Dear Katarina,
thanks for your message and your interest in our workshop. I will try to answer your questions the best I can.
As for the issue of (Palestinian) participants, well, we are trying to circulate the CfP throught all the possible channels, and trying hard to get a diverse and interesting range of contributions. Beyond circulating the CfP, we also specifically invited few Palestinian scholars - I won't mention any name for obvious reasons. As I said in my previous email, this is made difficult because the call for the boycott certainly gained a lot of consensus in the last few years, so that I came to realize - not only as far as this workshop is concerned - that many people I'd certainly love to have on board would not consider participating precisely because of
this reason. In my view this is a pity, but I can understand their concerns and anyway I respect their choice.
As for your more specific question about scholars coming from the West Bank or Gaza, I am afraid that guaranteeing their participation is simply impossible for us, given the tight restrictions to imposed by the Israeli authorities on the freedom of movement of Palestinians - not only on Palestinian scholars, and often in the case of much more pressing reasons than attending a seminar. What I can guarantee is that, as organizers, we will do whatever we can to provide them assistance if need be. Once again, I deeply regret that attending a seminar in Tel Aviv is easier for a guy from the US than for a Palestinian from Ramallah, but there's (almost) nothing I can do about that.
As for your question on the purposes of the workshop (What is the concrete meaning of “The seminar will aim at presenting a fresh perspective on the issue
of settlements by bringing together different perspectives on the subject, as well as junior and senior scholars.”? ), well, it would be a long discussion.
I suggest that looking to our academic production and CVs (I and Ariel have recently published two articles: mine on Environment and Planning A is listed below, Ariel's is http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tran.12045/abstract ), as well as to the record of activities of the Minerva Center for Humanities, would give you a good idea of what we want to achieve with this workshop. Also, I think that the four tracks detailed in the CfP (http://settlementsworkshop.wordpress.com/about/) give a more or less clear idea of what we mean by "less conventional approaches" and "fresh perspectives").
I should add that anyone familiar with the treatment of the settlement issue as discussed in the media in the academia cannot help but notice the fact that there's a total lack of
contributions except for: the monitoring of the growth of the settlements; the legal and human rights implication of their existence and expansion; and their nature as "obstacles to peace" in the context of the diplomatic talks. The only segment of settlement population that has been the object of a more sociological and anthropological approach is the minority of politicized settlers of ultra-nationalist background; studies on the vast majority of settlements/settlers and the settlement policy as a whole, however, are almost completely non-existent - Eyal Weizman's Hollow Land is one of the few exceptions in this respect.
I hope this answer your questions
Best wishes
Marco
Marco Allegra, PhD
Research Fellow, Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES)
Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa - Instituto Universitàrio de Lisboa
(ISCTE-IUL)
Academia.edu: http://iscte.academia.edu/MarcoAllegra/About
Recent Publications
(2013, with I. Bono, J. Rokem, A. Casaglia, R. Marzorati, H. Yacobi) Rethinking Cities in Contentious Times: The Mobilisation of Urban Dissent in the ‘Arab Spring’, Urban Studies, 50(9), http://usj.sagepub.com/content/50/9/1675
(2013) The politics of suburbia: Israel’s settlement policy and the production of space in the metropolitan area of Jerusalem, Environment and Planning A 45(3), http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=a45108
(2012, with A. Casaglia, J. Rokem) The Political Geographies of Urban Polarization: A Critical Review of Research on Divided Cities, Geography Compass, 6(9), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2012.00506.x/abstract
Dear all,
To me, extended studies of Israeli settlements seem extremely timely for many reasons. The occupation must end according to international law.
However, in order to decide whether or not to attend events (no matter how scientifically relevant and full of good intentions) in apartheid academia,
I as an outsider need more information.
These questions might seem naïve, but nevertheless, here I go: For instance, how are Palestinian colleagues under occupation integrated / disintegrated?
How is the permit situation handled if scholars from Nablus or Ramallah want to attend? What is the concrete meaning of
“The seminar will aim at presenting a fresh perspective on the issue of settlements by bringing together different perspectives on the subject, as well as junior and senior scholars.”?
