Report on the Asfari Institute's Inaugural Conference on New Spaces of Civil Society Activism in the Arab World

[Image from the Asfari Institute`s Inaugural Conference. Image provided by the American University of Beirut.] [Image from the Asfari Institute`s Inaugural Conference. Image provided by the American University of Beirut.]

Report on the Asfari Institute's Inaugural Conference on New Spaces of Civil Society Activism in the Arab World

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[This post has been updated to include videos from the inaugural conference. They are embedded below the introduction.]

Introduction

Founded in November 2012, the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut (AUB) held its inaugural conference, “New Spaces of Civil Society Activism in the Arab World” this month. The conference took place in partnership with the Arab Studies Consortium (Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and the Arab Studies Institute at George Mason University) and Legal Agenda Beirut. Invited participants, whose backgrounds spanned academia to grassroots movements in the Middle East and North Africa, discussed and debated the broader theme of civil society in a multitude of ways. 

[This report was prepared by the Arab Studies Institute`s Samia Errazzouki. Click here for the full schedule and list of participants.]

In the context of ongoing transitional junctures in the Middle East and North Africa, the timeliness of the Asfari Institute’s inaugural conference revealed the urgency of addressing the limitations placed upon civil society in the region, as well as questioning its boundaries. In his opening remarks, AUB provost Ahmad Dallal highlighted an overarching theme, which was how changes in the region, even in countries that did not necessarily experience an uprising, are reformulating politics of inclusion. This reformulation of inclusionary politics, as noted by several conference participants during each panel, comprises a double-edged sword. In an authoritarian context, though a politics of inclusion often hinges on cooptation, it can also be a way for members of civil society to exert agency and participate in setting the agenda.

The boundaries of civil society are fluid as is its composition, and varies depending on context. This is true for the region as well. Civil society in both Bahrain and Palestine, for example, are shaped by its own respective conditions. Factors such as the political landscape, socioeconomic conditions, and external forces, among others, contribute to the multi-faceted nature of civil society. This was evident throughout the conference. Additionally, as participants from across the region shared their experiences and perspectives emerging from either research or participation, it was clear that despite the uprisings that overthrew various governments, the same pervasive forces that sparked widespread dissent remain entrenched in the region. Among these forces are neoliberal institutions that operate beyond the confines of government buildings, which renders the replacement of a former president or ruling party ineffective in changing the dominant political economic order. Keynote speaker Rashid Khalidi argued that the Gulf petromonarchies continue to remain one of the most significant geopolitical challenges facing civil societies in the region.

Given the widely authoritarian context from which civil societies in the Middle East and North Africa emerged, their presence and activities merit analyses through  nuanced and multidisciplinary lenses. Conference participants rooted in academia brought together historical, social, political, and anthropological perspectives that offered sound critiques and analyses. Common critiques centered on the “NGO-ization” of civil societies, raising the issue of funding and their sources, at times influencing the positions and activities of civil society groups. More broadly speaking, however, general questions were posed such as: how does one define civil society? What are the constraints of civil society in an authoritarian context? What factors shape the discourse on civil society, but also what discourse do various civil society actors adopt? Meanwhile, those involved with grassroots work and activism on the ground shared their experiences and offered their own visions of what civil society is and the direction its going in light of the ongoing transitions in the region. From countries that continue to experience uprisings, to those that overthrew governments, members of civil society hold a significant position that not only pushes powerful actors in their respective countries to adhere to the path of transition and reform, but also provide an alternative to the dominate(ing) narratives.

For a full summary of the conference, below are sections broken down by panel and keynote address with highlights and general summaries. Throughout the course of the two-day conference, there were four panels (two on each day), with keynote addresses between each panel. The conference concluded with a roundtable of the keynote speakers. Follow this link for the conference’s schedule along with a list of speakers. The Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship’s Twitter account also features highlights from the conference.

[The tweets that appear below are not direct quotations by the presenter. They are paraphrased in real time and  might not always reflect accurately the intention of the speaker. The video that will be released provides the actual words that are paraphrased herein.]

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412