Hi Ruddock,
Thanks for responding.
I read your previous responses on this list and I identify with your call
for action. I nonetheless think that after torture, boycott/censorship is a
prototypical tool of oppression/dictatorship. I think that medium is
message and that it doesn't matter whether mental control, coercion and
sanction come from the right, as is the case of the current Israeli
government, or from the global left, as is the case of this boycott
initiative. And since I want to advance democracy, as an ideal, as a
political regime and as a social utopia, I cannot ethically nor
intellectually accept the position that claims you can
fight apartheid with apartheid.
As for Palestinian push for boycott, two points. One: 'Palestinian', like
'Israeli', is a canopy of and for various ideological dispositions. Some
Palestinian spokesmen and pressure groups support the boycott, some are
not. Some, like the Popular Front, identify with Western-style social
democratic ideals, and some, like Islamic Jihad, affiliate themselves with
the call for a global Islamic revolution. I would look carefully at who is
promoting a boycott and who isn't, and what these might gain from that.
Second: When you take such measures as full and encompassing boycott you
accept unilaterally the radical all-or-nothing stance, which discredits
anything 'Israeli' and eulogizes anything 'Palestinian', without critically
looking at how things work on the ground and how these very definitions in
their own right might be challenged. I do not accept Ilan Pappe's claim
that the whole history of Zionism is a history of attempted-genocide
and institutionalized racism as much as I reject Netanyahu's
absurd justification for the construction of new settlements in East
Jerusalem or all kinds of right-wing ideas `that there has never been a
Palestinian people because there has never been a Palestinian state'. For
me both these statements and the politcial mobilization that may arise from
them can only lead to a standstill.
Last, concerning the statusquo: You are definitely right
that indifference will preserve the situation. What you can do is speak out
for the virtues of constructive cooperation and encourage people to do so.
This, ultimately, is what I am trying to do. You can also get active
through peace coalitions, partly operating on the ground by joint
Israeli-Palestinian groups (lots of focuses on cultural and economic
partership from below, rather than the granmd politcial screaming that
happens 'above'). Some of this, by the way, simply make part of the
lived-experience of persons in Israel and Palestine (for example, mixed
marriages, currently on the rise, between Jews and Muslims in Israel). You
can also, like many Israelis, refrain from buying products produced in
settlements and thus directly affect those who gain something from the
occupation (an economic, rather than an academic boycott, when applied
correctly, is a perfectly ethical action even within sheer consumerist
logic).
Matan
Dr. Matan Shapiro
Honorary Research Associate
Department of Anthropology
University College London (UCL)
14 Taviton Street
London
WC1H 0BW
U.K.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Anthropology Department
Haifa University
Mount Carmel
Israel
On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 4:59 PM, Ruddock M.W. <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Funny email, 'Boycott Ethnography from the Margins'.
>
> None of your reasoning seemed to consider the Palestinian demand, from
> across civil society, for an international boycott.
>
> Also you offered no alternative other than to sympathise and maintain the
> status quo.
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The Anthropology-Matters forum mailing list [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matan Shapiro
> Sent: 12 November 2014 12:33
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Boycott Ethnography from the Margins
>
> Colleagues
>
>
> I completed my PhD at UCL Anthropology last year and am now working as a
> postdoctoral fellow at the University of Haifa in Israel. I hesitated, but
> eventually signed the petition AGAINST the boycott for five main reasons.
>
>
> First, academic boycott is a logical absurdity that collapses into itself
> because it works to marginalize and silence those voices that support, in
> general terms, the cause for which the boycott had been set up in the first
> place. Beyond this internal contradiction, by which you actually end up
> boycotting yourself, the method is just as intolerant and discriminatory as
> those policies of occupation and colonization you vehemently reject. By
> resorting to these methods - consequently radicalizing the violence - you
> will be serving the interest of those who seek the prolongation of this
> atrocious conflict.
>
>
> Second, boycotting institutions will almost inevitably entail the
> boycotting of individuals. Are you seriously saying you will approve
> research funding for PhD students working with the theories of Carl Schmitt
> and Martin Heidegger, for example, but boycott Yaron Ezrahi and Lev
> Greenberg?! And what about the many Palestinian scholars tenured in Israeli
> academic institutions? And committed peace activists, whose research funds
> come from the Israeli government but their knowledge production is aimed at
> enforcing change? And so on. Would the boycott exclude these professionals
> due to their personal biographies or 'correct' political views? If so, it
> would certainly lose its ethical credibility and universal appeal.
>
>
> Third, the War Machine is primarily sustained by pretty powerful
> corporations, the media, and extra-academic governmental institutions.
> These might have links with research power centers in Israeli and global
> universities, but there is no way to enforce them to comply with academic
> ethical conventions. Consequently, such corporations as the NATO
> MBDA-Systems, UK Raytheon, Brazilian Vale, you name it, will not be obliged
> to follow any boycott policies whatsoever. And it is them who run the
> business, not anthropology departments. Surely a boycott on Israeli
> academia, let alone on Israeli humanities and social sciences, is unable to
> drain the occupation from its sources of funding.
>
>
>
> Fourth, as flagrant neo-liberalism, wild capitalism and colonial
> exploitation still emanate from the major political and economic powers in
> the Global North, certain supporters of the boycott in some American,
> British, and French academic institutions should take a second look at who
> is paying their own salaries. Not to mention guilt by association, as with
> renowned British universities receiving money from the Army, on the one
> hand, and from 'legitimate' war-lords on the other (see the Gaddafi case).
>
>
> Fifth, many Israeli scholars are overwhelmingly sympathetic to the
> Palestinian cause. Some are not. By grouping them all into the category of
> perpetrators the bureaucratic logic of boycott emits the end of
> *vita-activa*, creativity, dialogue, negotiation and freedom of speech.
> This is not an appeal to differentiate intellectual and political debates
> on the basis of some kind of an anachronistic and positivistic claim for
> the 'objectivity' of science, but, rather the contrary, to take
> anthropology's special interest in alterity and its powerful message in
> enhancing complexity to full use, by making informed decisions about how to
> struggle in the grey-zone, and recognize it for being grey, through
> constructive cooperation, rather than always-already resort to
> black-and-white territories of discord and animosity.
>
>
> Hence, I oppose the boycott.
>
>
> Matan Shapiro
>
>
> Dr. Matan Shapiro
> Honorary Research Associate
> Department of Anthropology
> University College London (UCL)
> 14 Taviton Street
> London
> WC1H 0BW
> U.K.
>
> Postdoctoral Fellow
> Anthropology Department
> Haifa University
> Mount Carmel
> Israel
>
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