Abstract
As a theoretical starting point, this paper takes up Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity which posits that gender configurations are shifting and determined by whichever expectations best motivate behaviors that reinforce a hierarchical and complementary relation between genders. This hierarchical structure, following theorizations by Maria Lugones, is itself a product of the colonial encounter. With this in mind, this paper compares historical shifts in American gender configurations to the material demands of settlement. Utilizing existing research into settler gender identity between 1760 and 1870, it finds that the increasing emphasis on domesticity in gender discourses concretized gender configurations in the racialized nuclear family, facilitating overwhelming population booms and justifying land-grabbing. Resultingly, American manhood was configured around patriarchal familial relations and property, intimately connecting settlement and masculinity. The 2016 Malheur occupation in which armed, primarily white, militia members took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon exemplifies this settler masculine complex. The militants routinely emphasized that their access to land was necessary for them to maintain their livelihoods and thereby their position as patriarchs. This paper finds that the connection between property and manhood is an important part of settler colonization because it embeds, at the level of socialization, an internal motive to seize and hold territory. Looking more broadly, the explanatory power of combining post-colonial feminist scholarship with modern gender research paradigms reveals not only their utility but also the need to take settler colonialism as a structural factor seriously in current American gender formation research.
Publication Place
Tacoma, Washington
Publisher
University of Puget Sound
First Advisor
Benjamin Lewin
Second Advisor
Monica DeHart
Third Advisor
Jennifer Utrata
Degree Type
Dissertation/Thesis
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Date of Award
Spring 5-19-2019
Institution
University of Puget Sound
Recommended Citation
Van Alstine, Connor, "“Go West young man, and grow up with this country”: Settler Colonialism, Gender and Property" (2019). Sociology & Anthropology Theses. 7.
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/csoc_theses/7
Included in
Gender and Sexuality Commons, History of Gender Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Rural Sociology Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons, United States History Commons