Arab Studies Institute and Asfari Institute Present: Exploring an Agenda for Active Citizenship (Beirut, Feb. 20-22)

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Feb 17, 2015
Arab Studies Institute and Asfari Institute Present: Exploring an Agenda for Active Citizenship (Beirut, Feb. 20-22)

Arab Studies Institute and Asfari Institute Present: Exploring an Agenda for Active Citizenship (Beirut, Feb. 20-22)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

`Exploring an Agenda for Active Citizenship`

First Annual Conference

A conference co-sponsored by the Arab Studies Institute and the Asfari Institute

Date and Time: 8am Friday 20 February through 5:30pm Sunday 22 February

Location: Beirut, Lebanon

Live Tweets: Follow @AsfariInstitute

The February 2015 conference commemorates the fourth anniversary of the revolts that began in Tunisia in the final days of 2010 and rapidly spread to nearly half the countries of the Arab region. The revolts provided a stellar example of the power of citizen engagement as millions of people took to the streets and toppled long-time authoritarian regimes or leaders, changing perceptions of the “Arab Street” for good. Four years later, where are those millions? How do we understand and assess their successes or failures in achieving their demands for freedom, dignity and social justice? Do we know enough about the historical roots of civil society activism in the region to ascribe cause-and-effect in regard to these events? What are the medium and long-term prospects for the future of citizenship participation in the public sphere, given the current realities? What are the factors that give rise to hope in some countries or open the pit of despair in others?

The conference does not claim to assess the Arab uprisings as such. Rather, it aims to shed light on the dynamics of civil society and citizen activism in the region, and to promote an understanding of the historical, political, economic and legal factors affecting this activism. It also aims to gather collective wisdom as to the short-and long-term potential for continued citizen engagement, fill knowledge gaps, assist the Asfari Institute to develop its research agenda, and point the way to future programming.

The conference will be live tweeted. Follow @AsfariInstitute to keep up with all the analysis and discussion.

 

Conference Program

 

Day 1: Friday 20 February 2015

 

8:00-8:45: Conference Registration

Bathish Auditorium, West Hall, American University of Beirut (AUB)

9:00-9:30: Welcome and Opening Session

  • Fateh Azzam, Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, AUB
  • Bassam Haddad, Arab Studies Institute, George Mason University, U.S.
  • Ahmad Dallal, Provost, AUB


9:30-11:00: Panel 1: Civil Society in Arab Region: Concepts and Case Studies (1)

  • Chair: Fateh Azzam, Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, AUB
  • Civil society: Theoretically ambitious and practically misused in the Middle East
    Lina Suleiman, KTH Royal Institute for Technology, Sweden; and
    Michael Schultz, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Towards a Maghribi civil society (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria), by Ammar Djeffal, Universite D’Alger 3, Algeria
  • Redefining the civil society scene in Jordan, by Heba Al Nasser, Chatham House, UK; and Mohammad Qasem Al-Hamad, Juman for Civil Society Empowerment, Jordan

11:00-11:30: Break

11:30-1:15: Panel 2:  Civil Society in Arab Region: Concepts and Case Studies (2)

  • Chair: Rania Masri, Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, AUB
  • Civil Society and Political Movements in Egypt: From Neglect to Stabilization and from Leadership to Stigmatization, by Dina El-Khawaga, Arab Reform Initiative
  • The Political Economy of Social Change: from the moral economy of the peasants to the “Arab Spring” in Egypt by Dina Mansour, The Arab Council for the Social Sciences
  • Framing the Discourse and Priorities of the Palestinian Youth Movement in the West Bank, by Ayman Yousef, Arab American University, occupied Palestine
  • Sharing Power or Continued Status Quo? The Trials and Tribulations of the Disability Rights Movement in Lebanon, by Maha Damaj, AUB

1:15-2:30: Lunch

2:30-4:00: Panel 3: Civil Society in Arab Region: Concepts and Case Studies (3)

  • Chair: Bassam Haddad, Arab Studies Institute, George Mason University
  • The Structural Transformation of Palestinian Civil Society, by Tariq Da’na, Birzeit University, occupied Palestine
  • Between Neglect and Interference: The Impact of Foreign Policies on the Development of [Arab] Civil Society: the Case of Syria, by Leila Hilal, New America Foundation, U.S.
  • The Past and Future of Syrian Civil Society, by Salam Kawakibi, Arab Reform Initiative 

