ABSTRACT
There is likely no setting where the centrality of the population in governance is as crucial as it is in colonial settler regimes. The size, natural growth, structure, migration, and spatial distribution of the indigenous population and the settlers are of fundamental importance to the functioning – and even the very survival – of these regimes. Moreover, since these regimes are premised on racial/national domination, they devise different, even opposing, principles of governmentality for natives and settlers. Intentionality, elaborate planning, and learning, therefore, are at the heart of how these regimes handle populations. Generally speaking, such regimes have dealt with the problem of biopower through strategies reminiscent of the ways in which European societies treated “abnormal” populations (namely, through exclusion, quarantining, or surveillance) (Foucault 1991). These strategies, according to Foucault (2000: 332), work simultaneously at the collective and individual levels. In colonial settler regimes, they took the form of removal through expulsion or genocide, ghettoization, or the imposition of surveillance and control techniques. These latter techniques were intended to mold the indigenous population’s identity, culture, consciousness, and modes of economic activity, most noticeably through regular (and occasionally mundane) practices aimed at keeping them subordinate. Yet, these strategies should be viewed as archetypes, and the emergence of hybrid models in various colonial settings, such as Israel, is highly likely (see, e.g., Abernethy 2000; Judd 2004; Fieldhouse 1981).
