{"id":9518,"date":"2010-10-14T18:46:51","date_gmt":"2010-10-14T18:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9518"},"modified":"2010-10-14T18:46:51","modified_gmt":"2010-10-14T18:46:51","slug":"%e2%80%98half-breeds%e2%80%99-racial-opacity-and-geographies-of-crime-law%e2%80%99s-search-for-the-%e2%80%98original%e2%80%99-indian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9518","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Half-breeds,\u2019 racial opacity, and geographies of crime: law\u2019s search for the \u2018original\u2019 Indian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Half-breeds,\u2019 racial opacity, and geographies of crime: law\u2019s search for the \u2018original\u2019 Indian<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cultural Geographies<\/a>
\nVolume 17, Number 4<\/a> (October 2010)
\npages 487-506
\nDOI: 10.1177\/1474474010376012<\/a><\/p>\n

Renisa Mawani<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Sociology
\nThe University of British Columbia, Canada<\/em><\/p>\n

Discussions of hybridity<\/a> have proliferated in cultural geography and in social and cultural theory. What has often been missing from these accounts are the ways in which mixed-race identities have been forged, contested, and embodied spatially. Inspired by recent calls in cultural geography to rematerialize race and drawing from the growing literature on law and geography, this article examines the material dimensions of hybridity, how it was legally produced, gained traction, and slipped in the quotidian spaces of everyday encounters. Focused on late-19th and early-20th-century British Columbia<\/a> (Canada), I trace the emergence of the \u2018half-breed\u2019 as a new racial personage and juridical taxonomy that unsettled racial hierarchies and spatial distinctions between aboriginal and white settler populations. Unlike other colonial contexts, mixed-race peoples on Canada\u2019s west coast did not threaten European superiority alone but were believed to endanger the protection and assimilation of aboriginal peoples. Proximities between \u2018half-breeds\u2019 and \u2018Indians\u2019 were politically charged for two reasons. First, racial differentiations between these populations were often imperceptible, and second, their putative distinctions were closely bound up with concerns over territory and with aboriginal well-being. The racial opacity of mixed-race peoples created some sites of mobility for those in-between. However, their unknowability shored up the uncertainties of colonial knowledge production and the limits of existing racial repertoires, creating persistent demands for new markers of racial otherness in the process. Crime and immorality became potent signifiers of racial inferiority aimed at differentiating half-breeds from Indians and providing authorities with additional optics through which to problematize and govern their affective and geographical encounters.<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Half-breeds,\u2019 racial opacity, and geographies of crime: law\u2019s search for the \u2018original\u2019 Indian Cultural Geographies Volume 17, Number 4 (October 2010) pages 487-506 DOI: 10.1177\/1474474010376012 Renisa Mawani, Associate Professor of Sociology The University of British Columbia, Canada Discussions of hybridity have proliferated in cultural geography and in social and cultural theory. What has often been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,19,459,8,3015],"tags":[2138,4128,2137],"class_list":["post-9518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-canada","category-history","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","tag-british-columbia","tag-cultural-geographies","tag-renisa-mawani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}