Farida Makar and Ehaab Abdou, “Egyptian Textbooks in Times of Change 1952-1980” (New Texts Out Now)

Farida Makar and Ehaab Abdou, “Egyptian Textbooks in Times of Change 1952-1980” (New Texts Out Now)

Farida Makar and Ehaab Abdou, “Egyptian Textbooks in Times of Change 1952-1980” (New Texts Out Now)

By : Farida Makar and Ehaab Abdou

Farida Makar and Ehaab Abdou, “Egyptian Textbooks in Times of Change 1952-1980,” Arab Studies Journal, Spring 2021, Volume XXIX, No. 1, pp. 6-43.                                                                                                                                                            

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article?

Farida Makar and Ehaab Abdou (FM & EA): There was a spike in interest in textbook and curriculum studies in Egypt following the 2011 uprising—perhaps because of the public’s interest in identity, education reform, and current affairs at the time. So, prior to writing the article, both of us had worked on separate projects related to Egyptian textbooks. Farida worked on a project which sought to explore whether there were major changes to textbook content following the 2011 uprising. At the same time, Ehaab was busy undertaking research for his PhD and was in the process of publishing several pieces related to how Egyptian textbooks present the country’s history, including particular historic events or groups. Ehaab’s analyses have been published as book chaptersacademic articles, and opinion pieces.

Having read each other’s work, sometime in 2015, we decided to join forces and collaborate on a longer piece together, since we were both interested in the Nasser period and in trying to understand whether the contemporary textbooks we had spent so much time analyzing were linked to their predecessors. In other words, we were interested in looking at continuities and changes in the narrative. We also wanted to write something that combined our different approaches and respective specializations, namely history (Farida) and educational and curriculum studies (Ehaab). We felt the need to address an existing gap in the literature which has tended to either narrowly analyze textbooks without proper contextualization or to assume too many parallels between political discourse and textbook content. Instead, our piece is aimed at demonstrating the role of post-1952 state functionaries and the bureaucracy in the development and maintenance of textbook content.

The article also brings to light new perspectives on education policies under Nasser and Sadat and thereby explores a time period that remains understudied ...

J:  What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the article address?

FM & EA: Our article intersects with bureaucratic history, intellectual history, and curriculum studies. It provides both an analysis of the bureaucratic structures that facilitated the development of textbooks in Egypt between 1952 and 1980, as well as a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of those textbooks. The article also brings to light new perspectives on education policies under Nasser and Sadat and thereby explores a time period that remains understudied in terms of curriculum policy and education policy at large.

J: How does this article connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

FM: I was familiar with the interwar period and its education system and was also aware of the contemporary period, having worked on post-2011 textbooks. This new piece addresses a time period that I had not focused on before, but which had a major influence on the development of textbooks in the second half of the twentieth century.

EA: As can be seen in some of my earlier publications, I have sometimes taken an archival and historical approach to my textbook analyses, critically engaging with continuities and changes over time. So, in a sense, this article is a continuation and a deepening of some of those earlier efforts. However, thanks to our joint collaboration, this is the first time I have taken such a holistic approach that not only looks at the textbooks’ narratives and their continuities and changes over time, but also deeply analyzes other historical dynamics and dimensions. These include the ideologies and training of textbook authors, bureaucratic considerations, and so on—topics that are often neglected in scholarly textual analyses of curricula.

J: Who do you hope will read this article, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

FM & EA: We hope that historians of the Middle East, historians of education, and scholars of education and curriculum studies in the region and elsewhere will find this article useful for their work. It is also our hope that this article will be the beginning of a larger interest in the bureaucratic and institutional history of educational establishments across the region. Although textbook studies do explore the larger context, they often focus on political discourse or major political changes and try to draw parallels between the content emerging in the texts and larger political developments. We do not deny that these parallels exist, but what we showcase in this study is that they are normally facilitated via a bureaucratic structure that is usually overlooked. Our hope is that these bureaucratic structures will be more fully considered by other scholars because of their potential to reveal misalignments, tensions, and coincidences and to shed more light on the textbook development process itself.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

FM: I am currently writing up my PhD dissertation on the history of progressive education in Egypt from 1922 to 1956 at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. I am hoping to submit the final draft in 2022. It has actually been a lot of fun working on both projects simultaneously because I have been able to follow some of my interlocutors well into the 1970s, since some of them ended up developing textbooks later on in their careers.

