political-community-workshop-programme-provisional

Inter-disciplinary workshop POLITICAL COMMUNITY H O ST E D BY T H E CENTRE FOR CITIZENSHIP, CIVIL SOCIETY AND RULE OF LAW (CISRUL) AT T H E UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND Committee Room 2, University Office Tuesday 25th – Wednesday 26th June Academic coordinator: Trevor Stack (t.stack@abdn.ac.uk) Workshop secretary: Tracey Connon (t.connon@abdn.ac.uk) See the end of the programme for details of how to register TOPIC Notions of political community are implicit in many or most contemporary debates – academic and public – of citizenship, civil society and rule of law, as well as of democracy, multiculturalism and human rights But they are seldom made explicit and subject to analysis and reflection That has also been our experience at CISRUL Having debated and discussed aspects of citizenship, civil society and rule of law in a series of events since our founding in 2009, we have identified political community as a topic that crosscuts the three but which we have yet to comprehend fully, and are seeking papers that address the following questions: When “political community” has been the explicit topic of debates, in particular times and places, what is meant by “political” and what is meant by “community”? What is not considered political and what is not community? To give just two examples, how is political community distinguished from religious community? And community from society? What notions of political community have been caught up in citizenship, civil society and rule of law? Does citizenship, for example, always entail political community? Can we identify political community beyond citizenship, civil society and rule of law? For example, are universities political communities? How about families, businesses and churches? Is multitude, as Hardt and Negri suggest, an emergent form of political community? What other emergent political communities might there be? The following are some of the questions that will addressed at the workshop: • Early modern thinkers such as Rousseau tended to associate political community with the city; governments from the late-18th century onwards attempted to nationalise political community How successful have they been? • How has the principle of self-determination affected political community? Is there still a place for an authority that governs different people with different languages and cultures, as the Romans had? • What kinds of political community have been possible under empires? What has been their legacy? • Where understandings of sovereignty come into political community? And how does political community stand in relation to democracy? • How have political communities dealt with minorities? Have minorities been able to constitute their own political communities? How successful have been attempts to develop plural political communities? • What is the role of business in relation to political community? Does corporate citizenship imply political community, and if so, how does it compare to corporate social responsibility? • Where churches stand in relation to political community? Are they, themselves, political communities? Can they be subsumed within broader political communities such as nation-states? • Does political community need law? What kind of constitutional arrangements are typical of political community? • Partha Chatterjee dismisses the promise of citizenship and civil society to build an inclusive political community in India The best he can envision is “political society” by which he means the terrain on which popular classes deal with the developmental state, for example by presenting themselves as “targets” of government assistance What does his argument spell for India and for other countries? • Does the UN operate as a political community, and if so, of what kind? SPEAKERS Raul Acosta, Centre for the Study of Applied Ethics, Deusto University, Bilbao, has been working on orderly dissent in the contexts of the Brazilian Amazon, west Mexico and the Mediterranean Matyas Bodig, Senior Lecturer in Law at Aberdeen, is a legal theorist who has worked on a range of issues concerning rule of law and the nature of the modern state Michael Brown, Senior Lecturer in History at Aberdeen, has written extensively on the Scottish and Irish Enlightenments Nigel Dower, Emeritus in Philosophy, U Aberdeen, author of An Introduction to Global Citizenship(Edinburgh UP, 2003) Ajay Gudavarthy, Assistant Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, author of Politics of Post-Civil Society: Contemporary History of Political Movements in India(Sage, 2013) and editor of Reframing Democracy and Agency in India: Interrogating Political Society (Anthem, 2012) Tamas Gyorfi, Lecturer in Law, U Aberdeen, publications include "Between Common Law Constitutionalism and Procedural Democracy" in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (2012) Daniel Koltonski, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Amherst College, publications include “Normative Consent and Authority” in Journal of Moral Philosophy (2013) Sian Lazar, Lecturer in Social Anthropology, U Cambridge, author of El Alto, Rebel City: Self and Citizenship in Andean Bolivia (Duke, 2008) Hanna Lerner is Assistant Professor of Politics, Tel Aviv University, author of Making Constitutions in Deeply Divided Societies (CUP, 2011) Gal Levy, Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, The Open University of Israel, publications include "Within and Beyond Citizenship: Alternative Educational Initiatives in the Arab Society in Israel" in Citizenship Studies (2012) Sourayan Mookerjea, Associate Professor of Theory/Culture at the University of Alberta, publications include “Subaltern Biopolitics in the Networks of the Commonwealth” in Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences (2010) Silvia Pasquetti is a Research Fellow at Clare Hall and in the Department of Sociology at Cambridge University Her publications include “Legal Emotions: An Ethnography of Distrust and