Peter Kent-Stoll, Dispossessory Citizenship: The Settler Colonial State and the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Relocation Program, 1952–1972, Social Problems, Volume 71, Issue 4, November 2024, Pages 1014–1031, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac054

Through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) relocation program starting in 1952, the United States sought to terminate federal trust restrictions for American Indians and while relocating reservation and rural-residing Indigenous people to cities to be assimilated into the American “mainstream.” I analyze the BIA’s program as part of the specifically settler colonial structure of the U.S. state. Using primary and secondary sources, I ask what explains the BIA’s shifting spatial strategies and imaginaries from the rise of the relocation program to its demise? The BIA’s project derided reservations as fiscal burdens, depicted the postwar city as a place of “Indian freedom,” engaged in gendered surveillance of Indigenous families, and negated Indigenous peoples’ histories in U.S. cities. As the program ended, the BIA shifted rhetoric from assimilation to self-determination to maintain the settler colonial relation while paying lip service to critiques of the colonial tactics of relocation. These different moments of the relocation project articulated a type of dispossessory citizenship as a racial and empire state strategy of enacting and justifying settler colonialism. This work analyzes the settler colonial dimensions of the state and its technologies of violence and territory used when it presents itself as supposedly moving past its colonial past.

Thomas, J. R., Liang, L., Sonoda, S., & Xie, Y. (2025). The soft power cost of COVID-19 in OECD countries: a lose–lose outcome for China and the United States. International Political Science Review, 46(4), 557-574.

One way in which many scholars of public opinion have operationalized a country’s soft power abroad is to measure how favorably that country is viewed by people in foreign countries. While earlier research has demonstrated the mechanisms and factors correlated with how foreigners perceive a country, much less is known about how sudden and unexpected global events may impact how favorably citizens of different countries view another country. Analyzing recent Pew Global Attitudes Survey data, we assess how the COVID-19 pandemic changed public opinions of China and the United States—with Russia as a reference—in 12 OECD countries. Our analysis reveals that COVID-19 led to a decline in favorability toward both the US and China—the ‘soft power cost’ of COVID-19. While the cost is larger for China than for the US in most countries, we observe exceptions in Germany, Italy, and South Korea. We also explore the heterogeneity of the soft power cost by respondents’ individual attributes and other attitudes such as how COVID-19 impacted their lives.