EA: I am busy trying to turn my doctoral thesis—which focuses on curriculum and how it shapes Egyptian students’ understanding of history and their civic engagement—into a book manuscript. I am also really enjoying and keeping busy helping co-edit two edited volumes: one with some prominent Egyptian Egyptologists, and another with my colleague Dr. Theodoros G. Zervas. critically analyzing representations of ancient and Indigenous (pre-Abrahamic) belief systems in school textbooks, with contributions from several scholars from across the world.

J: Can you tell us a bit more about how you obtained your sources?

FM & EA: There were extensive trips to the Ministry of Education’s archives to read through all history textbooks that were published between 1952 and 1980, and to compile the data we needed. The staff working there were quite welcoming, supportive, and receptive. We also looked into earlier texts for comparative purposes, which turned out to be crucial given the continuities in authorship and in content that we uncovered—a central finding of our piece. A little bit of detective work followed: we had to figure out when certain texts were discontinued in order to trace how long texts were in circulation and when they were replaced by newer ones, since this information is not directly available in the Ministry’s records. We then compiled lists of the authors and proceeded to locate them in the literature, the press, and in obituaries. While the Ministry of Education archives house an important collection, internal reports, memos, and policies are limited. The majority of these sources are located at the Egyptian National Archives, which are extremely difficult to access. We therefore undertook additional trips to backstreet booksellers and second-hand markets, where we acquired a number of the Ministry’s publications, such as pamphlets outlining their education policy, or reports describing internal reform initiatives. These sources were vital in the identification of the Ministry’s textbook policy during the period of investigation.

 

Excerpt from the article (“Experimentation: Ad Hoc Committees in Transition 1952-1958,” pp. 14-18)

The existing literature portrays the 1952 revolution as a decisive rupture in textbook content, suggesting that the new military-led regime was quick to alter textbooks. Some historians have explored the rise of previously marginalized amateur historians, such as ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Raf‘i, whose ideas of popular struggle contributed to a changing political discourse under Nasser, suggesting that similar changes made their way into curricula immediately after 1952. Within this literature, the appointment of Free Officer Kamal al-Din Hussein as minister of education in 1954 was the “final nail in the coffin” for textbook plurality. For example, Yoram Meital argues that a new political line was evident in textbooks as early as one year into military rule. Meital cites a nationalist chapter in a 1953 secondary school Arabic-language textbook, whose title he translates as “The Nationality of the Student” (“Wataniyyat al-Tilmidh”). But the chapter “Wataniyyat al- Tilmidh” had appeared in a 1940 Arabic-language textbook. Brand also suggests that textbook committees changed history content early on, but Brand references only one particular textbook, Tarikh Misr fi al-‘Asr al- Hadith (The History of Egypt in the Modern Age) from 1954.

Instead of selecting particular textbooks from 1953 to 1954, we examined all history textbooks that the Egyptian Ministry of Education produced between roughly 1950 and 1960 in relation to their predecessors while paying particular attention to the authors and their links to the ME. In both the primary and the secondary level, these included authors from the earlier generation such as Muhammad ‘Abd al-Rahim Mustafa and Mustafa al-Duqmayri, and a few newcomers including ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Batriq, Muhammad Wasif Hums, Mustafa al-Shihabi, and Abu al-Futuh Radwan. 