Fear in the Arab Districts of an Israeli City” in Law & Society Review (2012) Yoav Peled is Associate Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University and co-author of Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (CUP, 2002) John Perry, McDonald Post-Doctoral Fellow for Christian Ethics and Public Life, U Oxford, author of The Pretenses of Loyalty: Locke, Liberal Theory, and American Political Theology (OUP, 2011) Márton Rövid holds a PhD in International Relations and European Studies from the Central European University, and has co-edited a book on Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Romany Studies (2012) Trevor Stack, director of CISRUL and Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, Aberdeen, and author of Knowing History in Mexico: An Ethnography of Citizenship (2012) and co-editor of “Citizenship Beyond the State?” special issue of Citizenship Studies (2007) SCHEDULE MONDAY 25TH JUNE Tea, coffee and biscuits 9.30 Introduction: Trevor Stack and Matyas Bodig 10.10 Discussion Political Community and Constitution Making 10.40 Hanna Lerner “tbc” 11 Tamas Gyorfi “tbc” 11.20 Discussion 11.50 Tea, coffee and biscuits A Historical View 12.10 Michael Brown “tbc” 12.30 Discussion 12.50 Sandwich lunch Philosophical Approaches 1.40 John Perry “tbc” Daniel Koltonski “Political obligation and political community” An account of the democratic citizen’s duty to uphold the law must make use of the notion of political community: it is only when she is a citizen of a genuine democratic community—a polity whose citizens are motivated in their political choices by some liberal conception of justice—that she must recognize as part of citizenship a duty to uphold the law Absent such a community, then, she will not have such a duty Why is that? Consider the case of an engaged and conscientious citizen—a citizen whose main aim is to live justly—who is confronted by a law she reasonably thinks to be unjust How can she have a duty to uphold that law, a duty that overrides her usual prerogative, as a free person, to act on her own moral judgments? She has a moral duty to uphold that law when she may reasonably regard it as the result of her fellow citizens responsibly exercising their moral agency with regard to questions of justice, for upholding that law is the way, in the inevitable circumstances of reasonable disagreement about justice, for her to respect their equal rights to such responsible exercise in deciding upon the laws governing their lives together Her duty to uphold the law, jointly with her fellows’ duties to uphold the law, is the correlative of their rights to an equal say The duty to uphold the law is a duty distinctive of citizenship in a democratic community whose citizens exercise their moral judgment responsibly—and are known to so—in making their political choices And so, it is in a political community in which a kind of thick reciprocity of political concern for justice actually, and not simply aspirationally, characterizes both the relationship of citizenship and so also the democratic processes, that upholding the law will be what respect for one’s fellows as free and equal citizens requires This is a very demanding account of political obligation—few, if any, states come close to achieving this sort of democratic community—but it is the sort of account one is lead to when one takes seriously the citizen who reasonably demands a justification for the claim that her citizenship requires that she against her own judgments about justice And a liberal account of justice must take this citizen’s demand seriously 2.20 Discussion Beyond the State? Sian Lazar “tbc” 3.20 Trevor Stack “Political community versus human society? versus? Reading Rousseau in contemporary west Mexico” 3.40 Discussion 4.20 Tea, coffee and biscuits 4.40 Ajay Gudavarthy “tbc” Discussion 5.30 End of session and campus tour 6.30 Buffet dinner TUESDAY 26TH JUNE The Case of Israel-Palestine Tea, coffee and biscuits 9.30 Silvia Pasquetti “The affective foundation of subordinated political communities: Lessons from a West Bank refugee camp and an Israeli ‘mixed’ city” Emotions are key components in the making and unmaking of political communities The activation of solidarity facilitates the pursuit of collective political projects By contrast, mutual distrust discourages people from pursuing shared political identities Drawing on fieldwork within and across a West Bank refugee camp and the Arab districts of an Israeli city, this paper explores the affective foundation of political communities among subordinated populations—subjects and citizens alike— experiencing exclusion due to their ethnonational, ethnoracial, or ethnoreligious membership The point of departure of this analysis is an empirical puzzle: stateless camp dwellers invest in their group solidarity and perceive themselves as members of a political community while urban minorities with Israeli citizenship experience mutual distrust and withdraw from the public sphere My research traces this difference in the shape and intensity of group life among these two sets of Palestinians to the workings of different ruling agencies, especially their distinct uses of law, coercion, and language Specifically, I study the emotional and political effects of the interplay between military repression and humanitarian aid in the camp and those of the convergence of policing and security interventions in the minority district This paper aims to use these empirical materials and arguments to address two questions posed by the Political Community Workshop organizers: the question of political community beyond citizenship and the question of the interplay between political community and access to scarce resources The case of the Palestinian urban minorities draws attention to how stigmatized segments of a citizenry, which are excluded from the dominant body politic due to their ethnonational (or ethnoracial) identity, might also be prevented from forming a thriving minority political community Similarly, the case of