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Le programme "Œcumene, citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme”

Présentation du programme : "Œcumene, citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme”

Programme hébergé : lien avec le projet Œcumene, Citizenship after orientalism (“Œcumene, citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme”) de la Open University à Milton Keynes, Grande Bretagne, un projet financé par le Conseil Européen pour la recherche (dans le cadre de : “Institutions, values, beliefs and behaviour” ERC-AG-SH2). Oecumene consiste en une équipe internationale de chercheurs situés à la Open University au Royaume Uni ainsi que dans d’autres parties du monde.

http://www.oecumene.eu/about

Lien avec le projet Œcumene, Citizenship after orientalism (“Œcumene, citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme”) de la Open University, GB.

Programme hébergé : lien avec le projet Œcumene, Citizenship after orientalism (“Œcumene, citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme”) de la Open University à Milton Keynes, Grande Bretagne, un projet financé par le Conseil Européen pour la recherche (dans le cadre de : “Institutions, values, beliefs and behaviour” ERC-AG-SH2).

Qui ?

http://www.oecumene.eu/about

Oecumene consiste en une équipe internationale de chercheurs situés à la Open University au Royaume Uni ainsi que dans d’autres parties du monde.

Le professeur Engin Isin est le directeur de recherche de l’équipe du projet "Œcumene. Citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme" de la Open University, http://www.oecumene.eu/ Il est titulaire de la Chaire sur la Citoyenneté et professeur dans le programme "Politics and International Studies" (POLIS) à la Faculté de Sciences sociales, The Open University. Il a également été directeur (2007-2009) du "Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance" (CCIG). Il est membre du Conseil scientifique de TERRA.

http://www.oecumene.eu/people/engin-isin

Email e.f.isin@open.ac.uk

Tél : +44 (0)1908 552022

Sur le projet Œcumene

Œcumene : la citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme explore comment le concept de citoyenneté est en cours de reconfiguration et de renouvellement dans le monde entier. À une époque où des événements mondiaux tumultueux, d’Israël à l’Inde, appels à une meilleure compréhension de la finalité et de la puissance de la citoyenneté, le projet ouvre les frontières de la citoyenneté par l’exploration des subjectivités politiques en dehors de l’Europe. Le projet met l’accent sur la tension entre deux institutions différentes : la citoyenneté, processus par lequel la subjectivité politique est reconnue et adoptée, et l’orientalisme, processus par lequel l’Europe est considérée comme le berceau des “idées universelles” telles que la démocratie, la laïcité, le droit et le capitalisme.

Que relie la citoyenneté à l’orientalisme ? Historiquement, la citoyenneté a été considérée comme une institution exclusivement européenne en contraste avec les sociétés non européennes. Pourtant, la « citoyenneté » comme l’expression de notre appartenance sociale et politique est devenue « illimitée » (unbound). Les gens à travers le monde ont trouvé de nouvelles façons de faire valoir leurs droits démocratiques en tant que citoyens.

Le fond de toile

La Open University est en cours d’exécution du projet Œcumene afin de révéler les pratiques de la citoyenneté qui restent invisibles ou inaudibles à l’extérieur de l’« Europe » et afin d’explorer les possibilités d’une compréhension renouvelée et élargie de la citoyenneté européenne elle-même.

Partout dans le monde, les gens revendiquent leurs droits en tant que citoyens, souvent de façon à créer des défis pour les gouvernements. Dans le Madhya Pradesh, en Inde, les peuples autochtones déplacés par un projet de barrage ont occupé et cultivé des terres appartenant au gouvernement. Dans le même temps, la migration des peuples à travers et vers l’Europe a conduit les gouvernements à mettre en place des régimes juridiques destinés à contrôler ces mouvements, par exemple à travers la définition de « l’illégalité ». La portée mondiale du projet lui donne l’occasion unique d’étudier les actes de citoyenneté à travers les frontières à une époque de changements rapides.

Citoyens orientalisés

Une interprétation eurocentrique de la laïcité occidentale, de l’Etat de droit, de la démocratie ou de la citoyenneté conduit à une vision orientalisée de l’immigration comme étant une irrégularité, un comportement antisocial ou de terrorisme. Si nous suivons cette logique, selon certains "ils" ne devraient jamais devenir citoyens. Ainsi, la citoyenneté est devenue un site de conflit. Ces idées alimentent et sont alimentés par l’émergence de partis politiques anti immigration et par leurs interprétations. D’un point de vue juridique, l’Europe à plusieurs niveaux institutionnels (l’UE, les États membres, les gouvernements régionaux) a élaboré des stratégies et technologies multiples dans le but d’établir une Europe sélective à travers les contrôles aux frontières, les centres de détention, la machine de déportation et lois sur l’immigration.

