CALL FOR PAPERS — Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy

CALL FOR PAPERS — Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy

CALL FOR PAPERS — Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following is a call for submissions to an uprcoming conference, Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy, taking place on  16 and 17 June 2025. Scroll down or click here for information on how to submit.]

Wars have long been connected to the construction of states, advancing economic interests, and expanding networks of influence. Indeed, Militarization and the globalization of security are a defining feature of today’s world. From the mercenary armies of ancient empires to the military-industrial complexes of modern states, wars have not simply reflected ideological struggles or territorial disputes, but are central to the reshaping of economies, forging alliances, and imposing hegemony. Militarization is visible through the heightened presence of armed forces in public spaces, the ghettoization of communities, the reliance on carceral tactics, the constant surveillance of populations, the growth of private armies and mercenaries, the booming global arms trade, and the intensification of the use of new warfare technologies. Wars have transformed communities into laboratories for the expansion and development of technologies of death and destruction.  

Militarization and its impact on capital accumulation and international relations have been the subject of profound philosophical and academic debates, with scholars and authors discussing the ways in which wars and militarization are used to reorganize economies and the global order, and their impact on global hegemony and security. The broad and interdisciplinary set of literature brings interesting discussion and analysis into the political economy of war and militarization, and their impact on communities and manifestations of power relations between the south and north. 

The intersection between power, economy, politics, and international relations which signals the relationship between war-making and the war economy, is not only reflected by ongoing wars including the Gaza genocide and the Russian-Ukraine war. It extends to other parts of the world, and includes military occupations, the construction of walls and borders, the inflaming of sectarian, ethnic, and religious strife to stimulate the arms market, carceral policies, and biometric technologies and artificial intelligence used to control and silence “unwanted” voices. These militarized realities are transnational in their formation with states and non-state actors sharing violent tactics and know-how, in effect creating a continuum of violent policies and practices that transcend national boundaries.  

Nonetheless, marginalized and oppressed populations whose rights are infringed upon and livelihoods threatened, have continuously sought ways of resisting militarization and violence. Indeed, social and political movements –adopting both non-violent and violent responses – have long resisted against militarization through the organizing of protests in public spaces, campaigning for the boycott of foreign companies, and creating social and economic movements that counter war-making and the neoliberal order. Manifestations of these responses also include the organizing of strikes, resisting carceral regimes, engaging in cultural and political productions against militarization, and fostering global forms of solidarity. 

The increased militarization of societies and reliance on crude forms of violence and torture have severely negated peoples’ human rights and freedom of expression, a reality exacerbated by the violent and brutal response unleashed against those standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people as they face Israel’s genocide and its war machine.

The organizing committee invites scholars and activists wishing to participate to reflect upon the conference’s themes including carceral tactics and surveillance, the political economy of war, resistance strategies against militarization and carcerality, and the militarization of urban space. The following themes are suggested, but submissions can address other topics related to conference’s broad areas of interest. 

  • The policing of urban spaces
  • Carceral tactics and surveillance
  • The political economy of war
  • Managing carceral settings and subjects
  • Resistance strategies by carceralized populations
  • The globalization of security
  • Solidarity movements and confrontation practices 
  • The military industrial complex
  • The militarization of urban space


Paper Submission


Abstracts of papers (around 250 words) along with a short bio should be sent to conference.ialiis@birzeit.edu no later than March 28, 2025. We ask that those who are selected to participate send their full papers (4000 – 6000) by May 30, 2025.

Languages


We invite submissions in English, Arabic and Spanish. The conference will be organized in hybrid format at Birzeit University and streamed online. Simultaneous translation will be organized as needed.

Publication


The organizers intend to publish the proceedings after the conference. Further information on publication details and mechanisms will be sent to conference participants in due course.

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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