Symposium: Mobilities and Materialities of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula (American University of Kuwait, 17-19 March)

New Article Submission

Thank you for your interest in Jadaliyya. We welcome all submissions. The most significant requirement is for Jadaliyya submissions to be analytically compelling and offer a perspective or argument that has not been covered at length either on Jadaliyya or elsewhere. Because of the volume of submissions, well-written pieces are prioritized. Length is flexible, 1000 to 2500 words is the average range. However, we will accept longer pieces. Once submitted, several members of the editorial committee will review your piece and one of them will inform you of the decision.
Author Details
Article Details
Select Countries
Select Keywords
Select Topics
Only RTF, Word, and Pages documents accepted.

Recommended image size: 762x800 px

Location of each image should be indicated in the text of the article via a square bracket caption that includes: (1) a description of the image; (2) the photographer/designer and source of the image. Please note we only use images you as the author have the right to use, which usually means those of your own creation or those published under Creative Commons. Alternatively, you need specific permission from the copyright holder.
Please read the Release Form and provide an electronic signature [your full name] below to confirm that you accept its terms
Required
Hyperlink words in your article if they refer to links on the internet. We encourage more, rather than less, links (try to avoid footnotes—embed them as hyperlinks if possible)

Article added successfully.

Pages Menu BETA
Mar 11, 2017
Symposium: Mobilities and Materialities of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula (American University of Kuwait, 17-19 March)

Symposium: Mobilities and Materialities of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula (American University of Kuwait, 17-19 March)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

The Center for Gulf Studies at the American University of Kuwait will hold its third Gulf Studies Symposium (GSS) on 17-19 March 2017. The GSS is a meeting of worldwide Gulf scholars and researchers held biennially in Kuwait. Each symposium is based on a particular scholarly theme that is timely both to the region and to the field of Gulf studies. The theme of the 2017 GSS is "Mobilities and Materialities of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula."

2017 Program

The Gulf and Arabian Peninsula (incorporating the GCC states, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen) has for centuries been settled, unsettled, and resettled through continuous patterns of migration and the systematic movements of people. Yet the people of this region are commonly fixed within one of two overarching sociological dichotomies: sedentary/Bedouin in relation to the citizenry (particularly before oil), and citizens/expatriates in relation to the overall population (after the advent of state citizenship laws). The two sides of each binary evoke contrasting states of mobility. Historically sedentary groups like villagers or townspeople (hadar) were tied to specific locales, while the Bedouin were nomadic tribes that wandered aimlessly across the region`s deserts. In the citizens/expatriates binary, the former are depicted as settled and permanent, whereas the latter are transient and temporary "guests." In reality, these sociological groups cannot be neatly reduced to such designated states of mobility. Historically, sedentary town-dwellers were extremely mobile: trading and sailing by sea to ports across the Indian Ocean for months at a time, and regularly relocating to towns with more favorable economic or political conditions. Bedouin tribes, meanwhile, were often tied to particular territories (called diras) and inextricably connected to rulers and markets in nearby towns. In present-day contexts, Gulf citizens are also mobile and transnational: they travel several times a year, have second homes elsewhere, study abroad, and so on. And expatriates-though not granted formal citizenship or even, in some cases, permanent residency-often remain in the Gulf for decades if not generations, belying their "temporary" status. Such binaries are not constructed organically out of ostensible facts, but rather are produced, maintained, and reinscribed through overlapping state citizenship, labor, and migration regimes.

This symposium proposes new ways of thinking about the mobilities of diverse groups that go beyond the aforementioned binaries and include subjects previously elided. These include: students, scholars, artists, diplomats, sailors, merchants, travelers and tourists, religious figures, pilgrims, refugees, slaves, and migrant laborers. The papers examine the processes that animate or delimit diverse forms of mobility; writings, narratives, and archives that index these mobilities; everyday power relations, governance systems, and geopolitics that configure and are reconfigured by these mobilities; as well as their broader sociocultural, religious, economic, and environmental implications.

The continuous and systematic movement of people to, from, and within the region creates a mutually-affecting engagement with, and leaves substantial traces in, the material world. The symposium also therefore examines the materialities of these mobilities. This includes the infrastructures, transportation networks/geographies, and various built environments that enable, constrain, or are produced by people`s movements. It also includes commodities, artworks, monuments, everyday objects, and other forms of material culture that expose (or omit) such mobilities.

The Gulf Studies Symposium is open to the public, though you must register in advance to attend as seating is limited. To register, go to: www.auk.edu.kw/cgs/gss

The GSS will take place in the AUK Auditorium (Liberal Arts Building).

\"\"

 

Day 1: Friday, March 17

11:30-12:15pm: Opening Remarks

 

12:15-1pm: Excavating Gulf Mobilities

 

This opening lecture discusses the long historical development of nomadic and settled peoples in the Gulf through an analysis of historical and archaeological evidence, and ties the patterns of migration and settlement in the region to wider patterns of integration, globalization, and trade.