stateless camp dwellers offers some important insights on the role that military repression and humanitarian aid might play in the creation of subordinated political communities The question of access to scarce material and symbolic resources is also central to the diverging affective and political trajectories of Palestinian refugees and minority citizens, highlighting how for poor people the creation of political communities is inextricably linked to the available survival strategies To sum up, this paper argues that exploring how different coercive and humanitarian discourses and practices affect emotional relationships among subordinate people—for example, shaping whom they trust or distrust and whom they feel threatened by or have confidence in—is a necessary step toward a better understanding of the link between survival strategies and political projects, including the formation of political communities 9.50 Yoav Peled “Decline of political community and the excluded other: the erosion of Palestinian citizenship in Israel” While a Jewish state by self-definition, and therefore not a liberal democracy, between 1966 and 2000 Israel respected the citizenship rights of its Palestinian citizens, although not to the same degree as those of its Jewish citizens Until the mid-1980s the dominant citizenship discourse in Jewish Israeli political culture was the civic republican discourse Based on a corporatist economy centered on an umbrella labor organization – the Histadrut – it legitimated a virtue-based community of Jewish solidarity, and mediated between the contradictory dictates of the two others discourses of citizenship present in the political culture – the liberal and the ethno-national Since then, the globalization and consequent liberalization of the Israeli economy has weakened the republican discourse and the Jewish political community it sustained Initially, the liberal discourse seemed to be the beneficiary of the decline of political community, but its victory was short-lived, except in the economic sphere The decline of Jewish political community had a paradoxical effect on the citizenship rights of Israel's Palestinian citizens Initially it provided them with a wider political space in which to struggle for their rights, but when they began to use this space in order to demand that the state be transformed from an ethnic into a liberal (and lately even consociational) democracy, they encountered fierce Jewish ethno-nationalist reaction The high (or low) point of this reaction so far has been a citizenship law that denies the Palestinian citizens the basic human right of family unification, and that has withstood two constitutional challenges in the liberal high court Thus, the decline of Jewish political community proved detrimental to the interests of its excluded other 10.10 Discussion 10.50 Tea, coffee and biscuits New forms of political community? 11.10 Márton Rövid “On the transcendence of national citizenship in the light of the case of Roma, an allegedly non-territorial nation” The Roma are increasingly seen as a group that challenges the principle of territorial democracy and the Westphalian international order While diverse in customs, languages, church affiliations, and citizenship, the Roma can also be seen as members of a non-territorial nation One international nongovernmental organization, the International Romani Union, advanced claims for the recognition of the non-territorial Romani nation and advocated a general vision in which people are no longer represented on the basis of state The manifesto “Declaration of Nation” claims that the Roma have survived for several centuries as distinct individuals and groups with a strong identity without creating a nation-state, so therefore, their example could help humanity find an alternative way to satisfy the need for identity without having to lock it to territorial boundaries The paper studies theories of post-national citizenship in the light of the case of Roma What are the empirical preconditions of the transcendence of liberal nationhood? Under what circumstances can claims of post-national citizenship be justified? To what extent transnational social, religious, and ethnic movements challenge the foundations of the so-called Westphalian international order, in particular the trinity of state-nation-territory? What forms of political participation they claim? Do transnational nations pose a different challenge to normative political theory than other transnational communities? By studying the case of Roma, the paper relates the literature on diasporas and global civil society to cosmopolitan theories thus offering a new typology of boundary problems The paper demonstrates that the trinity of state-nationterritory is challenged from all three directions Trans-state, transnational and non-territorial forms of solidarity and political action are thriving Such developments challenge state-centric liberal, multicultural and nationalist theories alike However, these developments in themselves are not sufficient for the emergence of transnational forms of democracy On the contrary, by studying the case of Roma, the paper identifies three dimensions of exclusion: ethnic stigmatization, social exclusion, and denial of citizenship These forms of exclusion may reinforce each other and push the racialized poor and the racialized stranger to the margins of the polis 11.30 Sourayan Mookerjea “The politics of community and the community of politics: Athabaskan Tar Sands Development” This paper explores how the crises and contradictions of tar sands mining development in Fort McMurray, Alberta enable us to re-theorize the concept of community How are we to assess and understand the prolixity of the rhetoric of community in this context? Does the incitement of discourses on community in this instance stand as a symptom of a governmental strategy by now, in the endgame of neoliberal ascendency, tried and true? Or is there something else at stake here? After the complications and critiques of the politics of identity