Judging by the year of publication alone, it appears as though new textbooks coincided with political turning points (1953, 1954, 1956), supporting the arguments made by Meital and others. But the persistence of textbook authors across this period complicates this analysis. Academic historians from the pre-1952 period such as Shafiq Ghurbal and Muhammad Rif‘at remained moderately influential until 1955, when schools stopped teaching their works. On some level, Ghurbal’s influence persisted indirectly through his three students Ahmad ‘Izzat ‘Abd al-Karim, ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Batriq, and ‘Abd al-Aziz al-Shinnawi. This “trio” represented the new generation of textbook authors. Even though these students came to embrace the new historiographical trends favored by the Nasser regime, Ghurbal’s “professionalism” and his school’s reliance on primary sources and footnoting also persisted in Taha Hussein’s collection of historical primary sources, Selected Episodes from History Textbooks, which schools used from 1954 to 1957. While many earlier generation historians gradually disappeared from the list, ministry inspectors did not. In fact, inspectors Ibrahim Sayfuldin, Muhammad ‘Abd al-Rahim Mustafa, and Ahmad Hassuna were the leading authors throughout this time period, suggesting a certain degree of continuity. 

A second complication arises when we consider these dates not as political turning points, but as bureaucratic and pedagogical ones. While political considerations most certainly had a bearing on the choice of new authors, the establishment of preparatory school, an entirely new school level, resulted in the production of many of the new textbooks published in 1953, 1954 and 1956. The ME began discussing the importance of preparatory schooling in the late 1940s. Law 142 of 1951 established a preparatory level within secondary schools, then a series of laws in 1953 separated this level into its own school, which became fully independent in 1956. This process mandated a reorganization of some curricula in other levels, which helps explain the emergence of new textbooks in those particular years across all school levels.

Establishing the preparatory level provided an opportunity for the ministry to experiment with new textbook committees, invite a new generation of authors (such as Ghurbal’s trio) and introduce new content. These new authors introduced textbook content that was compatible with the day’s political discourse. Thus, preparatory-level textbooks were the first to reflect a shift in tone. They produced fourteen new history textbooks between 1954 and 1960 for the new four-year preparatory level. One of these was the trio’s textbook debut in 1954, referenced by Brand, which they coauthored with Abu al-Futuh Radwan, a graduate of Columbia University’s Teachers College and doyen of education at ‘Ayn Shams University. Once these authors had established themselves at the preparatory level, they gradually went on to author texts at the primary and secondary levels. Inspectors Sayfuldin and ‘Abd al-Rahim Mustafa authored six of those fourteen textbooks, and the ME even briefly employed Muhammad Rif‘at to develop a textbook on Islamic history in 1954. 

The case of Ghurbal’s student ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Shinnawi demonstrates that political developments could be entirely disconnected from the ME’s bureaucratic inner workings. In 1955, the Nasser regime accused Shinnawi of espionage, arrested him, and tortured him, for having smuggled important historical documents pertaining to the Suez Canal to France on the eve of the Suez Crisis. Even though Shinnawi spent two years in prison, the ME did not discontinue using the history textbook he coauthored for the preparatory level in 1954, or omit his name. In fact, schools used his textbook at least until 1959. 

More fundamentally, our textual analysis revealed that many of the changes to textbook content were, in fact, largely cosmetic. Often, the authors simply changed the book’s title while retaining the same content. For example, the 1955 primary school history textbook authored by Sayfuldin et al., originally titled Suwar Min al-Tarikh al-Misri (Images from Egyptian History), became Suwar Min al-Tarikh al-Qawmi (Images from National History) in 1956. Far from constituting a major shift in discourse, changing the title was a convenient way to mask and recycle old content. In the words of Abu al-Futuh Radwan, “The popular revolutionary orientation has allowed the authors to see things that they could not see in the past. Texts once titled, ‘Muhammad Ali, Founder of Modern Egypt’ became ‘The Affirmation of National Consciousness and the Role of the People in the Ascent of Muhammad Ali to Power.’”

Changes to history textbooks in the 1950s did not immediately mirror radical political ruptures. Rather, a combination of factors shaped textbook development, including bureaucratic inertia, convenience, and the introduction of preparatory schools. At the same time, the initial phase of textbook experimentation, especially at the preparatory level, left a space for the coexistence of competing historical voices, narratives, and approaches at least until 1958. 

New Texts Out Now: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein, guest eds. "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis." Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development

Conflict, Security and Development, Volume 15, No. 5 (December 2015) Special issue: "Israel-Palestine after Oslo: Mapping Transformations in a Time of Deepening Crisis," Guest Editors: Mandy Turner and Cherine Hussein.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you compile this volume?

