Call for Proposals: New Paradigms Factory (Deadline: 12 September 2012)

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Aug 15, 2012
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Call for Proposals: New Paradigms Factory (Deadline: 12 September 2012)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Fellowship Opportunity for Arab Scholars and Activists in the Arab Region: “New Paradigms Factory”

A new project of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences facilitating publishing of new thinking by critical, activist, young Arab scholars

Are you challenging ways of thinking about politics, culture, action, and social change?
Are you frustrated by the way Arab or Western journalists frame the events of Arab uprisings, new social transformations, state formations, and public cultures?
Do you think that contemporary social science paradigms are no longer useful or up-do-date?
Have you formulated a critique and an alternative way of analyzing or understanding contemporary and historical societal processes?

The ACSS is offering ten “Factory Fellowships” for the rethinking of social science paradigms. Winners will receive an honorarium, translation and editing support as well as intensive mentoring during the period between October 1 and December 3, 2012. A broad network will then be deployed to publish your work in a prominent, prestigious journal or respected online magazine. By publishing your own work, in a recognized publication, you will be able to stamp your vision on a “new paradigm” for the social sciences or offer a new frame for a debate that you feel has paralyzed thought, politics, and social change in the region. You will help ignite a new generation of scholarship and activist thought in the Arab region.


The Theme for the first class of “Factory Fellows” (October 1 – December 3, 2012) is “Sovereignty.” 


“Paradigm,” for the purposes of this project, signifies any mainstream pattern of thinking or a predominant model for analyzing a set of social problems, cultural norms or political situations. A paradigm structures which phenomena should be observed and scrutinized, which questions should be asked, and how realities, data, and findings should be interpreted. A paradigm can also signify a well-established habit of linking cause and effect.  A paradigm is both a mode of analysis predominant in the social sciences and also a worldview that underlies how the news media, public spheres, and the state, themselves, perceive social, political, economic and/or cultural problems. When an applicant identifies a paradigm that they wish to challenge, the applicant should give an example of how that paradigm appears in social science discourse and in the media. And then the applicant should specify what new data, findings, and/or cases will be presented to challenge this old paradigm and to propose a new model for thinking about a particular problem.

“Sovereignty,” the theme of this season of the New Paradigms Factory, is about who rules and how governing power is asserted over people, territory, culture, economies, bodies and/or law.  Sovereignty can be about independence or autonomy of rule, modes of asserting self-governance, or about the definition of national security or national identity in relation to rule or governance.  There are also revolutionary or insurgent forms of sovereignty – popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of “the people” versus “the regime;” youth or women’s sovereignty; sovereignty through or against globalization or imperialism; sovereignty within or over communities, resources, cultures, etc.

Project Aim:


The “New Paradigms Factory” project aims to identify and facilitate writing and publishing by innovative, critical-thinking, engaged Arab scholars and public intellectuals, particularly those thinkers who have faced restricted time or resources, or limited access to publishing venues.  Our goal is to improve the visibility and accessibility of new work, and ensure proper recognition and professional credit for Arab social-science thought that generates novel paradigms and new frames for analyzing the key problems of the day, particularly those linked to the dynamics associated with the recent uprisings and transformations.


Fellowship Benefits:

  • A “Factory Fellowship” honorarium of $1000 USD. This honorarium is designed explicitly to help you ‘buy time’ from studies or activism during the period October 1 to December 3, 2012 in order to focus on your ideas. One half of honorarium is given at the beginning of the fellowship, the second half at the completion of your article and its submission for publication.
  • An intensive period of mentoring. We will help you extend, translate, and improve your draft article.
  • Networking with editors of journals and different publishing venues. We will give you the best chance possible of being published in an internationally recognized publication.
  • Presenting your work at an international conference. You will be invited to present your revised paper (in Arabic, French or English) at the first Conference of the Arab Council of Social Sciences to be held in Beirut on November 29-30, 2012 where you can network with other scholars and activist-scholars. Your travel, hotel, and expenses will be fully covered.
  • Intensive workshop with the whole class and mentors to be held on December 1-2, 2012 in Beirut for improving essays and for defining new paradigms, research agendas and public policy initiatives.
  • Future activities and networking. Forthcoming rounds of other activities with subsequent classes of “Factory Fellows” may follow.

Eligibility:



This competition is open to activist-scholars as well as academics currently resident in the Arab region. You have to be 40 years or younger. You should be currently enrolled in an MA or PhD program or have already obtained an MA or PhD. You do not need to be employed in a social science field or academic institution but you do need to be actively engaged in social-science debates and aware of current dominant paradigms, and concerned about their limitations.  


Materials to Submit:


To apply, please submit the following materials:

  1. The application cover form, which contains basic information about your academic background and requests the name and contacts of one academic referee (no reference letter required at the time of the application).
  2. A draft essay of between 1500-2000 words (strict limit). In this essay, you must:
    • Identify a particular paradigm or framework of knowledge in a particular social science (or a popular political or social theory that is powerful in the media) that addresses our theme for the first class of “Factory Fellows” (October 1 – December 3, 2012), which is “Sovereignty;”
    • Explain what set of experiences or findings you have that challenge that “old” paradigm (please include information on relevant projects you have worked on or research you have undertaken);
    • Outline which set of ideas, revised theoretical perspective, new method of research or way of seeing, or new framing of phenomena you are developing. How will your new paradigm or frame reveal more accurately and vividly the political, social, historical or cultural process that interests you?
  3. If you have a relevant publication, conference paper, newspaper or web article, blogs or other media output, please add to your application.

Submission Guidelines:


Applicants are requested to submit their application materials online through the ACSS website. Please click here for application cover form, with instructions on uploading your essay and a relevant publication. The essay should be uploaded as a Word document and be single-spaced, in a left justified format and in Times New Roman font (font size 12).  Materials can be submitted in Arabic, English or French. 
Please feel free to email the ACSS with any questions regarding the project, eligibility or application procedures.

Click here to download the call for applications. 

Click here to apply online. 

If you have any questions, please contact the Research and Fellowships Manager, Arab Council for the Social Sciences.



Deadline for Submissions: 12 September 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