La ville elle-même devient le champ de bataille pour l’institution de cette Europe sélective. Cette recherche sera menée à Barcelone (considérée comme une ville globale par des études GaWC). Un pourcentage élevé de Sud Asiatiques (70%) vit dans le quartier stigmatisé de El Raval, ou comme il est parfois appelé, Ravalistan. La plupart des contrôles des comportements sociaux et des interventions de la police sont mis en œuvre ici. Dans les dernières années, surtout après les bombes de Madrid, diverses détentions multiples ont eu lieu : le cas Comando Dixan et le cas Raval Onze. Au milieu des années ‘90, Papeles para todos (Des papiers pour tous), un collectif composé par de multiples mouvements sociaux, des partis alternatifs et des syndicats, a commencé à organiser des sit-in, des manifestations de solidarité, grèves de la faim, la désobéissance civile, des boycotts, des camps et des manifestations contre la politique d’immigration espagnole.

Pendant les 10 dernières années les communautés sud asiatiques et le collectif Papeles para todos ont travaillé ensemble en faveur du droit et de la dignité pour les immigrants.

Les politiques d’immigration restrictives et le fait de nier aux migrants la subjectivité politique, sont-ils des vestiges de l’orientalisme ? Comment ces criminalisées, ces sans-papiers, ces immigrants orientalisés remettent-ils en question les conceptions contemporaines de citoyenneté européennes ? Est-ce qu’ils questionnent le clivage interne Est-Ouest qui a été constitué en Europe aujourd’hui ? Quelles sont les stratégies que ces groupes “abjects” on pu développer dans les rues de la cosmopolis, dans les centres de détention ou aux frontières pour devenir des sujets ayant le droit de revendiquer des droits ?

Le Prochain grand colloque international organisé par Œcumene, précédé par l’Ecole postdoctorale internationale (voir plus loin)

Information en anglais :

Citizenship After Orientalism (Œcumene) project - Final Conference 6-7 March 2014

We are very pleased to announce the final conference of the Citizenship After Orientalism (Œcumene) project funded by the European Research Council (ERC). This conference concludes the project Citizenship After Orientalism (Oecumene) funded by the European Research Council (ERC). Since January 2010, six postdoctoral researchers, two visiting postdoctoral fellows and three PhD students have conducted research on the vexed relationship between citizenship and orientalism under the supervision of Professor Engin Isin and explored ways of rearticulating or reimagining this relationship. Drawing upon this research, this two-day conference presents 12 papers as affirmative statements and provides a glimpse of how we might (and must) begin to think about it differently. Professor Hamid Dabashi (Columbia University, New York) will be delivering a keynote lecture at the end of the first day. Please find the draft programme at this link : http://www.oecumene.eu/events/final...

As part of this conference we are also offering postgraduate students an international school as an opportunity to deepen their understanding of the findings of the project. Please find details at this link : http://www.oecumene.eu/events/final...

Please note that attendance at both the conference and the international school are free. However, places at the international school are limited, so please register as soon as possible.

We would also very much appreciate it if you would distribute both the conference and the international school information to those who might be interested.

Ecole postdoctorale internationale les 4 et 5 mars 2014, Londres, information en anglais :

International Postgraduate School – 4th – 5th March 2014 Senate House, Russell Square, London

This two-day postgraduate school is taught as part of the final conference of Citizenship after Orientalism (Oecumene) project that takes place on 6th – 7th March 2014 in the Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes. Those who are registered for the school are expected to attend both the school and the conference for the entire experience. The school features four three-hour seminars over two days as follows.

Day One – Tuesday 4th March 2014

Bloomsbury Room

Part One 09:30 – 12:30

Title : Citizenship’s Domestic Others Professor Engin Isin

This seminar provides a broad overview of the constitution of citizenship as political subjectivity in the West. It surveys resources available to think critically and historically about citizenship and illustrates how it contributed to the creation of the space that came to be known as ‘the West.’ This seminar traces several meanings and trajectories of the institution of citizenship through the creation of its domestic others : women, workers, queer, blacks, and multicultural.

Part Two 14:00 – 17:00

Title : What are ’genealogists’ to do ? Thinking critically about method Dr Deena Dajani and Zaki Nahaboo

Zaki Nahaboo begins this seminar by moving beyond Marxist and postcolonial genealogies of multiculturalism to historicise the taken for granted role cultural difference plays in genealogical critiques. This discussion uncovers the promises and limits of genealogy when attending to the present : how to do genealogies with concepts that are not stable. From the difficulties of attending to concepts that are not stable, Deena Dajani then reflects on whether genealogy has developed its own forms of stability, inevitably falling into the very logics it sought to distance itself from. This question is explored through drawing on the writings of Nietzsche, Foucault and their critical interlocutors to re-cast genealogy by revisiting its relationship to history. Is it possible for a critical understanding of genealogy to account for, and move beyond, its orientalist limits ?