Et cetera et cetera…
I am currently working on material concerning Patrick Geddes, Palestine, and settlement planning, and would love to share my first thoughts with
geographers in Tel Aviv. However, the apartheid situation makes me feel very uncomfortable attending any, as well as this (I presume well intended) Israeli conference, unless I know more about the politics of arrangement.
This issue seem to concern the wider political context of our academic work.
Best regards, Katarina Schough
Från: A forum for critical and radical geographers [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
För Marco Allegra
Skickat: den 12 december 2013 18:55
Till: [log in to unmask]
Ämne: Re: CFP: The Settlements in the West Bank (1967-2014): New Perspectives
Dear Mekonnen,
your emails raise a number of different questions that I can only briefly touch - and, I fear, in a quite unsatisfactory manner. Still, it's important to point out a few things unless we find ourselves entangled in a confused mix of moral, political, and scholarly
arguments. As Ariel said in his message, I only speak for myself.
I think that the call for boycotting Israel (in its BDS form or otherwise) is legitimate; on the other side I think that premises, merits and pitfalls of such a strategy should remain open for discussion even for those who criticize Israel.
I want to voice, in passing, two among the many doubts that I personally have on the academic boycott. First, it does not make sense to me to boycott in Israel the same event that I would be glad to take part to if held let's say in the UK. Second, as I think
this case shows, the boycott paradoxically hits events and people that represents the most critical voices in Israel - those who follow this forum, for example. Just google the name of one of my co-organizers, Ariel Handel, and you will find confirmation of
what I am saying, including a lot of material gently offered by Academia Monitor, an organization dedicated to exposing "Anti-Israel Activities of Israeli Academics" - something similar to what Campus Watch is doing in the US. One unpleasant effects of the
boycott is indeed that it contributes to squeeze people like Ariel between two anvils; and that it has become increasingly difficult to have Palestinian and Israeli scholars discussing together in seminars and workshops.
But still, one could argue that every war, including the struggle against Israeli occupation, has its collateral damages - I am not being ironic, it just came out like that. So anyone is free to boycott whatever he wants, although I would refrain from considering
those who don't believe in boycott as enemies of the Palestinians.
What I found totally unacceptable is the way you belittle our intellectual effort to make sense of Israel's settlement policy (""Less conventional approaches?" - give me a break! Colonialism is still colonialism by any other name! It is not "an Isreali-Palestinian
conflict". It is pure unadulterated occupation of someone else's land.").
I think that this is totally against what social science should stand for: there are no "pure, unadulterated" social phenomena; and yes, there's a huge need of research looking for "less conventional approaches" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ariel already answered about your use of the label "colonialism". Starting from your email ("do the occupied need to enlightened about what it means to be a shooting target for racist "settler" mobs or the colonial army of Israel?"), I would urge you to consider
that, for example, one of the key elements in the success of the Israel's settlement policy has been precisely that settlers are not - not only, not always - a racist mob shooting Palestinians. In fact the vast majority of them are quite average Israelis that
simply don't care about 1967 borders - borders which have been by and large invisible for the last 40 years anyway, at least as far as Israelis were concerned - and moved to the West Bank for very banal and random reasons.
I think I need to point out that this does not excuse Israel's settlement policy (and by no means I am trying to balance the existence of "bad settlers" by pointing to the existence of "good settlers"); it reveals, however, how we need to make an determined
effort for understanding it.
And, if I may say, this is precisely because the attitude that surfaces in your message is an example of how we can just stop thinking and be happy with saying either that islamists' terror is revolting or that the Israeli occupation is colonialism - again,
I don't mean to say the two side are equal and we should look politically for a "third way".
As a consequence, the banality of occupation and colonization is something that scholars and media alike have consistently overlooked; we are trying, among other things, to present the settlements as a meaningful object of inquiry in this respect.
I think that as human beings we do have a sort of moral obligation to participate to the struggle for justice and democracy, be it in Palestine or in our neighborhood; as social scientists, I guess, we need to do something else in addition to that, that is,
trying to understand and explain how the social reality works.
At least, that's what we should try to do if we want to earn our salaries.
Best
Marco
ps: and we have now a website online
http://settlementsworkshop.wordpress.com/ (you only find here the CfP for the moment, but further information will be posted)
On 12/12/13 8:48 AM, Mekonnen Tesfahuney wrote:
If anything it is now more than ever that we need resounding calls for boycotting apartheid Israel – academically and
any other way we can. Enough is enough.
