Law Commons^™

The Transcolonial Politics Of Chinese Domestic Mastery In Singapore And Darwin 1910s-1930s, Claire K. Lowrie

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Feminist and postcolonial scholars have long argued that the home was a microcosm and a symbol of the colony. To exercise power in the home, to practice domestic mastery over colonised servants, was an expression of colonial power. At the same time, intimate contact and domestic conflicts between non-white servants and their employers had the potential to destabilise hierarchical distinctions, thereby threatening the stability of colonial rule. As Ann Laura Stoler puts it, the home was a site where "racial classifications were defined and defied" and where relations between coloniser and colonised could sustain or challenge colonial rule. The vast …