and difference, what lessons regarding class politics we draw from the crisis of community in the northern boom-towns of Alberta? Especially in the past five years, big and small environmental organizations, activists from the First Nations of Athabasca Chipewyan, Chipewyan Prairie, Fort McKay, Fort McMurray, and Mikisew Cree, the Alberta Federation of Labour, the Council of Canadians, to name only a few organizations, have launched public campaigns to either reform, slow, scale back or stop tar sand mining This mobilization has continued to burst back into flames in ever different situations, beginning with the National Energy Board hearings regarding the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal, opposition to the broad legislative sweeps of the Harper government’s omnibus bills and most recently with the Idle No More movement Given this diversity of social movement organizations and subject positions mobilized, how we understand the affinity or alliance that is emerging as a new kind of politics here, the new form of subjectivity or becoming in common this development and its social crises brings to life? Bringing into critical juxtaposition the post-Gramscian and postcolonial theorization of subalternity with Hardt and Negri’s concept of the multitude, this paper queries the historical content of the truth that binds political rhetoric enabling various social movements to act in solidarity in opposing tar sands development, and interrogates the community of politics that this politics of community seems to promise In doing, I argue for the importance of a Utopian social poetics of mediation to what Boaventura de Sousa Santos has called the project of a “sociology of absences” 11.50 Discussion 12.50 Sandwich lunch Global political community? 1.40 Raul Acosta “Constructive hostilities: dissent, transnational activism and the ethical imagination” An aggregation of individuals does not constitute a community, as this entails some level of intimacy among its members In much of the literature focused on social collectives, group solidarity is sought in shared ethnic or religious traits, or perhaps a common heritage of life in a locality Those focused on cosmopolitanism tend to focus on mechanisms through which differences among individuals may be bridged Both logics appear to assume positive attitudes towards those included, and negative to those who are not The cosmopolitan effort is thus to extend the net of inclusion This paper argues that the conflictive negotiations over what is shared among a community’s members render a collective political Discords in political scenarios are usually portrayed as power struggles, with the class struggle as the best example Although such disparities are clear breeding grounds for conflicts, apparently calm situations among members of a similar status may also originate strong disagreements It is open dissent over public affairs that creates a sense of community The processes of negotiation over what is shared, either in physical form (such as territory or goods) or in intangible form (e.g ideas or symbols), are thus essential in the making of the community The form in which dissent is performed and dealt with in turn shapes the collective It is a becoming of the political dimension of social relations within it Political anthropology has sought to examine the many forms through which people resolve such matters Various ceremonial strategies to channel commotions have been documented in valuable ethnographies As contrasting cultural traditions have travelled and are increasingly interpreted and assimilated, a new political landscape is emerging The methodological nationalism that pervades most political analyses is no longer useful to understand the processes of construction of collectives Some identities, as many considered indigenous in Latin America, have become reinforced and used in political struggles without negating external influences What these appear to show is an exercise of an extended ethical imagination, seeking to reinvent local political communities while at the same time collaborating across borders Gal Levy “An end to political community: the global social protest and the future of citizenship” In the last decade or so, it has become more and more prevalent in citizenship studies that the notion of citizenship is much more encompassing than is the idea of citizen as a right-bearing member in a political community, namely the nation-state The study of citizenship has long left its formal, legal confines and even the mere investigation of 'who is a citizen?' It has thus grown from a legal concept to a rich sociological and political concept, depicting not only ideological regimes and discourses, but also the power of citizenship as it is enacted by citizens and non-citizens alike In this context, the idea of citizenship as merely as a prerogative of the state, and as a manifestation of state power, has been replaced by new understanding of 'citizenship beyond the state' (Gordon and Stack 2007) On a different level, the notion of community has also taken various faces More importantly, with the rise of neo-liberalism and globalisation, and against the erosion of the notion of national, territorially-bounded societies, 'community' rose as an alternative 'spatialisation of government' (Rose 1996) This, to cite Rose further, had had several implications not only on the territory of the political, but also gave rise to 'anti-political motifs' (Rose 1996: 352) Consequently, the notion of community, which was partly born against the ills of modernising societies, turned into another means of government, and an expression of the weakening of 'the hold of "the social" over our political imagination' (Rose 1996: 353) Against this backdrop, and in light of the social protest that swept the world after the 'Arab Spring' and against the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, it is timely to ask what does it mean to have or to build a political community at these times, and what it entails to the future