4:00-4:30: Break

4:30-5:30: Open Discussion

  • Facilitator: Rania Masri, Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, AUB
  • Open discussion; sharing of reactions and ideas 

 

 

Day 2: Saturday 21 February 2015

 

9:00-10:30: Panel 4: Citizenship in the Arab Region: Concepts and Case Studies (1)

  • Chair: Sami Attallah, The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies
  • Egyptian Citizenship and Arab Solidarities: Changing Dynamics After January 25th, by Omneya Ragab, researcher and writer; and Asmaa Naguib, Zyara Egypt
  • Religion, Democracy and Women in Egyptian textbooks before and after 2011, by Patrycja Sasnal, Polish Institute of International Affairs and Jagiellonian University
  • A Tale of Two Trade Unions: How contrasting historical legacies have dictated the roles and actions of trade union federations in post-revolutionary Tunisia and Egypt, by Leila Kabalan and Mark Bracher, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, AUB

10:30-11:00: Break

11:00-12:30: Panel 5: Citizenship in the Arab region: Concepts and Case Studies (2)

  • Chair: Hind Ghandour, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
  • Framing and Claiming Citizenship in the GCC, by Ala’a Shehabi, University of Lund, Sweden
  • Saudi Arabia and the Concept of Citizenship, by Florence Borot, IRIS Sup – L`école des Relations Internationales de l`IRIS, France 

12:30-2:00: Lunch

2:00-3:30: Panel 6: Citizenship in the Arab Region: Concepts and Case Studies (3)

  • Chair: Omar Dewachi, AUB
  • Mechanisms for Activating Citizenship in Iraq , by Ali Al-Masoodi, Baghdad University, Iraq
  • Organic Citizenship: the Case of Iraq , by Abdul Hussein Shaaban, author and human rights activist
  • Empowering Women in Public and Political Life in the MENA region: Reflections on the potential (and limits) of action research as ethos, methodology and practice, by Suzanne Hammad, International NGO Training and Research Center, U.K.; and Tamara Alkhas, British Council, Jordan

3:30-4:00: Break

4:00-5:30: Panel 7: Examinations from Different Lenses

  • Chair: Sami Ofeish, University of Balamand, Lebanon
  • The Arab Graphic Arts in the context of the current revolutions: a journey in the margins , by Marwan Al-Allan, University of Philadelphia, Jordan
  • The Arab Spring and the Economic Alternatives: Society organizing itself, by Wael Gamal, Journalist and Researcher
  • The Presence of Social Sciences in Arab Civil Society Organizations, by Rima Majed, AUB

7:00: Dinner and Cultural Evening, Metro el Madina, Hamra Street

  • 7:00 – 8.30 Dinner and music
  • 8:30 – 10:30 Poetry, theatre and musical performances
  • 10:30 – midnight Dance party with DJ Bassam

 

 

Day 3: Sunday 22 February 2015

 

9:00-10:30: Panel 8: The Rulers and the Ruled

  • Chair: Sbeih Sbeih, Birzeit University
  • Post-Revolution: Civil society and the democratic transformation in Egypt , by Mohamed Elagati, Arab Forum for Alternatives, Egypt
  • Explaining the Constraints on Civic Activism in Libya: Appraising the 2011-2013 Case of Constitutional Development, by Carmen Geha, AUB
  • Beyond ‘Business as Usual’: Regime-Society relations in Jordan four years after 2011, by Ziad Abu Rish, Ohio University, U.S.

 10:30-11:00: Break

 11:00-12:30: Panel 9: The Rulers and the Ruled (2)

  • Chair: Hassan Abbas, Syrian League for Citizenship
  • Focus on the Relationship between the Rulers and the Ruled in the Era of the Arab Uprisings, by Massoud Daher, Lebanese University
  • Beyond the ‘Moroccan Exception’: Historicizing state and civil society relations in Morocco, by Samia Errazzouki, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, U.S.
  • The Role of Syrian Civil Society in Mediation and Peacemaking in Syria, by Rim Turkmani, London School of Economics and Political Science, U.K.

12:30-2:00: Lunch

2:00-4:30: Open Discussion: Elements for a Future Agenda

Facilitators:

  • Ziad Abdel Samad, Arab NGO Network for Development;
  • Fateh Azzam, Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, AUB;
  • Bassam Haddad, Arab Studies Institute, George Mason University; and
  • Rania Masri, Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, AUB

-- Summary and reflections of the papers

-- Recommendations for future action, research, collaboration

-- Closing remarks

 

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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