From Slavery, Criminalization and the Civilizing Mission to Re-Articulating Human Rights amid Colonialities

Seminar on ‘The British Empire and its Legacies: From Slavery, Criminalization and the Civilizing Mission to Re-Articulating Human Rights amid Colonialities' with Dr Matthew Waites

Thursday 12 February, 3.30pm-5pm 

Kloppenberg Room, Cohen Quad (Walton Street)

All Welcome

This paper is a chapter from a forthcoming book Colonialisms and Queer Politics: Sexualities, Genders and Unsettling Colonialities, co-edited by Sonia Corrêa, Gustavo Gomes da Costa and Matthew Waites (Oxford University Press, forthcoming August 2026). The chapter seeks to provide a new overview of the British Empire’s relationship to sexualities and genders beyond Eurocentric heterosexual norms, from the sixteenth century to the present, focusing especially on racialized features, Protestant sexual morality and criminal law legacies. The analysis is informed by postcolonial and decolonial studies and by the third wave of global historical sociology. Differently from previous analyses of British colonialism and homosexuality that have focused on legal regulation commencing in the Indian Penal Code’s Section 377 (1860), the chapter starts with the role of buggery laws in the United Kingdom’s imperial formation, then broadens interpretation of colonial criminalization of queer sexualities by addressing slavery. A more historically and spatially expansive account of legal and social regulation with respect to discourses concerning ‘same-sex’ sexualities and gender diversity is thus developed, looking at regionally varying governmentalities in North America and the Caribbean, India, Australasia and Africa. The final section analyzes transnational advocacy network campaigning for decriminalization and re-articulated human rights within the Commonwealth frame. Power now often works through state-funded consensual partnerships, where ‘coloniality’ remains relevant but needs supplementing with a wider concept such as ‘living legacies’ of colonialism, to conceptualise involvement of southern LGBTQ+ organizations. The paper has been written as a contribution in the context of a wider book project’s methodology for comparative analysis between eleven empires, so discussion after the presentation may also broach comparisons with other Empires and colonial legacies associated with Eurocentrism.

Biography: 

Matthew Waites is Reader in Sociological and Cultural Studies within the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. He has co-edited (with Kelly Kollman) The Global Politics of LGBT Human Rights special issue of Contemporary Politics (Vol. 15, no.1, 2009), and (with Corinne Lennox) the volume Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change (School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2013), as well as several special issues on the sociology of human rights. In recent years he has published on global queer politics, especially from international political sociology and in the former British Empire frame, and through exploring the relationships between decolonizing, human rights and genocide. Articles have been published in leading journals such as Current Sociology, International Sociology, International Review of Sociology, International Politics and the Journal of Genocide Research. He is co-editor, with Sonia Corrêa and Gustavo Gomes da Costa, of the book Colonialisms and Queer Politics: Sexualities, Genders and Unsettling Colonialities (Oxford University Press, in press for publication in August 2026).