Call for Proposals--Arab Revolutions: An Event For the Social Sciences?

Call for Proposals--Arab Revolutions: An Event For the Social Sciences?

Call for Proposals--Arab Revolutions: An Event For the Social Sciences?

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Taking for a starting point the “revolutions” experienced by Arab and Muslim societies since 2011, this issue proposes a reflective discussion on the links between the event and our practice of the social sciences.

The changes that occurred from the end of 2010 in the South and East of the Mediterranean have indeed been marked by several characteristics: the strength of the event and its narrative construction, the unexpected nature of the event, the speed of the first changes and the resilience of certain processes. A context of rapid social change produced a demand for social understanding (or at least, a demand for explanations), which very quickly implicated the social sciences. Despite mistrust for what is generally assimilated to “spontaneous media spin”, it was impossible not to comment, however transient the explanation. At first, commentary was provided by political and more generally current affairs specialists asked to provide context, in virtual real time, for the unfolding historical events. But they were not alone. We propose to examine, on the basis of first hand and comparative experiences how social science practitioners (historians, linguists, demographers, specialists of Islam, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers...) responded to this interpellation.

We seek contributions from researchers in all human and social science disciplines reflecting upon how breaking events in an historical context serve to stimulate and enrich cross-disciplinary exchanges, open new fields for investigation, produce new directions, eliminate others, change references and more generally, renew fundamental questions.

For global upheaval...

Arab and Muslim societies today offer a remarkable point of entry for evaluation of the human and social sciences in a context of social transformation. The explanatory power of an event should not be limited to the political field but tested across a range of fields and disciplines, challenging the social sciences in their own practices. In such cases, fields of enquiry may be exposed or redefined for phenomena which heretofore may have been largely ignored, proscribed or inaccessible for study. One can legitimately question whether the exposed phenomena are properly a product of crisis management or part of an underlying process exposed by the collapse of the old order. What is important is how such phenomena are taken into account and “discovered” in the post- revolutionary context.

In some cases, such enquiry can lead to a new understanding of known phenomena. To take one example, the effect of context obviously plays heavily on discussions on long held beliefs regarding the religious foundations of society, forcing a reexamination of the Islamists’ bid for power and their willingness to reintroduce “Islamic” policies.

In other cases, the appearance of new practices could bring into the field of research objects which may have struggled for legitimacy and recognition, as, for example, the proliferation of linguistic practices, beginning with the language and vocabulary of protest. More broadly, it is cultural production as a whole (film, literature, Internet...) which nurtures and encourages revolutionary social dynamics.

To the phenomena mentioned above, we should add the considerable effect of networks and Internet links to a variety of geographies which place these changes in the global context of contemporary socio-political protests.

The magnitude of these changes and the use of the term “revolution” detracted somewhat from the popular concept of an “Arab identity” before its forceful, post revolutionary re-appropriation. Does such a sequence offer possibilities for comparative studies on a greater scale and over time?

…enforced multidisciplinarity ?

It is probably the multidimensional nature of these developments that explains why such a wide range of disciplines have been mobilized and solicited by events and individual researchers in organizing the conduct of their enquiries, and for interpreting and understanding their observations. This is also true for the teaching of these disciplines. But the very boundaries of disciplinary practices tend to blur in the heat of events, testing multidisciplinarity in ways that few research programs could hope to achieve in times of “normal observation”.

It is thus that Islamic scholars specializing in medieval Islamic law and unaccustomed to media exposure, can be questioned on the issue of the application (or non-application) of Shari`a law. Specialists in contemporary Arabic literature reiterate the importance of the social dimension of cultural production, beyond the strictly textual analysis of the works they study. Some linguists report cross-border movement of slogans, unexpected combinations of linguistic registries and languages (Arabic, local dialects, Berber, French, English) while noting the linguistic diversity of political protest.

Anthropologists and geographers offer hypotheses which do not always correlate with respect to the territorial implications of strains placed on tribal or confessional identities, as was the case in Libya and especially in Syria.

Historians – who are often said to write inevitably from their own present – cannot fail to wonder at what looks like history in the making: How does one reconcile an obvious fascination for the fleeting present with a long term perspective? How should one treat new sources as they become available while digital archives are in the making? How should one interpret the (re)writing of national histories, etc.?

We can add that such proliferation is obviously amplified and projected by new digital media – spun for effect, yes, but also informative – such as journals and research blogs, whether personal or the product of group effort. These are just so many new ways of writing the present, which, while immediate and personal, may with time lead to more traditional publication products.

Arab revolutions: social sciences invoked by force of events

As editors of the REMMM, a multidisciplinary journal whose purpose is to contribute thought and insight in the area studied, we wish to take the opportunity to think about what the Arab revolutions are to the social sciences. Faced with a series of events that have blurred accepted standards for intelligibility, how are the demands for social explanation formulated? How can the social sciences, drawing on their own resources, recreate sense? In what terms can the issue of cross-discipline scholarship be posited and reposited so that academic practitioners, advancing in dispersed order at times even in competition with one another, may contribute to a practical foundation for mutual understanding between approaches and specific knowledge?

Several lines of thought can be considered:

  • The researcher and social demand for expert opinion: unlike the attacks of 11 September 2001 which led to criticism of research on Middle Eastern societies, the Arab Spring has led to a heavy reliance on academic expertise for commentary. The sudden disruption of public understanding has led to call for better understanding. We might therefore consider the channels through which social demands are communicated as well as the intermediaries who make the request. What latitude do researchers have in choosing to respond to such requests, what is their margin of flexibility, their degree of autonomy and specific contribution to recreate intelligibility?
  • The shifting boundaries among the social sciences: In research, it is a matter of studying current developments and emergent research for innovative disciplinary approaches and new interactions among fields that study evolving realities. To take one example, the Tunisian and Egyptian elections of 2011, whatever their outcome, produced an immediate effect, giving new importance to the behavior and choices of voters, thus opening a major avenue of research in electoral sociology, a field until then considered inconsequential for Arab societies. Conversely, one might consider an heuristic approach heretofore hidden by an excessive focus on the present or dismissed in an agenda dictated by social demands. The aim would be to extend this type of thinking to all disciplines, to try to understand how these might be transformed, both from a theoretical point of view (new objects, new models and interpretations...), and a methodological point of view (access to land and resources, or conversely, by exclusion) by observing, analyzing and commenting on the changes that have occurred since the end of 2010.

This call is open to researchers working in other areas and to whom the Arab revolutions have, somehow, brought new perspectives to their own fields. Such contributions could indeed help conceptualize the Arab revolutions as “local” manifestations of a process which is disruptive of the “disciplinary regimen of knowledge”.

Proposed papers (4000 characters at the most) should be emailed to mcatusse@hotmail.com and to siino@mmsh.univ-aix.fr before 28 February 2014.

Selected papers of 40,000 characters (maximum) should be received before 1 September 2014.

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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