Ten Years On Project: Exploring the New Regional Dynamics of the Middle East (Video)

Ten Years On Project: Exploring the New Regional Dynamics of the Middle East (Video)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Ten Years On Project Presents

Exploring the New Regional Dynamics of the Middle East


Wednesday 26 May 2021
1:00 PM Washington D.C. | 6:00 PM London | 8:00 PM Beirut


This is the fifth signature event of the
Ten Years On: Mass Protests and Uprisings in the Arab World Project

For more information, go to thearabuprisings.com

Co-sponsored by  the Arab Council for Social Sciences and the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter

Featuring:

Seda Altug (Bogazici University)
Olfa Lamloum (Tunisia Country Director, International Alert)
Maziyar Ghiabi (University of Exeter)
Arang Keshavarzian (New York University)
Rima Majed (American University of Beirut)
Rafeef Ziadah (SOAS, University of London)

Moderators: Seteney Shami (ACSS) and Adam Hanieh (University of Exeter)


The last decade has witnessed deep changes to the regional dynamics of the Middle East. Millions of people have been displaced within and across the region, disrupting existing territorial arrangements and producing a range of new cross-border networks and political and economic ties. Struggles over regional influence have generated complex patterns of inter-state rivalries and reconfigured regional alliances in unprecedented ways. Closely coupled to these unstable political dynamics are changing trade, finance, and investment flows, with new relationships evolving between Middle Eastern states and neighbouring regions such East and West Africa, South Asia, and the Balkans.

This signature event will explore some of these themes and their implications for how we understand the Middle East as a ‘region’ or ‘area’. What new cross-border flows have emerged in the Middle East over the last decade, and how do these challenge standard social science approaches to the Middle East? How can we integrate the pluralities of the Middle East – including those of non-Arab majority states – into a study of the region, in ways that move beyond the constraints of competing nationalisms, geographical silos, and disciplinary boundaries? How do we recognize regional patterns of unevenness, marginalization, and dispossession, while avoiding homogenizing accounts that flatten the Middle East as an area in uniform ‘decline’ or ‘crisis’? How is the Middle East located within the changing global order, and what new relationships might be forming between the region and other areas of the world system? 

Speakers 


Seda Altuğ
 is a lecturer at the Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. She received her PhD from Utrecht University, Netherlands. Her dissertation is entitled “Sectarianism in the Syrian Jazira: Community, Land and Violence in the Memories of World War I and the French Mandate (1915–1939)”. Her research interests are state-society relations in French-Syria, sectarianism, land question, empire, border and memory. Her recent work concerns land, property regimes and citizenship practices in the late Ottoman East and Syria under the French mandate.


Dr Olfa Lamloum
 holds a PhD in political science from Paris 8 University. She taught at the University of Paris-Nanterre before joining the French Institute of the Middle East (IFPO) in Beirut as a researcher.  She is currently the Tunisia country director for the NGO International Alert. She has led several research projects on the relegation of the border areas and working class suburbs in Tunisia. Her latest edited book is Jeunes et violences institutionnelles : Enquêtes dix ans après la révolution(2021) She also co-directed 2 documentary films, including Voices from Kasserine (2017).


Maziyar Ghiabi
 is Wellcome Lecturer in Medical Humanities and Politics at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (London: Cambridge University Press, 2019, also in Open Access) won the 2020 Book of the Year Nikki Keddie Award by the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA). Maziyar's current project is about the experience of 'addiction' in states of disruption and it is funded by the Wellcome Trust, 2021-2026. Beside the politics of health, Maziyar has worked on theoretical and anthropological approaches to revolt, displacement and state formation, the outcome of which will appear in a forthcoming book, States Without People in 2022 with McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.


Arang Keshavarzian
 is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.  He is the author of Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace  and the co-editor with Ali Mirsepassi of Global 1979: Geographies and Histories of the Iranian Revolution.  He has published articles on the political economy and history of Iran, the Persian Gulf, and the broader Middle East in journals including Politics and Society, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Geopolitics, Economy and Society, and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Rima Majed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Her work focuses on the fields of social inequality, social movements, sectarianism, conflict, and violence. Dr. Majed has completed her PhD at the University of Oxford where she conducted her research on the relationship between structural changes, social mobilization, and sectarianism in Lebanon. She was a visiting fellow at the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice at Princeton University in 2018/19. Dr. Majed is the author of numerous articles and op-eds. Her work has appeared in several journals, books and platforms such as Social Forces, Mobilization, Routledge Handbook on the Politics of the Middle East, Middle East Law and Governance, Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East, Global Dialogue, Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology, Al Jumhuriya, OpenDemocracy, Jacobin, Middle East Eye, and Al Jazeera English. She is also the co-editor of the upcoming book The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution (I.B. Taurus).

