Call for Papers--Transformed Nations: State-Policies in Kurdish Populated Areas of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran (Istanbul, 23 February 2015)

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Call for Papers--Transformed Nations: State-Policies in Kurdish Populated Areas of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran (Istanbul, 23 February 2015)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Call for Papers

IFEA-Ifpo-University of Exeter Workshop

Transformed Nations: State-Policies in Kurdish Populated Areas of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran

(A Comparative Approach from a Transnational Perspective)

Istanbul, 23 February 2015

I. Presentation of the Workshop

In 2013, the French Institute for Anatolian Studies (IFEA, Istanbul), the French Institute for the Near East (IFPO, Erbil) and the University of Exeter, with the help of Aix- Marseille University, launched a common research program aiming at understanding the redefinition of relations between States and Kurdish-populated areas in the current regional context characterised by an intensification of transnational dynamics.

A first workshop was organized in June 2014 in Erbil. It aimed at analysing local modes of government in Kurdish-populated areas with a special focus on the role of political parties’ practices and ways to control territory.

The objective of the second workshop that will be held in Istanbul in January 2015 is to carry on this reflection while addressing the question of the production of State policies in Kurdish-populated areas in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. The production of State policy has often been described within a binary framework of analysis opposing the States’ actions and the societies of these regions. On the contrary, this workshop intends to give room for contributions with sociological, anthropological, contemporary history, political geography, political science or public policy approaches taking into account the non-unitary nature of the State and the multiple interactions between state authorities and local population or elites, and the role of transnational dynamics in the policy- making process.

In doing so, the workshop also aims at distancing itself from any kind of nationalist narrative that could leave in the shadow the decisive importance of national, local and transnational contexts. The predominance of coercive and repressive State policies should not let us overstate the specificity of these regions regarding State policy-making even if other factors have to be taken into account. The current intensification of relations between the different Kurdish-populated areas of the region can indeed be considered as an opportunity to question the effect of increasing regional interdependency links on State transformation. The role and power of the State, the level of autonomy of the Kurdish-populated areas, the different kinds of policy-making processes and the patterns of conflicts vary across countries of the region. Nevertheless civil wars in Syria and in Iraq and the ambiguities of the Turkish or Iranian regimes on the Kurdish issue in their domestic and foreign policies are putting into question in every country both the evolving nature of State policies and of their sovereignty in this cross-border space.

This workshop will address the following questions:

  • How can we analyse State policies as the outcome of a coproduction process between diverse types of central and local actors?
  • What kind of social mutations can we observe within the state political actors?
  • What are the impacts of transnational dynamics in the making of States policies?

More specifically, the workshop will gather speakers tackling issues such as:

  • Social and religious policies
  • Educational and linguistic policies
  • Border policies
  • Coercion and repression policies
  • Interaction between States foreign and domestic policies in the Kurdish- populated areas
  • States policies in conflict situations

II. Practical Information

  • About the Workshop

    • This workshop will be held at the French Institute for Anatolian Studies in

    • Istanbul (IFEA), Turkey. The IFEA is located in Nur-i Ziya Sokak, 10 in Beyoğlu. Papers shall be given in English. Participants’ transportation and housing fees will be covered.

  • Application Instructions

    • Abstracts should not exceed 1 500 characters and should be submitted in English by the 1st of December to the following email address: ifea.ifpo@gmail.com

    • Selected participants will be asked to submit the final version of their paper by January 17th, 2015. Papers are expected not to exceed 20 000 characters.

  • Organizing Committee: Yohanan Benhaim (IFEA) and Arthur Quesnay (Ifpo)

  • Scientific Committee: Jean-François Pérouse (IFEA), Clémence Scalbert-Yücel (IFEA), Boris James (Ifpo), Myriam Catusse (Ifpo), Olivier Grojean (CERIC), Jordi Tejel (IHEID), Yohanan Benhaim (IFEA), and Arthur Quesnay (Ifpo)

Calendar

  • December 1st, 2014: deadline for submitting abstracts
  • December 10th 2014: notification sent to participants
  • January 17th, 2015: deadline for submitting papers
  • January 23th, 2015: workshop in Istanbul

Websites

 

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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