Understanding Sovereignty and Recognition: Decolonial and Indigenous Approaches and Worldviews

Abstract

In line with the section theme, this panel focuses on employing critical postcolonial, decolonial, and Indigenous lenses to sovereignty and recognition. Non-Western and Indigenous worldviews, experiences, and political thought are still largely marginalised in mainstream political studies, rather than recognized for their ongoing contributions to political praxis and theory. Decolonial and Indigenous scholars and activists have articulated alternatives to some of the basic precepts and conundrums of political modernity, including sovereignty, recognition, and self-determination. Their role and influence in international and national political developments are increasingly significant. These developments signify a wave of change for political science and highlight the importance of engaging with these critical lines of political thought. Decolonial and Indigenous studies scholars are pushing political imaginations on how to (re)organise and/or (de)construct political communities. They are: theorising models of self-determination and recognition that disrupt the paradigmatic model of modern state sovereignty and the coloniality of power; articulating sovereignty as a conception disconnected from statehood and linked to alternative political models and philosophies; or engaging critically with issues of recognition within existing institutional structures and colonial matrices of power. We welcome submissions grounded in decolonial and Indigenous critiques of existing models of sovereignty and recognition, as well as those imagining decolonial ways of organizing and constructing political communities.

Title	Details
Reclaiming Sovereignty: Political Authority in the Strategies of Three Indigenous Leaders in Brazil	View Paper Details
Indigenous Peoples and the Language of Sovereignty: Strategic Entanglement in Māori Politics	View Paper Details
Indigeneity and Competing Victimhoods in Post/Colonial Conflict	View Paper Details
‘Like children doing a rain dance’: Indigenous knowledge, sovereignty and the politics of geoengineering	View Paper Details