Call for Papers: The Elections of the Revolution - From the Street to the Ballot Box (Cairo, 15 July Deadline)

[Centre d`Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales logo. Image from ema.revues.org] [Centre d`Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales logo. Image from ema.revues.org]

Call for Papers: The Elections of the Revolution - From the Street to the Ballot Box (Cairo, 15 July Deadline)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Egypt Arab World

Abstract due 15 July
Cairo, Egypt

Published by Centre d`Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales

Since the January 25 Revolution, Egyptians have been offered several opportunities to make their voices heard through the ballot box. The elections held in 2011 and 2012 have been opportunities for the different political currents not only to come into office or to influence politics, but also to test their worth. Due to the post-revolutionary context, this issue of Egypt Arab World will be in continuity with previous studies of Egyptian elections, and reflect a rupture in the study of the subject. While previous works provided the theoretical tools needed to understand the election process in Egypt, especially regarding the popular election of the assembly, the radically different circumstances under which the 2011 and 2012 elections were held marks a break with the past.

The joint publication on the 1995 legislative elections, edited by Sandrine Gamblin, showed that candidates, in order to be elected, had to have both a local constituency, as well as links to the regime.[1] On the one hand, candidates had to mobilize their ’asabiyat and on the other, provide services to the community. In their study of the 2000 legislative elections, Sarah Ben Néfissa and `Alâ al Dîn Arafat[2] continued in this same vein. They showed that, in 2000, the practice of a certain clientelism did not entirely preclude the politicization of the vote (notably in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood).[3] Nor did this tendency exclude candidates considered “independent with regards to the principle of the National Democratic Party,” to the detriment of the latter. Other studies have focused on forms of political participation in shanty towns and lower-class neighborhoods.[4] Finally, the issue of Egypt Arab World on the 2005 elections[5] widened the field of research to include actors in the electoral process previously been ignored, namely the media and the judiciary.

While the January 25 revolution did not make `asabiyat, nor the dominant view of the deputy as service provider, disappear entirely, it nonetheless profoundly modified the juridico-political context in which the elections were held. The proliferation of new political parties –  a result of the combination of a desire to participate, born of the 2011 demonstrations, and the reform of the law regulating political parties (March 28, 2011) –  the creation of new electoral laws, the quasi-disappearance of the police, the general feeling that fraud and electoral violence would no longer go unpunished, and the increase in participation together form a rupture with elections held under the former regime.

In this issue, we will privilege contributions based on case studies (of an electoral district, a political party, a candidate, a type of actor, etc.) that include empirical data (qualitative and/or quantitative). In addition to studies focusing on the legislative elections (People`s Assembly and/or the Shura Council), we also welcome contributions regarding the 2012 presidential elections and on the referendum held in March 2011. It seems to us that a comparison between these three different types of poll is indispensable to better understand voting habits in Egypt.

This issue will prioritize three axes of analysis:

·       The examination of the role of notables in the legislative elections, especially with regards to political parties. What is the sociological make-up of the candidates and those elected? How does this differ from previous elections of the same kind? How did the political parties formulate their programs, select their candidates, and mobilize their electors? What kinds of relationships did the candidates and parties form with different organized groups (such as the ‘asabiyat, but also religious networks, associations, unions, etc.)? These last two questions in particular may be the subject of contributions regarding the 2012 presidential elections.

·       What kinds of strategies were used to mobilize electors in the different polls (media, public services, campaign materials, argumentation, religious networks)?

·       Finally, this issue will emphasize the actors and the processes. While electors, candidates, and parties play important roles, we are also interested in the role of the media and all other actors whose responsibility it is to make sure that elections run smoothly: judges, assessors, observers, the security apparatus, etc. Thus, contributions may range from an ethnography of polling stations to the analysis of the legal rules that regulate the electoral process.

Paper abstracts (one page max) should be sent to elham@cedej-eg.org and clement@steuer.fr by 15 July. We will accept contributions in English, French or Arabic.

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NOTES 

1] Sandrine Gamblin (ed.), Contours et détours du politique en Égypte, Les élections législatives de 1995,   Paris, L’Harmattan Cedej, 1997.

[2] Ben Nefissa Sarah and `Alâ al Dîn Arafat, Vote et Démocratie dans l`Égypte contemporaine, IRD-Karthala, 2005.

[3] For more on the Brotherhood vote, see Vannetzel Marie, « Les voies silencieuses de la contestation : les Frères musulmans égyptiens, entre clientélisme et citoyenneté alternative », Raisons politiques, n° 29, 2008. 

[4] Diane Singerman, Avenues of Participation, Le Caire, The American University in Cairo Press, 1997.  Patrick Haenni, L’ordre des caïds : conjurer la dissidence urbaine au Caire, Paris, Karthala-Cedej, 2005. 

[5] Florian Kohstall et Frédéric Vairel, Égypte monde arabe, n° 7, 2011. 

 

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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