Discussant: Antonia Stamos (AUK)

Robert Carter (University College London, Qatar), "Demography, Migration and Settlement in the Historical Towns of Qatar"

 

1-3pm: Maritime Mobilities Past and Present

 

This panel focuses on the historical and present-day movement of people across the region`s waterways. The papers analyze how transoceanic communities of varied sorts have socially, politically, and geographically navigated the waters of the Indian Ocean, with a collective emphasis on the flexible and fluid, but also highly regulated and contested, nature of maritime mobilities.

Chair: Jasmine Singh (AUK) / Discussant: Gholamreza Vatandoust (AUK)

Fahad Bishara (University of Virginia), "Monsoon Travelers: Space, Text, and Mobility Across the Indian Ocean"

Victoria Hightower (University of North Georgia), "Irregularities, Disturbances, and Piratical Undertakings: Mobility and Maritime Violence in the Lower Arab Gulf Emirates in the 19th Century"

Ahmed Makia (Independent Researcher), "Treading Gulf Waters"

Nathalie Peutz (New York University, Abu Dhabi), "In Dire Straits: Documenting Yemen`s Humanitarian Crisis and the Mixed Migration Flows of Refugees, Migrants and Returnees Crossing the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden" 

 

3-3:30pm: Coffee Break

 

3:30-4:30pm: Keynote Address

 

Dina Khoury (The George Washington University), "What`s in a Passport? Reflections on Documents on the Borderlands of Empires and Nations in the Persian Gulf, 1880s-1930s

  

Day 2: Saturday, March 18

9-10:30am: The Mobilities of Urban Infrastructures

 

This panel examines the diverse ways that the movement of people and cultures into and around the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula in the 19th and 20th centuries radically transformed the region`s urban landscapes, highlighting the impact of religious pilgrimage, immigration, and imported construction methods and materials on the built environment and its inhabitants.

Chair: Shareefa Al-Adwani (AUK) / Discussant: Lisa Urkevich (AUK)

Ulrike Freitag (Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin), "The Material Infrastructure of the Hajj in Jeddah, Late 19th and Early 20th Century"

Lindsey Stephenson (Princeton University), "Building a New Home: Iranian Migrations to Kuwait and Bahrain and their Contributions to the Built Environment, 1900-1950"

Matthew MacLean (New York University), "Building the Nation: A History of Rock, Cement, and Concrete in the United Arab Emirates"

 

10:30-10:45am: Coffee break

 

10:45-12:15pm: Mobilizing Modernity

 

This panel examines the discursive and material traces of the Gulf`s early oil modernity (1950s-1970s). It analyzes the circulation of the people, objects, ideas, and technological expertise that shaped the region`s modernization, and considers traveling materials such as postcards, films, magazines, and stamps as representations of its modernity.

Chair: Raymond Farrin (AUK) / Discussant: Farah Al-Nakib (AUK)

Nelida Fuccaro (School of Oriental and African Studies), "The Politics of Mobility and Materiality in the Making of Historical Petroleum Societies and Cultures"

Mai Al-Nakib (Kuwait University), "Traveling Postcards: Retracing Kuwait`s Modernity"

Wafa Alsayed (London School of Economics), "Sawt al-Bahrain (1950-1954): Transnationalism, Pan-Arabism and Modernism in a Bahraini Magazine"

 

12:15-1:15pm: Lunch break

 

1:15-2:45pm: The Transnational Flow of Modern Ideologies

 

This panel explores the transnational transmission of Arabism and Islamism in the context of the Gulf`s historical connections to the wider Arab world. The papers examine the flow of educational and intellectual influences into, across, and out of the Gulf. 

Chair: Katherine Hennessey (AUK) / Discussant: Abdulrahman Al-Farhan (AUK)

Louis Allday (School of Oriental and African Studies), "From Egyptian `Rascal` to Saudi Arabian Diplomat: The Political Journey of Hafiz Wahba"

Courtney Freer (London School of Economics), "Islamism across Borders: Exploring the Egyptian-Kuwaiti Connection"

Talal Al-Rashoud (School of Oriental and African Studies), "Educating the Arab Nation: Kuwait`s Scholarship Program for Arab Students, 1953-1961"

 

2:45-3pm: Coffee break

 

3-4:15pm: Aesthetic Mobilities

 

This panel examines the movement of artists and their work across regional boundaries, as well as the infrastructures and institutions that enable, finance, and give visibility to this creative flow. The papers examine the circulation and exchange of aesthetic references and norms of cultural consumption across transnational networks.

Chair: Rosalind Buckton-Tucker (AUK) / Discussant: William Andersen (AUK)

Anahi Alviso-Marino (European Centre for Sociology and Political Science), "The Artist and the Archive: Geographies of Visibility in and around Kuwait"

Amin Moghadam (Princeton University), "Moving with Art, the Art of Moving: Transnational Cultural Flows Between Tehran and Dubai and the Shaping of New Materialities"

 

Day 3: Sunday, March 19 

9-10:30am: Migratory Spirituality

 

This panel analyzes religious pieties, identities, and belongings among particular sects and migratory groups, and examines how material forms-such as churches, historical sites, and prayer stones-animate religious mobilities and mediate spiritual relations.