Mandy Turner (MT): Both the peace process and the two-state solution are dead. Despite more than twenty years of negotiations, Israel’s occupation, colonization and repression continue–and the political and geographical fragmentation of the Palestinian people is proceeding apace.

This is not news, nor is it surprising to any keen observer of the situation. But what is surprising–and thus requires explanation – is the resilience of the Oslo framework and paradigm: both objectively and subjectively. It operates objectively as a straitjacket by trapping Palestinians in economic and security arrangements that are designed to ensure stabilization and will not to lead to sovereignty or a just and sustainable solution. And it operates subjectively as a straitjacket by shutting out discussion of alternative ways of understanding the situation and ways out of the impasse. The persistence of this framework that is focused on conflict management and stabilization, is good for Israel but bad for Palestinians.

The Oslo peace paradigm–of a track-one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution–is therefore in crisis. And yet it is entirely possible that the current situation could continue for a while longer–particularly given the endorsement and support it enjoys from the major Western donors and the “international community,” as well as the fact that there has been no attempt to develop an alternative. The immediate short-term future is therefore bleak.

Guided by these observations, this special issue sought to undertake two tasks. The first task was to analyze the perceptions underpinning the Oslo framework and paradigm as well as some of the transformations instituted by its implementation: why is it so resilient, what has it created? The second task, which follows on from the first, was then to ask: how can we reframe our understanding of what is happening, what are some potential alternatives, and who is arguing and mobilizing for them?

These questions and themes grew out of a number of conversations with early-career scholars – some based at the Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, and some based in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. These conversations led to two interlinked panels at the International Studies Association annual convention in Toronto, Canada, in March 2014. To have two panels accepted on “conflict transformation and resistance in Palestine” at such a conventional international relations conference with (at the time unknown) early-career scholars is no mean feat. The large and engaged audience we received at these panels – with some very established names coming along (one of whom contributed to this special issue) – convinced us that this new stream of scholars and scholarship should have an outlet.  

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures do the articles address?

MT: The first half of the special issue analyzes how certain problematic assumptions shaped the Oslo framework, and how the Oslo framework in turn shaped the political, economic and territorial landscape.

Virginia Tilley’s article focuses on the paradigm of conflict resolution upon which the Oslo Accords were based, and calls for a re-evaluation of what she argues are the two interlinked central principles underpinning its worldview: internationally accepted notions of Israeli sovereignty; and the internationally accepted idea that the “conflict” is essentially one between two peoples–the “Palestinian people” and the “Jewish people”. Through her critical interrogation of these two “common sense” principles, Tilley proposes that the “conflict” be reinterpreted as an example of settler colonialism, and, as a result of this, recommends an alternative conflict resolution model based on a paradigm shift away from an ethno-nationalist division of the polity towards a civic model of the nation.

Tariq Dana unpacks another central plank of the Oslo paradigm–that of promoting economic relations between Israel and the OPT. He analyses this through the prism of “economic peace” (particularly the recent revival of theories of “capitalist peace”), whose underlying assumptions are predicated on the perceived superiority of economic approaches over political approaches to resolving conflict. Dana argues that there is a symbiosis between Israeli strategies of “economic peace” and recent Palestinian “statebuilding strategies” (referred to as Fayyadism), and that both operate as a form of pacification and control because economic cooperation leaves the colonial relationship unchallenged.

The political landscape in the OPT has been transformed by the Oslo paradigm, particularly by the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Alaa Tartir therefore analyses the basis, agenda and trajectory of the PA, particularly its post-2007 state building strategy. By focusing on the issue of local legitimacy and accountability, and based on fieldwork in two sites in the occupied West Bank (Balata and Jenin refugee camps), Tartir concludes that the main impact of the creation of the PA on ordinary people’s lives has been the strengthening of authoritarian control and the hijacking of any meaningful visions of Palestinian liberation.