Israel should respect the 1967 boundaries. All else is just a slap in the face – including concerns about how occupation affects the occupied - do the occupied need to enlightened about
what it means to be a shooting target for racist "settler" mobs or the colonial army of Israel? Jason: this is about the occupation of Palestine - please spare me the crocodile tear. Let us stick to the issue here and let be drawing parallels with other totally
different situations (Kashmir etc) that are not the topic of discussion
Mekonnen Tesfahuney, Associate Professor
Faculty of the Social Sciences and Humanities
Dept. of Geography, Media & Communication
Karlstads University
Från:
Jason Luger <[log in to unmask]>
Datum: torsdag 12 december 2013 09:01
Till: Mekonnen Tesfahuney <[log in to unmask]>
Ämne: Re: CFP: The Settlements in the West Bank (1967-2014): New Perspectives
I would hope for the academy's sake that we are not entering an era of calling for boycotts of CFP that we don't agree with or don't feel personally connected to. What a sad turn of events that
would be. Perhaps consider more carefully before blanket posting (so rapidly) on a large, international forum. I would hope you wouldn't also call for boycotts of calls relating to discussion of other occupied states, whether Tibet, Northern Ireland, Syria,
or the Kashmir. Oh, right, those topics are ok.
King's College London / National University of Singapore
"Less conventional approaches?" - give me a break! Colonialism is still colonialism by any other name! It is not "an Isreali-Palestinian conflict". It is pure unadulterated occupation of someone
else's land.
The honorable thing to do for critical geographers is to boycott this call and the meet.
Mekonnen Tesfahuney, Associate Professor
Faculty of the Social Sciences and Humanities
Dept. of Geography, Media & Communication
Karlstads University
Call for Papers
The Settlements in the West Bank (1967-2014): New Perspectives
Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University
June 29-30, 2014
A research workshop
Jewish settlements are one of the most controversial issues in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Still, academic production and
media attention on the topic focuses almost entirely on the radical, national-religious components of the settlers’ population; on the connection between the settlement enterprise and the religious-ethno-national territorial imperative of the “conquest of
the land”; on the status of settlements within the framework of international law; on the role of the settlements as “obstacles to peace”; and as an issue of political campaigning (both inside and outside Israel).
The rationale for organizing this research workshop is to explore less conventional approaches and angles that go beyond
the immediate politico-diplomatic dynamics and impact of Israel’s settlement policy. The underlying assumption is that the settlements' enterprise is not an exceptional phenomenon contradictory to other trends in Israeli society, but is a historical process
that was shaped by and related to other long-term processes.
We feel that a more comprehensive approach is needed in order to understand how the transformation of the landscape determined
by the expansion of settlements created new – albeit not necessarily fair – patterns of relations amongst the resident population of Israel/Palestine. At the same time, a more holistic approach to the settlement issue can open up spaces for comparative analysis
and theory building beyond the specific reality of Israel/Palestine.
Call for papers
The workshop invites contributions focusing on (although not necessarily limited to) four thematic axis:
-
The identity of settlers. While the large part of academic contribution on the subject dealt so far
with the (political) culture and identity of the ideological settlers’ movement, we are interested in shifting the focus on other groups of Israelis living beyond the Green Line and other sociopolitical and economic dynamics, including but not limited to issues
such as: personal and collective histories and different class and ethnic backgrounds, dynamics of place attachment, inter and intra-communal relations.
-
The spatiality of settlements. While the existing scholarship overwhelmingly focuses on the diplomatic,
legal and humanitarian impact of the establishment of the settlements, we will try to understand how the transformation of the landscape it entails created a new set of boundaries (gated communities, separate roads, security fences and checkpoints, jurisdictional
and administrative lines) and interfaces (physical proximity, neighborhood and economic relations, patterns of commuting, employment centers, etc.) that at the same time segregate and connect the various territorial and human components of the metropolitan
fabric.