Rafeef Ziadah is Lecturer in Comparative Politics of the Middle East in the Politics and International Studies Department, SOAS University of London. Her research interests are broadly concerned with the political economy of transport infrastructures, war and humanitarianism, racism and the security state, with a particular focus on the Middle East. Her latest book is Revolutionary Feminisms (Verso, 2020) co-edited Brenna Bhandar.

Moderators


Seteney Shami 
is an anthropologist from Jordan with degrees from the American University in Beirut and U.C. Berkeley. After teaching at Yarmouk University in Jordan and setting up a graduate department of anthropology, she moved in 1996 to the regional office of the Population Council in Cairo as director of the Middle East Awards in Population and the Social Sciences (MEAwards). She has also been a visiting Professor at U.C. Berkeley, Georgetown University, University of Chicago, Stockholm University and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (Uppsala). In July 1999, she joined the Social Science Research Council in New York and is program director for the program on the Middle East and North Africa and also was the program director for Eurasia from 1999-2010. She is also the Founding Director of the newly established Arab Council for the Social Sciences, a regional organization headquartered in Beirut. She has conducted fieldwork in Jordan, Turkey and in the North Caucasus. Her research interests center on issues of ethnicity and nationalism in the context of globalization, urban politics and state-building strategies, and population displacement and trans-national movements.

Adam Hanieh teaches in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. His recent publications include Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States (2011); Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (2013); and (co-edited with Omar Shehabi and Abdulhadi Khalaf) Transit States: Labour, Migration, and Citizenship in the Gulf (2014).


Ten Years On
Mass Protests and Uprisings in the Arab World


This event is part of the Ten Years on Project, a year-long series of events, reflections, and conversations created to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the start of the Arab uprisings in Tunisia. We launched this project in order to interrogate and reflect on the uprisings, with the hope of producing resources for educators, researchers, students, and journalists to understand the last decade of political upheaval historically and in the lived present.

Watch all of our previous Ten Years on events here:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Organizers: Arab Studies Institute, Princeton’s Arab Barometer, George Mason’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program.

Co-Sponsors: Georgetown University (Center for Contemporary Arab Studies), American University of Beirut (Asfari Institute), Arab Council for the Social Sciences, Brown University (Center for Middle East Studies), UC Santa Barbara (Center for Middle East Studies), Harvard University (Center for Middle East Studies), University of Exeter (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies), Birzeit University (Department of Political Science), University of Chicago (Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory), Stanford University (Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, Stanford University), AUC Affiliates, Georgetown University (Qatar) Center For International And Regional Studies (CIRS), The Global Academy (MESA Affiliated), Institute of Palestine Studies.
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Ten Years On Project - Disciplinary Woes and Possibilities: Political Science in the Context of the Uprisings (Video)

The Ten Years On Project Presents

Disciplinary Woes and Possibilities

Political Science in the Context of the Uprisings


Organized by the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago and the Department of Political Science at The American University in Cairo


This event is part of the
Ten Years On: Mass Protests and Uprisings in the Arab World
(TYO) Project

For more information, go to thearabuprisings.com


This panel explores how the example of the Arab uprisings can be brought to bear on the production of general knowledge in political science. Viewing the uprisings as complex, ongoing, and multifaceted processes of sociopolitical transformation already helps avoid the problems of teleology that have bedeviled a number of approaches to the study of politics—from modernization theory through the democratic transitions literature, from research on “political development” to studies of authoritarian resilience, from “political culture” to various forms of political economy research. Taking this rejection of teleology as a point of departure while at the same time embracing theories and voices from and about the Middle East, we ask: What kinds of conceptual, theoretical, and methodological tools might we develop to bridge the gap between mainstream political science and real-life events? What, framing the question more broadly, is the relation between theory and practice, and how can the uprisings illuminate that relation? What theories and methods central to political science are the most relevant or thought-provoking regarding the uprisings? Assuming a broader definition of politics is useful, how can it be operationalized in studying the Arab uprisings and their reverberations? What approaches, in particular, need to be revamped,  dismissed, or even outright rejected?