The origin of the administrative division between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the focus of Tareq Baconi’s article. He charts how Hamas’s initial opposition to the Oslo Accords and the PA was transformed over time, leading to its participation (and success) in the 2006 legislative elections. Baconi argues that it was the perceived demise of the peace process following the collapse of the Camp David discussions that facilitated this change. But this set Hamas on a collision course with Israel and the international community, which ultimately led to the conflict between Hamas and Fateh, and the administrative division, which continues to exist.

The special issue thereafter focuses, in the second section, on alternatives and resistance to Oslo’s transformations.

Cherine Hussein’s article charts the re-emergence of the single-state idea in opposition to the processes of separation unleashed ideologically and practically that were codified in the Oslo Accords. Analysing it as both a movement of resistance and as a political alternative to Oslo, while recognizing that it is currently largely a movement of intellectuals (particularly of diaspora Palestinians and Israelis), Hussein takes seriously its claim to be a more just and liberating alternative to the two-state solution.

My article highlights the work of a small but dedicated group of anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli activists involved in two groups: Zochrot and Boycott from Within. Both groups emerged in the post-Second Intifada period, which was marked by deep disillusionment with the Oslo paradigm. This article unpacks the alternative – albeit marginalized – analysis, solution and route to peace proposed by these groups through the application of three concepts: hegemony, counter-hegemony and praxis. The solution, argue the activists, lies in Israel-Palestine going through a process of de-Zionization and decolonization, and the process of achieving this lies in actions in solidarity with Palestinians.

This type of solidarity action is the focus of the final article by Suzanne Morrison, who analyses the “We Divest” campaign, which is the largest divestment campaign in the US and forms part of the wider Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Through attention to their activities and language, Morrison shows how “We Divest”, with its networked, decentralized, grassroots and horizontal structure, represents a new way of challenging Israel’s occupation and the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The two parts of the special issue are symbiotic: the critique and alternative perspectives analyzed in part two are responses to the issues and problems identified in part one.

J: How does this volume connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

MT: My work focuses on the political economy of donor intervention (which falls under the rubric of “peacebuilding”) in the OPT, particularly a critique of the Oslo peace paradigm and framework. This is a product of my broader conceptual and historical interest in the sociology of intervention as a method of capitalist expansion and imperial control (as explored in “The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace”, co-edited with Florian Kuhn, Routledge, 2016), and how post-conflict peacebuilding and development agendas are part of this (as explored in “Whose Peace: Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding”, co-edited with Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008).  

My first book on Palestine (co-edited with Omar Shweiki), Decolonizing Palestinian Political Economy: De-development and Beyond (PalgraveMacmillan, 2014), was a collection of essays by experts in their field, of the political-economic experience of different sections of the Palestinian community. The book, however, aimed to reunite these individual experiences into one historical political-economy narrative of a people experiencing a common theme of dispossession, disenfranchisement and disarticulation. It was guided by the desire to critically assess the utility of the concept of de-development to different sectors and issues–and had a foreword by Sara Roy, the scholar who coined the term, and who was involved in the workshop from which the book emerged.

This co-edited special issue (with Cherine Hussein, who, at the time of the issue construction, was the deputy director of the Kenyon Institute) was therefore the next logical step in my research on Palestine, although my article on Jewish-Israeli anti-Zionists did constitute a slight departure from my usual focus.

J: Who do you hope will read this volume, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

MT: I would imagine the main audience will be those whose research and political interests lie in Palestine Studies. It is difficult, given the structure of academic publishing – which has become ever more corporate and money grabbing – for research outputs such as this to be accessed by the general public. Only those with access to academic libraries are sure to be able to read it – and this is a travesty, in my opinion. To counteract this commodification of knowledge, we should all provide free access to our outputs through online open source websites such as academia.edu, etc. If academic research is going to have an impact beyond merely providing more material for teaching and background reading for yet more research (which is inaccessible to the general public) then this is essential. Websites such as Jadaliyya are therefore incredibly important.