-
The political economy of settlements. The prevailing discourse sees settlement policy as part of a
political “plan”, executed by the Israeli state and the settlers’ movement following an ethno-national territorial imperative of the “conquest of the land”. Our focus seeks to adopt a more contextualized approach, which will allow understanding the expansion
of the settlements not as an exceptional phenomenon contradictory to other trends in Israeli society, but as a historical process that was shaped and influenced by broader and long-term changes of Israel's political-economy such as privatization, deindustrialization
and government retrenchment.
-
Settlements in comparative perspective. Much of the discourse about Israel/Palestine stresses the
unique history of the region and the exceptional features of the conflict that developed there; at the same time, and despite the diffusion of the concept of “settlers society”, comparative research that explicitly focuses on the development of settlements
remains scarce. The workshop aims therefore at locating the development of settlement policy in a broader comparative perspective – and especially, albeit not exclusively, along the three thematic dimensions already outlined.
Abstracts and papers submission
Participation to the workshop entails the delivery of a full paper (in English) no later than May 1st, 2014, in order to facilitate the discussants’ work and ease the
publication plans
Key Dates
Submission of abstracts: February 1st, 2014
Communication of acceptance of the proposal: before February 15th, 2014
Deadline for the submission of full papers: May 1st, 2014
Travel grants
At this stage we cannot guarantee the payment of travel and accommodation expenses, so we are asking the participants to consider covering these expenses with autonomous funds; however,
we are working to secure funds to provide a certain number of travel and accommodation grants.
Program of activities, aims and audience
The seminar will take place in two days and include five panel sessions (each structured around three-four papers based on on-going or recent research). A final roundtable
will mark the conclusion of the seminar.
The program of the workshop is structured in order to allow for a continuous and close interaction among the participants. Participants are therefore encouraged to attend all the
sessions beside their own. There are a limited number of slots available for paper presentations; additional enrollment will be accepted limited to room capacity.
The seminar will aim at presenting a fresh perspective on the issue of settlements by bringing together different perspectives on the subject, as well as junior and
senior scholars. PhD Students are encouraged to submit paper proposals based on their doctoral research.
The seminar is meant to be the first episode in a future series of events, aimed at establishing a continuous discussion among scholars working on these issues. A more
immediate goal of the seminar is to collect materials for a special issue of a leading journal and/or a book proposal to be submitted to a major publisher.
Organizers and contact details
Marco Allegra is Research Fellow at the Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES), Instituto Universitàrio
de Lisboa (IUL). His main research interests are urban studies and political geography, Middle East politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His articles appeared, among others, on
Citizenship Studies, Mediterranean Politics, The Geography Compass,
Urban Studies, and Environment and Planning A. [log in to unmask]
Ariel Handel
is a postdoctoral fellow at the French Research Center in Jerusalem (CRFJ) and a research fellow at the Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University. His research interests are human
movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, mapping and spatial representations, and the political philosophy of geography. He is the head of the "Space and Power: A Political Lexicon" research group at the Minerva Humanities Center. His publications
include The Political Lexicon of the Social Protests (co-ed, 2012), Geographies of Occupation (forthcoming) and several journal papers and book chapters.
[log in to unmask]
Erez Maggor is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology at New York University (NYU). His main research
interests are political economy, state theory, and historical and comparative sociology. [log in to unmask]
--------------------------------
Ariel Handel, Ph.D.
Bettencourt Schueller Postdoctoral Fellow, French Research Center in Jerusalem (CRFJ)
--
Marco Allegra, PhD
Research Fellow
Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia (CIES)
Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa - Instituto Universitàrio de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)
Academia.edu: http://iscte.academia.edu/MarcoAllegra/About
Twitter: @MarcoAllegraTW
Recent Publications
(2013, with I. Bono, J. Rokem, A. Casaglia, R. Marzorati, H. Yacobi) Rethinking Cities in Contentious Times: The Mobilisation of Urban Dissent in the ‘Arab Spring’, Urban Studies, 50(9), http://usj.sagepub.com/content/50/9/1675
(2013) The politics of suburbia: Israel’s settlement policy and the production of space in the metropolitan area of Jerusalem, Environment and Planning A 45(3), http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=a45108
(2012, with A. Casaglia, J. Rokem) The Political Geographies of Urban Polarization: A Critical Review of Research on Divided Cities, Geography Compass, 6(9), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2012.00506.x/abstract