Chair: Mara Leichtman (AUK) / Discussant: George Irani (AUK)

Benjamin Crace (American University of Kuwait), "Singing the Lord`s Song in a Foreign Land: The Coptic Orthodox Diaspora in Kuwait"

Attiya Ahmad (The George Washington University), "The Spoils of War: Halal Tourism Aspirations and Material Counterpoints"

Thomas Fibiger (Aarhus University), "Material Mediation: The Case of the Turba Prayer Stone as Traveling Soil"

 

10:30-10:45am: Coffee break

 

10:45am-12:15pm: Materialities of Power and Resistance

 

This panel addresses the materialities and geographies of power by which official authorities-from imperial powers to the modern state-have attempted to manage and control the movement of people across deserts and everyday urban space, and that have enabled some mobile communities to resist the reach of state control. 

Chair: Roman Kulchitsky (AUK) / Discussant: Arby Siraki (AUK)

Carl Bryant Shook (University of Chicago), "Raiders, Refugees, and Resettlement: Managing Tribal Populations in the Kuwait-Nejd-Iraq Border Zone, 1924-1925"

Zina Sawaf (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva), "Mobility and Materiality in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Identification Cards, Everyday Life and the State"

Hassan Hussain (University of North Georgia), "Between Hadar and Badu: The Mesopotamian Marshes as Sites of Refuge and Resistance"

 

12:15-1:15pm: Lunch break

 

1:15-2:30pm: The Mobilizing Effects of War

 

This panel focuses on the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait to examine the mobility and materiality of war and its aftermath, with a particular emphasis on the lasting effects of memories of the invasion recorded in material traces of war debris, in divisive official narratives, and in personal remembrance.

Chair: Inas Mahfouz (AUK) / Discussant: Pellegrino Luciano (AUK)

Christopher Ohan (Texas Wesleyan University), "Mobility and Reconfiguration Resulting from the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait"

Conerly Casey (Rochester Institute of Technology), "War Debris and the Mobilizing of Presence"

 

2:30-2:45pm: Coffee break

2:45-5pm: Roundtable: New Perspectives on Labor Migration in the Gulf

 

This roundtable tackles the most pervasive issue concerning mobility in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula today: the transnational flow of migrant labor into the region. An increasingly familiar topic of scholarly analysis, the papers introduce under-researched aspects of the labor migration system, such as the historical production of labor hierarchies, proposed reforms to the kefala system, the role of transnational labor brokers in migrant-sending states, and the lived experiences of the laborers themselves. The paper presentations will be followed by an extended general discussion on the topic with all symposium participants.

Moderator: Attiya Ahmad (The George Washington University)

Andrew Leber (Harvard University), "Skill Levels and Migrant Labor Reform: Evidence from the GCC"

Andrew Gardner (University of Puget Sound), "Profiteers and/or Enablers? Mobility and Contemporary Labor Brokers in the Indian Ocean World"

Andrea Wright (The College of William and Mary), "From Slaves to Contract Workers: Genealogies of Consent in the Production of Labor Hierarchies in the Arabic-speaking Persian Gulf"

Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar (Independent Researcher), "On the Stage and the Page: Articulations of Indian Identity in the GCC"

5-5:30pm: Closing Remarks by Farah Al-Nakib (AUK)

  

  • ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

    • Connections Episode 104: War on Iran with Sina Toossi (1 July)

      Connections Episode 104: War on Iran with Sina Toossi (1 July)

      Join us on Tuesday, 1 July for a conversation with Sina Toossi about the war on Iran. This episode of Connections will examine the background, impact, and consequences of the war, and assess the durability of the ceasefire. 

    • Lies, Deceit, and Criminality: Israel & the United States Attack Iran (Part II)

      Lies, Deceit, and Criminality: Israel & the United States Attack Iran (Part II)

      Join us for Part II of our series on the US-Israeli attack on Iran as we discuss the US' recent bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities as well as their national and regional implications.

    • Long Form Podcast Episode 9: Islamophobia, the West, and Genocide with Hatem Bazian

      Long Form Podcast Episode 9: Islamophobia, the West, and Genocide with Hatem Bazian

      Hatem Bazian addresses the historical trajectory of Islamophobia and its significance in understanding geopolitical transformation in the post-Cold War world. As Western ideologues shifted from their focus on the Soviet Union after the Cold War, and increasingly adopted the Clash of Civilizations paradigm to undergird their maintenance of global hegemony, Islam and Muslims replaced communism as the chief bogeyman. Bazian explains how and why this came about, and the centrality Palestine played in its development and operation, both in the West and for Israel. He also addresses US government disciplining of universities and particularly student activists.
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
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