Having said all that, I am under no illusions about the potential for ANY research on Israel-Palestine to contribute to changing the dynamics of the situation. However, as a collection of excellent analyses conducted by mostly early-career scholars in the field of Palestine studies, I am hopeful that their interesting and new perspectives will be read and digested. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

MT: I am currently working on an edited volume provisionally entitled From the River to the Sea: Disintegration, Reintegration and Domination in Israel and Palestine. This book is the culmination of a two-year research project funded by the British Academy, which analyzed the impacts of the past twenty years of the Oslo peace framework and paradigm as processes of disintegration, reintegration and domination – and how they have created a new socio-economic and political landscape, which requires new agendas and frameworks. I am also working on a new research project with Tariq Dana at Birzeit University on capital and class in the occupied West Bank.

Excerpt from the Editor’s Note 

[Note: This issue was published in Dec. 2015]

Initially perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine-Israel, the Oslo peace paradigm of a track one, elite-level, negotiated two-state solution is in crisis today, if not completely at an end.

While the major Western donors and the ‘international community’ continue to publicly endorse the Oslo peace paradigm, Israeli and Palestinian political elites have both stepped away from it. The Israeli government has adopted what appears to be an outright rejection of the internationally-accepted end-goal of negotiations, i.e. the emergence of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In March 2015, in the final days of his re-election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Jewish settlement of Har Homa in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is regarded as illegal under international law. Reminding its inhabitants that it was him and his Likud government that had established the settlement in 1997 as part of the Israeli state’s vision of a unified indivisible Jerusalem, he promised to expand the construction of settlements in East Jerusalem if re-elected. And in an interview with Israeli news site, NRG, Netanyahu vowed that the prospects of a Palestinian state were non-existent as long as he remained in office. Holding on to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), he argued, was necessary to ensure Israel’s security in the context of regional instability and Islamic extremism. It is widely acknowledged that Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israel’s security—against both external and internal enemies—gave him a surprise win in an election he was widely expected to lose.

Despite attempts to backtrack under recognition that the US and European states are critical of this turn in official Israeli state policy, Netanyahu’s promise to bury the two-state solution in favour of a policy of further annexation has become the Israeli government’s official intent, and has been enthusiastically endorsed by leading ministers and key advisers.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority (PA) based in the West Bank also appears to have rejected a key principle of the Oslo peace paradigm—that of bilateral negotiations under the supervision of the US. Despite a herculean effort by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to bring the two parties to the negotiating table, in response to the lack of movement towards final status issues and continued settlement expansion (amongst other issues), the Palestinian political elite have withdrawn from negotiations and resumed attempts to ‘internationalise the struggle’ by seeking membership of international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), and signing international treaties such as the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. This change of direction is part of a rethink in the PA and PLO’s strategy rooted in wider discussions and debates. The publication of a document by the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG) in August 2008, the production of which involved many members of the Palestinian political elite (and whose recommendations were studiously discussed at the highest levels of the PA and PLO), showed widespread discontent with the bilateral negotiations framework and suggested ways in which Palestinians could ‘regain the initiative’.

[…]

And yet despite these changes in official Palestinian and Israeli political strategies that signal a deepening of the crisis, donors and the ‘international community’ are reluctant to accept the failure of the Oslo peace paradigm. This political myopia has meant the persistence of a framework that is increasingly divorced from the possibility of a just and sustainable peace. It is also acting as an ideological straitjacket by shutting out alternative interpretations. This special issue seeks a way out of this political and intellectual dead end. In pursuit of this, our various contributions undertake what we regard to be two key tasks: first, to critically analyse the perceptions underpinning the Oslo paradigm and the transformations instituted by its implementation; and second, to assess some alternative ways of understanding the situation rooted in new strategies of resistance that have emerged in the context of these transformations in the post-Oslo landscape.

[…]

Taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue aim to ignite conversations on the conflict that are not based within abstracted debates that centre upon the peace process itself—but that begin from within the realities and geographies of both the continually transforming land of Palestine-Israel and the voices, struggles, worldviews and imaginings of the future of the people who presently inhabit it. For it is by highlighting these transformations, and from within these points of beginning, that we believe more hopeful pathways for alternative ways forward can be collectively imagined, articulated, debated and built.