Call for Papers:
Settlers and Citizens: A Critical View of Israeli Society
Special Issue of Settler Colonial Studies
In Collaboration with the SOAS Palestine Society
We invite contributions for a guest-edited special issue of Settler-Colonial Studies on the topic: “Settlers and Citizens: A Critical View of Israeli Society”. Papers should be between 8000 and 9500 words and should be submitted to soaspalsoc.conf2015@gmail.com by 31 August 2016.
This special issue aims to contribute to the growing body of literature that intersects settler colonial studies with empirical studies of Israel/Palestine, and is based on the 10th annual SOAS Palestine Society Conference, held on the 17th-18th October 2015. Its thematic focus is a concrete and contemporary interrogation of the structures and mechanisms of Zionist settler colonialism through the lens of Israeli politics and society. Bringing critical studies of Palestine into conversation with critical studies of Israeli society offers a platform through which the two conflate and form a united body of knowledge on Israeli settler-colonial realities. Our aim is to develop an analysis of the relations between the colonisers and the colonised.
The designation of Settler Colonial Studies as its own disciplinary arena has been an important development for understanding its particular machinations, as linked to but distinctive from Colonialism as a whole. Authors such as Patrick Wolfe, Lorenzo Veracini and others have helped to identify the specificity of the settler colonial frame, and the overall forms in which historical processes – ranging from the colonisation of North America to the colonisation of South Africa, through that of Australia, Algeria, Zimbabwe and others – are inscribed.
Also in the case of Palestine, a rich body of literature has emerged on the historical development, and contemporary realities of Zionist settler colonialism. Historians such as, among others, Gershon Shafir, Salim Tamari, Walid Khalidi and Ilan Pappe, or social scientists such as Nadim Rouhana, Shourideh Molavi, and Mansour Nsasra have detailed the ways in which Zionist colonisation took form in Palestine from the late 19th century onwards, how this project interacted with the indigenous population, and how it continues to play itself out today. The Journal, Settler Colonial Studies, itself, produced a seminal issue on settler colonialism in Palestine, calling for a new praxis for analysing and challenging the political and social spectrum it has produced (Salamanca et al, 2012).
The issue aims to advance this body of literature, in its specific focus on social, political and economic relations within contemporary Israel. Moving beyond the critical work that has already established the efficacy and analytical astuteness of the settler-colonial paradigm in this case, the issue’s contribution to the field will be framed by the materiality of ‘the settler-colonial logic’. While its structural features reach across place, space and time, settler-colonialism takes on concrete form through the colonisation of people and land. It then evolves and is entrenched through the production, maintenance and dissemination of knowledge, which then further sustains its dominance over territory, capital, institutions and people. The concrete produces the contours of the settler-colonial space, and the titles in this issue will trace these lines through the complex relations, modalities and mechanisms that embed Zionist settler-colonialism as part of the everyday life of present-day Palestine.
For this special issue, we are seeking articles that interrogate the material ambiguities of the Israeli case, and thus can contribute to advancing our theoretical understanding of the settler-colonial frame. The different titles will answer the question: What are the material, cultural, ideological and legal manifestations of Israeli settler colonialism, and what do they teach us about the potential for decolonisation?
While we are open to any range of topics, we hope to specifically explore:
· Productions of knowledge and the construction of the colonising subject
· Logistics, legalities and infrastructure that seek to make indigenous space and people legible to the coloniser
· The impact of settler colonial analysis on shifting discourses of ‘race’ and racism inside Israel
· The violence of settler colonialism in Israel
· Limits to power and limits to resistance in Israel
· The political economy of Israel’s war machinery
· International patrons of contemporary settler colonial society in Israel
· Relations between marginalised Israeli-Jewish communities and Palestinian citizens of Israel
· The role of religion in the Israeli settler colonial logic
Through these different approaches, the special issue aims to situate the analysis of Israeli society firmly within the boundaries of Palestine studies. Too often, the subjects discussed herein are considered to be the sole preserve of Israel Studies’ publications and tend, therefore, to approach the subject through the limits of this lens. By challenging these boundaries – in physical and disciplinary terms – the task of understanding the particular modes of the settler colonial society, become part and parcel of the process of explaining the colonial process, in order to contribute to its dismantling.
Submissions should be between 8,000 - 9500 words in length, including endnotes and bibliographic references, and sent to the guest editors at soaspalsoc.conf2015@gmail.com by August 31st, 2016. These will undergo a stringent peer review process; the results of which will be communicated to authors within three months of receiving the papers. We expect to publish the special issue in the first half of 2017.
Please see and follow the journal’s submission guidelines, in particular its eligibility requirements and reference style guide. If you would like to discuss your contribution, please contact the guest editors at soaspalsoc.conf2015@gmail.com.
This special issue is being developed in collaboration with the SOAS Palestine Society and co-edited by:
- Yara Hawari (University of Exeter)
- Dr. Sharri Plonski (SOAS, University of London)
- Dr. Elian Weisman (Council for British Research in the Levant)