Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States
Normalizing Dispossession and Elimination in Palestine
This book shows 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. The book forwards a new, theoretically ground-breaking perspective. It 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.
Cite as: Badarin, E. (Forthcoming 2025). Recognition Politics in Settler Colonial States: Normalizing Dispossession and Elimination in Palestine (I.B. Tauris: London)
The book can be preordered on: Bloomsbury, Amazon, Waterstones
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 ṣumūd (steadfastness), extracting its philosophy of liberation as a pathway towards a decolonial future for all in Palestine and beyond.
Palestinian Political Discourse
Between exile and occupation
This book presents an in-depth examination of Palestinian political discourse sincean-Nakba in 1948 and stitches together the underlying mechanisms and rules that have shaped Palestinian politics, in turn synthesizing, interpreting and scrutinizing these rules. Studying the question of Palestine discursively offers new ways to rethink political agency, structures, identity, institutions and power relations while interpreting Palestinian actions.
Review: “the book is an original, and strongly argued, contribution to our understanding of Palestinian history and politics…”
Cite as: Badarin, E. 2026. Palestinian Political Discourse: Between exile and occupation. London: Routledge.
This book adds new understanding to Palestinian political agency by explaining how political actions were constructed. Discourse analysis methodology underlies the critical examination of the genealogy of concepts and frames that have oriented Palestinian political thought. Contrary to established views that ascribe shifts in Palestinian politics primarily to external factors and international changes, this book demonstrates how transformation has been a continuing inbuilt feature within the discursive regime and that dramatic shifts were only effects of much deeper, slowly evolving changes. Examining discourse, and thus language, offers an exceptional possibility to see from the Palestinian perspective. As such, this book provides material vital to the deeper interpretation of the Palestinian question. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Israel-Palestine studies, Middle East studies, and discourse analysis.
Review of the book
Overall, then, in both its close attention to the detail of Palestinian discourse as well as in its attempt to offer a politically coherent analysis of the evolution of this discourse, Badarin’s book has much to offer as a contribution to our understanding of the plight, history and present needs and aspirations of the Palestinian people. All in all, then, the book is an original, and strongly argued, contribution to our understanding of Palestinian history and politics from the discourse end. Read more.
Reviewed by Peter E. Jones, professor in Language and Communication in the Department of Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University.