Call for Papers: The Egyptian Revolution, One Year On

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Jan 3, 2012 Egypt
[Image from below call for papers] [Image from below call for papers]

Call for Papers: The Egyptian Revolution, One Year On

By : Jadaliyya Reports

The Egyptian Revolution, One Year On: Causes, Characteristics and Fortunes

Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

International Conference, 18-19 May 2012

Abstract Deadline: 31 January 2012


Scope and Aims:

The popular uprising of the 25 January 2011 launched a revolution in Egypt that captured observers’ imagination worldwide, and whose reverberations continue to be felt throughout the Middle East, as well as in the world’s major capitals. The year 2012 will see scholarly communities worldwide mark the first anniversary of this extraordinary development. This Conference aims for Oxford University to be the meeting point, at the juncture of one year on, for a consideration of the causes, characteristics, and fortunes of the January Revolution.

Amidst the wave of scholarly interest in the Arab uprisings as a whole, this conference will offer a welcome focus on one country case, allowing an in-depth consideration of relevant themes in Egyptian history and politics, society and economy, while also accounting for international linkages. The Conference will also stand out for its explicit aim to bring together scholars based inside and outside the Arab world, and encouraging the participation of scholars on the ground in Egypt. Finally, the Conference is timed to allow consideration of the events of the first anniversary of the uprising in January and February 2012.

The Conference also aims to form the basis for a scholarly network, which will engage in continued collaboration on themes and ideas emerging from the Conference. The 2012 Conference will gather scholars in the collective goal of writing a ‘first anniversary history’ of the Revolution, emphasising the value, as well as the limits, of conducting such an exercise at precisely such an early stage. It is hoped that further anniversaries will be marked by similar gatherings through the emerging network.

Themes and Proposed Panels

Submissions are invited from different disciplines on topics relating, but not restricted, to the following themes:

I. Anticipating the Revolution: Causes and Precursors

How can we conceptualise and understand the outbreak of the uprising? What have been the relative weight and influence of factors such as political mismanagement, the rise of new social movements, socioeconomic causes, state repression, and social change, among others? How can we locate the Egyptian experience in relation to prior Egyptian and Arab cycles of protest, as well as other revolutionary situations worldwide?

II. Agents and Praxis of Revolution

Who are Egypt’s revolutionaries? What has characterised and moved the actors and organisational structures associated with the events of January 2011? In what ways have some structures been reformed and remoulded, and some alliances made and reconfigured? What strategies of mobilisation have been adopted and how have such choices been made and informed by prior experience? How and why have these strategies changed over the months since January 2011?

III. ‘Talking About a Revolution’

Which concepts, symbols and demands came to be associated with a ‘revolutionary cannon’ and how? How have elements of this discourse been redefined and revived since January e.g. freedom, social justice, national unity and dignity? How were these related to precedents in Egyptian/Arab history? What has been the role of popular imagination and artistic expression, and the interaction with political developments?

IV. Competing Visions for the Transition; Unpacking the ‘counter-revolution’

Who have been the influential players since February 2011 and what have been their associated visions for the transition period and for post-Mubarak Egypt? What is meant by the term ‘counter-revolution’ and which sets of actors and interests can substantiate it? How have these groups related to each other, and what has governed the strategies and fortunes of each in the period since February? What was new about the election process and how did negotiations on the electoral law, as well as campaigning itself, reflect and impact the Revolution’s demands?

V. Revolution and Institutions

How did the ouster of Mubarak impact upon Egypt’s unions, syndicates, universities, media and other institutions? How have the labour movement and other strands of the revolutionary movement related to one another and how have they articulated and enforced their demands in particular contexts?

VI. Egypt’s Revolution and Arab Regional and International Repercussions

What commentary did the Egyptian democracy movement make on foreign policy, and how have protesters in Egypt related to those in other Arab uprisings? How have existing relations with regional and international actors been affected? What of the links forged between Egyptian and international social movements?

Conference Plan

Each panel will include 2-3 paper presenters and a chair/discussant from Oxford or another UK University. Presentations should last 15-20 minutes, chairs’ interventions up to ten minutes, followed by questions and discussion. Each panel session will thus last no longer than 1.5 hours.

Speakers will also be invited to contribute to a roundtable entitled ‘Revolution in the Field’ which will consider the way in which the Arab uprisings challenge contemporary scholarship on the region, how they are to be understood and situated within Arab history, and how they should be taught.

Travel and Accommodation Arrangements

We will be happy to take care of the accommodation and meals of all paper presenters for the two day duration of the Conference. There are also funds available to subsidise paper presenters’ travel costs.

Papers presented at the Conference will be considered for publication in an edited volume.

Convener: Reem Abou-El-Fadl, Jarvis Doctorow Junior Research Fellow, St Edmund Hall and Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

ABSTRACT GUIDELINES

Please submit an abstract of 500 words to oxford.egypt.conference@gmail.com, adding

  • Your institutional affiliation (university and department, research centre etc.)
  • Your position (doctoral student, post-doctoral fellow, lecturer etc.)
  • A brief biography or CV

Abstracts should refer to

  • the argument, approach, and sources used
  • which conference theme the paper is aimed at, and why


***DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: 31 JANUARY 2012***

Authors of shortlisted abstracts will be informed by 20 February 2012.

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Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

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