Call for Papers
Workshop: Reconstruction & Transnationalism in the Middle East & Africa
Date: October 25-26, 2002
Location: Cairo, Egypt
The reconstruction of war-torn societies -- the (re) establishment of the
modernist territorial nation-state -- is taking place in a global space in
which classical definitions of economic sovereignty have been blurred and in
which the centrality of the social contract that is to guarantee the
state/nation/citizen relationship is being complicated as more and more
people reproduce their lives in fractured migratory spaces. This workshop
invites 10-12 scholars to explore these questions in the context of the
Middle East and Africa.
Disenchantment with the postcolonial state, and challenges to the very
sustainability of the statist project has been the subject of much
discussion over the last few years. Yet, much less attention has been paid
to developing a deeper understanding of post-colonial statist projects in
the region. The workshop invites papers critically engaging with some of the
following questions:
How are we to conceptualize postcolonial statist projects, especially their
various states of dissolution such as in Iraq, Somalia and the Yemen?
Rurality is a little understood phenomena yet is emerging as an important
issue in these dissolution/ reconstruction processes, for instance in
Zimbabwe and Algeria. What sorts of dynamics undergird the (re) emergence of
rurality‚ as a (new) spatio-political force in the political present?
Likewise, how are the new teleologies of Islamism and indigeneity deployed
in dissolution and reconstruction practices (e.g. Nigeria, Algeria, and
Eastern Africa).
Transnationalism has been rather well studied in terms of migrant labor.
Much less attention has been given to questions of the transnational and/or
diasporic intelligentsia in reconstruction projects. What are the
implications for reconstruction processes in conditions such as in the Horn
of Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Iran in which the intelligentsia
remains largely diasporic?
what sorts of gendered subjectivities come into play in the reconstruction
of a social geography of space and place, such as in Palestine or Eretria?
Interested participants are invited to submit a 500-700 word (2-3 page)
abstract by August 1, 2002. A final 20 page paper will be due on October 1,
2002. Papers will be made available to all workshop participants shortly
thereafter. Papers from this workshop will be published in our ongoing
series on reconstruction, Reconstruction and its Futures: Essays on the
Challenges of Rebuilding War-torn Communities. Limited funding opportunities
are available for participants residing in the Middle East and Africa.
Please send your submissions to the e-mail addresses below.
This workshop constitutes part of a series of workshops organized by the
Reconstruction of War-Torn Communities in the Middle East and Africa
(RWCMEA) Working Group. RWCMEA is an autonomous working group housed at the
Middle East Awards for Population and Social Sciences in Cairo (Egypt) and
the Office of African Studies at the American University in Cairo. The
primary goals of the working group are to contribute to the articulation of
a new interdisciplinary field of reconstruction studies within the global
academy. A particular area of concern is the development of new theoretical
frameworks grounded in the historical and spatial realities of the political
present in the Middle East and Africa. The local co-sponsor for this
workshop is the Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies at the American
University in Cairo.
Ibrahim Elnur
Martina Rieker
American University in Cairo
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