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]