Call for Papers -- Five Years after the Arab Revolutions: The Arduous Road of Democratization and Future Prospects (Beirut, 21-23 January 2016)

Call for Papers -- Five Years after the Arab Revolutions: The Arduous Road of Democratization and Future Prospects (Beirut, 21-23 January 2016)

Call for Papers -- Five Years after the Arab Revolutions: The Arduous Road of Democratization and Future Prospects (Beirut, 21-23 January 2016)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Call for Papers

Five Years after the Arab Revolutions: “The Arduous Road of Democratization and Future Prospects

In association with the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) is pleased to announce “Five Years after the Arab Revolutions: The Arduous Road of Democratization and Future Prospects”, an academic conference to be held in Beirut from January 21-23, 2016. The conference’s organizing committee welcomes submissions which respond to the below mentioned focus areas, and which presents original research that drives forward the understanding of the Arab revolutions.

Submitted papers should fall under one of the following focus areas: 

1.     The State: Its Structure and the Way it Impacts the Difficult Transition

This topic covers the following issues: the emergence of hereditary republics; identification between power and the state; the effect of the state on revolutions; the effect of the revolutions on the state; the modern Arab state between institutional fragility and the strength of security agencies; excessive state violence in the face of revolutions and protest movements; the roles of military and security institutions; the redefinition of these roles in the new structure of the political system, especially in the first year of the outbreak of revolution; and finally, what are the role of the state and the nature of its relationship with power according to the various revolutionary patterns?

2.     Democracy, Spontaneous Revolutions and Organized Forces

Is there an Arab democratic alternative supported by a genuine social base? Is there a real social demand for democracy? What is the role of transitional justice and the legal and judicial institutions in making, impeding, or even reversing democratic change? Do the roles, of institutions as manifested in the concrete situation, provide legitimacy to main political actors? Are they essential in consolidating the process of democratic transition? What is the role of the media, particularly satellite TV channels, in the aforementioned context?

3.     Recent Dynamics in Society

What is the relationship between traditional society and civil society during the past five years? How did inherited civil structures reemerge, and is this reemergence functional or structural? To what extent is this determined by power-sharing? What is the impact of the advocacy of federalism and regional self-rule? Is political violence structural in traditional societies with strong sub-national identities? What are the consequences of the Islamic/secular polarization on the intricate process of democratization, on aggravating of the dynamics of social fragmentation, and on impairing social harmony during the stages of transition? Who are the Islamic and secular actors in the polarization? Furthermore, what are the effects of social media on the current situation and what are its limits? Is the role of the media exaggerated in such a way that it appears more influential than the socio-political factors in the outbreak of the uprisings and revolutions? Or else, is their role merely a technical and complementary one, serving exchange and political mobilization?

4.     Regional and International Polarizations and their Impact on Revolutions

What is the relationship between internal dynamics and foreign influence in a turbulent geo-political context that is caught between a web of international interests, the political and military "game of nations", and international humanitarian law? In addition, what are the consequences of the erosion of the traditional concept of sovereignty, i.e. the Westphalian sovereignty, especially in a phase where states exercise excessive use of power and violence that falls beyond the standards and the limits of national laws? Moreover, what is the role of direct intervention of foreign state agencies in the revolutionary scene? Does the direct or semi-direct involvement of regional and international parties in the socio-political revolutionary context enhance the possibility of structural changes in the regional order?

Please follow this link to the background paper for more information on each focus area. 

Interested scholars are expected to abide by the following requirements when submitting their papers:

a)     A concise summary of the proposed research paper, approximately between 500 to 700 words in length, which covers the main outline and contains: the paper’s main thesis or arguments, and specification of the research problem. The above should be submitted no later than June 30, 2015, to both Ms. Nermine El Horr (IFI; ne70@aub.edu.lb) & Mr. Nerouz Satik (ACRPS; nerouz.satik@dohainstitute.org). 

b)     Summaries can be submitted in both Arabic and English.

c)     Summaries will be judged by a panel of academic referees who will notify the relevant author of their decision in writing by October 30th, 2015. 

d)     Roundtrip ticket (economy class) to and from Beirut, four nights of accommodation and meals will be covered for presenters.

e)     Final papers need to be submitted by end of November, 2015

Contact information:

IFI |Ms. Nermine El Horr - Tel: +961-(0)1-350000 extension 3323 | Email: ne70@aub.edu.lb

ACRPS | Mr. Nerouz Satik – Email: nerouz.satik@dohainstitute.org

For more information about IFI please click here | For more information about ACRPS please click here

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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