areas of identity politics and the history of political thought. She has published a number of books including John Locke and America (OUP, 1996), Feminism and Politics (Blackwell,1999), and Diverse Communities: the Problem with Social Capital (CUP, 2006). Most recently she published a book entitled Domestic Colonies with OUP (2017), which won APSA’s 2018 David Easton Prize and CPSA’s 2018 C.B. MacPherson Prize and  BCPSA’s 2018 Weller Prize for the best book in political theory from each organization. Barbara Arneil is currently President of the Canadian Political Science Association.