Featuring


Nathan J. Brown
, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, is a distinguished scholar and author of four well-received books on Arab politics. Brown brings his special expertise on Islamist movements, Palestinian politics, and Arab law and constitutionalism to the Endowment. Brown’s most recent book, Resuming Arab Palestine, presents research on Palestinian society and governance after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.  His current work focuses on Islamist movements and their role in politics in the Arab world.

Laryssa Chomiak is the Director of the Centre d`Etudes Maghrébines à Tunis. She received her Ph.D. in political science in August of 2011, which was based on eighteen months of qualitative research in Tunisia and 6 months of comparative field work in Ukraine. She is currently finishing her book manuscript on the politics of dissent under Ben Ali`s Tunisia.  Her work has appeared as journal articles in Middle East Report and Middle East Law and Governance.

Amaney Jamal is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics at Princeton University and director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice. Jamal also directs the Workshop on Arab Political Development, and the Bobst-AUB Collaborative Initiative. She is the former President of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS). The focus of her current research is on the drivers of political behavior in the Arab world, Muslim immigration to the US and Europe, and the effect of inequality and poverty  on political outcomes. Jamal’s books include: Barriers to Democracy (2007), which explores the role of civic associations in promoting democratic effects in the Arab world (winner of the 2008 APSA Best Book Award in comparative democratization). She is co-editor of Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects (2007) and Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit after 9/11 (2009). Her most recent book, Of Empires and Citizens, was published by Princeton University Press (2012). Jamal is co-principal investigator of the Arab Barometer Project, winner of the Best Dataset in the Field of Comparative Politics (Lijphart/Przeworski/Verba Dataset Award 2010); co-PI of the Detroit Arab American Study, a sister survey to the Detroit Area Study; and senior advisor on the Pew Research Center projects focusing on Islam in America (2006) Global Islam (2010) and Islam in America (2017). Ph.D. University of Michigan. In 2005, Jamal was named a Carnegie Scholar.

Lama Mourad is an assistant professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.  Her research focuses on the intersection of forced migration, local governance, and the politics of borders, with a regional focus on the Middle East. Mourad was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania, and a SSHRC-postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. In 2018-2019, she was a pre-doctoral fellow with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Mourad’s work has been published in both academic and public outlets, including the Journal of Refugee StudiesMiddle East Law and GovernanceForced Migration Studies, the European Journal of International Relations as well as The Atlantic, Lawfare, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, and Le Devoir. To learn more about her research, please contact her at lama.mourad [at] carleton.ca, or find her on twitter.

Jillian Schwedler teaches political science at Hunter College. She is author of numerous books and articles, including the award-winning Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (Cambridge 2006) and co-editor (with Laleh Khalili) of Policing and Prisons in the Middle East (Columbia/Hurst 2010). She is former Chair of the Board of Directors and member of the Editorial Committee of Middle East Report.

 

Ten Years On
Mass Protests and Uprisings in the Arab World


This event is part of the Ten Years on Project, a year-long series of events, reflections, and conversations created to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the start of the Arab uprisings in Tunisia. We launched this project in order to interrogate and reflect on the uprisings, with the hope of producing resources for educators, researchers, students, and journalists to understand the last decade of political upheaval historically and in the lived present.

Watch all of our previous Ten Years on events here:

 
 
 
 
 
 
Organizers: Arab Studies Institute, Princeton’s Arab Barometer, George Mason’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program.

Co-Sponsors: Georgetown University (Center for Contemporary Arab Studies), American University of Beirut (Asfari Institute), Arab Council for the Social Sciences, Brown University (Center for Middle East Studies), UC Santa Barbara (Center for Middle East Studies), Harvard University (Center for Middle East Studies), University of Exeter (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies), Birzeit University (Department of Political Science), University of Chicago (Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory), Stanford University (Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, Stanford University), AUC Affiliates, Georgetown University (Qatar) Center For International And Regional Studies (CIRS), The Global Academy (MESA Affiliated), Institute of Palestine Studies.