Call for Papers -- DiverCities: Contested Space and Urban Identities in Beirut, Cairo, and Tehran (12-14 December 2013, Beirut)

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Call for Papers -- DiverCities: Contested Space and Urban Identities in Beirut, Cairo, and Tehran (12-14 December 2013, Beirut)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Call for Papers: DiverCities: Contested Space and Urban Identities in Beirut, Cairo, and Tehran

Date: 12-14 December 2013

Location: Beirut

Organisers: Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) and Goethe-Institut Beirut

Deadline: 31 July 2013

This conference aims to look at urban governance, its agents, agendas and options, through contested space and conflicting urban concepts, identity claims and social environments. Rapid urbanisation and demographic change, antagonistic political and economic interests, and the diversity of cultural patterns have impacted and continue to impact the make-up of local neighbourhoods and use of public space in urban centres. Situated at the core of social and political fractions, contested spaces reveal insights into the dynamics of diverse societies and urban identities. Contested space here is understood as the physical space at the centre of conflicting interests as defined by different social actors.

The focus will be on the three cities of Beirut, Cairo and Tehran, each highlighting different types of fragmentations, political, cultural and social. Beirut leaves one with the question of “Whose space is it”? Different social layers coexisting in close proximity to each other, in combination with competing economic interests over the already densely populated urban space, make the city host to many areas of contestation. This applies as much to supposed public spaces like the barely accessible al-Horsh al-Snawbar as it does to places like Raouche where investors take little interest in cultural diversity. In Tehran cultural fragmentations impact on urban life, cultural here referring to norms, values and practices, what is considered right and wrong by different sections of society and the multi-layered ruling establishment. In a place where public space is there and accessible but controlled by the morality police who often hold different values to the society, citizens take refuge in the private – impacting on the delineation of public and private space. Cairo has probably been hardest hit by demographic change, and has to constantly deal with the challenges rapid urban expansion brings with it. The question of formal versus informal space plays an important role in urban governance in a socially fragmented city. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each in terms of fostering social cohesion while ensuring diversity? How are contested spaces governed on a local level?

The aim of the conference is to gain insights into experiences of urban governance as it is perceived and practiced by different lobby groups and social agents in view of the ambivalence of public space in diverse societies. We invite academics and practitioners (urbanists, architects, civil society activists, anthropologists, political scientists etc.) to submit papers dealing with contested space and urban identities in Beirut, Cairo and Tehran addressing one of the following three panels:

Panel 1: Claims and Agency

Sociology of space in the twenty-first century is still informed by the basic Marxian insight that human beings  ‘make’ their own history, but that they do so under ‘given’ circumstances not of their own choosing to which they may relate by means of using, controlling, circumventing, subverting, transforming, or eliminating them. Material, social, and ideational ‘structures’ both confine and empower human agency (Giddens). This is particularly visible in the complex interplay between human actors and their spatial and built environments. The dialectics of material and socially constructed spaces (Lefebvre, Löw) are at the core of Urban Studies. This panel will focus (a) on the legal, moral, economic, and political claims that conflicting urban actors in the three cities may advance to control ownership, access, and uses of urban spaces, and (b) on their opportunities, resources and strategies to realize or renegotiate these claims.

  • What are the factors fuelling antagonism between different claims over the use of urban space (needs and means, economic interests, cultural diversity)?
  • What are the power dynamics over contested spaces?
  • What are the legal frameworks, political constraints, options and loyalties of different actors (municipalities, civil society, political parties etc.) in governing contested spaces?
  • What modes of symbolic appropriation of urban space do we observe?


Panel 2: Between Public and Private

Despite its historical contingency, the concept of a public space remains a powerful utopia that is strongly connected to the idea of a political space and to individual citizenship. As empty signifier a dichotomy of public and private continues to be the frame of reference for politicians, urban planners, and city dwellers on every level – normative, conceptual, and empirical. Every concrete meaning and manifestation of this dichotomy has an immediate impact on the lived, built, and imagined city, which is necessarily contentious and a dystopia for many of the individuals affected. The particularities of these negotiations between state agents, corporations/private-interest groups, and populations over the quality of urban spaces are at the core of this panel.

  • What does it mean for a city’s spatial texture when the private becomes public and the public becomes private?
  • How do moral norms (whether imposed by society or the state) affect the delineation of public and private space, and how do diverse concepts coexist or clash?
  • How do (changing) gender relations define public and private space and how are they formed by the structural design of urban space?
  • How do alternative public spaces influence cultural production and how do manners of cultural production alter space?
  • What influence does virtual public space have on real space?
     

Panel 3: Open Air Spaces of Gathering - Norms and Practices

Open air spaces, whether designed for leisure purposes or as busy city squares, prestigious urban focal points and the like, often serve as public meeting places that may acquire a more specific significance for the assertion of citizen rights and contesting political power. The recent conflict over Gezi Park in Istanbul may illustrate this, and the importance of People’s Park in California in the debate over public space and the conceptualisation of the latter by diverse members of society (Don Mitchell) is an often-cited example. This panel will focus on case studies of urban governance by looking at public open air spaces of gathering such as Horsh Beirut, Sioufi Park, the Corniche or the Beirut Waterfront, al-Azhar Park or one of the Mayadin in Cairo, and public parks such as Laleh Park or equivalents in Tehran, and the intricate interplay between them and the public sphere. The aim is to discuss to what extent the spaces are used the way they were designed, who determines their use and whether and how this use is culturally and politically contested. The direct comparison between three structurally similar spaces of gathering in the three cities is of particular interest in this panel.

  • What are the symbolic, normative and practical frameworks of collectively used open air spaces?
  • How and under what circumstance do spontaneous popular practices create public open air space or alter its character? 
  • In how far is the use of open air space culturally and politically encoded and contested? 
  • What are the public order policies applied to such spaces and who is responsible for them?

The deadline for submission of abstracts (300 words) addressing one of the above panels is 31 July 2013. Please send your abstract together with a short biographical statement to Nadia von Maltzahn (maltzahn@orient-institut.org). Successful applicants will be notified by late August 2013.

The conference language is English, and is jointly organized by the Orient Institute Beirut and the Goethe Institute.

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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