of citizenship in the aftermath of the World Social Protest 2.20 Discussion Tea, coffee and biscuits 3.20 Matyas Bodig “States, peoples, communities: the construction of collective subjectivity in international law (and its political implications)” 3.40 Nigel Dower “tbc” Discussion NOTES FOR ATTENDEES REGISTERING Space is limited at the workshop so please register as soon as you can (and let us know immediately if you change your mind) You should the following: Register for the workshop by clicking on: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform? formkey=dFR3ZjYwZFdxTk5IZk5VR2JqVGJLaEE6MA Registration is free and includes tea and coffee, sandwich lunches and a buffet dinner on Tuesday 25th June We ask in return that you commit where possible to attending the whole workshop Sign up to the network of the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL) by clicking on: http://cisrul.ning.com You should enter a sentence or two about yourself Some of the workshop papers will be posted to the network website You can also view previous and future CISRUL activities (including PhD studentship) at www.abdn.ac.uk/cisrul ACCOMMODATION Attendees should email Tracey Connon (t.connon@abdn.ac.uk) to ask about accommodation options There are a good number of nice B&Bs that cost £48-60 per night close to the University in Old Aberdeen, but book ahead because the workshop coincides with graduations TRAVEL There are regular direct flights to Aberdeen from most UK cities (British Airways, BMI, Easy Jet, Eastern Airways) and from Paris and Amsterdam (Air France/KLM) There is also a very frequent train and bus service from England A taxi from the airport to Old Aberdeen, where the University is located, takes 15 minutes and costs around £12; from the train/bus stations there are buses or a taxi that takes 15 minutes and costs around £8 CONTACT Email Tracey Connon (t.connon@abdn.ac.uk) or phone her on +44 (0)1224 273575 WORKSHOP LOCATION The workshop will be held at the beautiful Old Aberdeen campus of the University of Aberdeen on Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th June It will be held in Committee Room of the University Office, which is marked on the campus map below 10 KEY TO MAP 18 University Offices – where workshop will be held 25 King's College Chapel 28 King’s College entrance (where PhD summer school staff will take the bus on Thursday morning) CENTRE FOR CITIZENSHIP, CIVIL SOCIETY AND RULE OF LAW The workshop and PhD summer school are hosted by the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL), whose mission is to produce conversation across the social sciences and humanities on key concepts of the modern polity Citizenship, civil society and rule of law are three such key concepts, all three of some pedigree but enjoying a new lease of life, prescribed by bodies such as IMF and United Nations, championed by social movements, and debated in the media and in academic research, although we are also interested in related notions such as democracy, human rights, multiculturalism and pluralism We are distinguished by: • our conceptual approach, which contrasts with the often uncritical adoption of citizenship, civil society and rule of law as catch-all slogans or as fix-all solutions; 11 • • instead we ask searching questions about the concepts themselves, less to define them more clearly than to consider how they get deployed in practice our serious inter-disciplinary commitment, which goes beyond occasional encounters to aim at full engagement between up to or disciplines, in which we take time to learn the premises of each other’s disciplines in order to understand each other our global and historical reach that includes but goes beyond the usual focus on contemporary Europe and North America, looking at medieval and early modern Europe but also a range of contexts across Latin America, Africa and Asia We also offer PhD studentships and would be grateful if you could draw them to the attention of promising, inter-disciplinary Masters students Our interest in political community runs through two other CISRUL activities which are detailed on the website: Citizenship Education forum and project We held a forum for parents, teachers and researchers on 22-23 March 2013 to launch a project designed to improve the delivery of education for citizenship, working closely with schoolteachers, NGOs, and local and national government The next stage will be a larger conference in 2014, prior to writing classroom materials and/or making policy recommendations The project is relevant in that citizenship education is arguably all about building a political community, and conversely political community comes sharply into focus when looking at citizenship education Politics of Oil & Gas in a Changing UK public conference Follow the link on the website for a detailed summary and audio recordings of the sessions We held a major public conference on 8-9 May 2013 that focused on the politics of oil and gas but which has at its heart difficult questions about political community To begin with, in 2014 Scottish voters face a referendum on whether they remain citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Their understanding of the political economy of oil and gas is likely to play a significant part in how they decide their future But Scottish independence – with its obvious ramifications for political community - is only one of many decisions to be made about the future of hydrocarbons, and whether Scotland is independent or not, they are decisions that need to be taken Public debate of the many aspects of this looming future is scarce, almost as if the future was inevitable or we were unable to influence it Many decisions are being left to lawyers, government, experts or the market As well as staging a public debate, the aim of the conference was to reflect theoretically on the dynamics of political community when valuable resources are at stake Information about all our activities, including our PhD studentships, is available at www.abdn.ac.uk/cisrul 12