Recommended Reading/Lecture recommandée :

Koopman, C., 2013. ’Chapter 4 : What Problematization Does : Aims, Sources & Implications’ in Genealogy as critique : Foucault and the problems of modernity Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press.

Day Two – Wednesday 5th March 2014

Torrington Room

Part One 09:30 – 12:30

Title : Citizenship’s Foreign Others Professor Engin Isin

This seminar surveys how the concept of citizenship was instituted not only through the creation of domestic others but also foreign others (e.g., non-Western peoples and indigenous peoples). It specifically illustrates that the creation of foreign others was connected with projects of imperialism and colonialism and worked together with the creation of domestic others. This relationship between domestic and foreigner and its function becomes the focus of discussion.

Part Two 14:00 – 17:00

Title : Making Citizens and Others : settler colonialism

Dr Jack Harrington and Dana Rubin

The seminar analyses and compares past and present typologies of settler-colonialism and the citizenship discourses about otherness that they have produced. Jack Harrington explores how the citizen was conceived in nineteenth century French and British settler colonies. In such colonies, genocide, racial segregation, displacement of indigenous peoples and wealth inequality were not simply accidents of history, they were often tools of social engineering and a means of deciding who could and who could not be a citizen. Dana Rubin examines the contemporary case of Zionist settler-colonialism. Focusing on various articulations of current West Bank settler groups regarding their position on the frontier, she attends to the religious, economic and political aspects that underline them.

READINGS/LECTURE :

Koopman, Colin (2013), Genealogy as critique : Foucault and the problems of modernity (Bloomington : Indiana University Press). Isin, Engin F. (2013), ’Citizenship after Orientalism : Genealogical Investigations’, in Michael Freeden and Andrew Vincent (eds.), Comparative Political Thought : Theorizing Practices (London : Routledge). Isin, Engin F. (2002), Being Political : Genealogies of Citizenship (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press), pp. 1-51.

L’Ecole postdoctorale internationale des 4 & 5 mars 2014 est suivie par le dernier grand colloque du projet Œcumene les 6 & 7 mars. Information en anglais :

Citizenship After Orientalism (Oecumene) : The Final Conference 6-7 March 2014, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes

Pour s’inscrire gratuitement/To register for this conference please email : oecumene-project@open.ac.uk

Please note that attendance at the conference is free.

This conference concludes the project Citizenship After Orientalism (Oecumene) funded by the European Research Council (ERC). Since January 2010, six postdoctoral researchers, two visiting postdoctoral fellows and three PhD students have conducted research on the vexed relationship between citizenship and orientalism and explored ways of rearticulating or reimagining this relationship. Drawing upon this research, this two-day conference presents 12 papers as statements on this vexed relation between citizenship and orientalism and provides a glimpse of how we might (and must) begin to think about it differently.

Critique of citizenship in liberal democracies over the last two decades has demonstrated that the abstract and ostensibly universal and secular figure of the citizen was in fact a projection of a male, propertied, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, Christian and Western figure. This critique also demonstrated that the challenge was not one of progressively including the subaltern figures such as women, blacks, queers, Muslims, and eventually non-Westerners into that figure through sexual citizenship, multicultural citizenship, or indigenous citizenship. Such assimilation meant that the subaltern figures could appear only through the qualities of the dominant figure of the citizen. It also meant that the logic of citizenship as a dividing practice remained intact.

‘Citizenship after orientalism (Oecumene)’ explored the possibilities of uncovering subaltern citizens and their acts and practices not with reference to the dominant figure of the citizen and its orientalizing perspective, but as a challenge to them. The project’s name plays on the etymology of the word Oecumene, which originally meant the inhabited world, separating it from ‘another’ world in ancient Greece. It then acquired a meaning that included other ‘worlds’, finally standing for the ‘whole’ world.

The project explored how the Arabic tradition of telling (humorous) tales produced political subjects (hakawatis) ; how Adivasis (indigenous people of India) have made claims to rights and how their claims spur acts of writing as acts of citizenship ; how Gurus cultivate post-secular citizenship in India ; and how Israel’s Zionist colonialism in Palestine is unsettling modern citizenship by spawning non-Zionist settler colonies. It also explored how the continuity between imperial and nation-state citizenship affected postcolonial conditions in Algeria and India ; how orientalism plays a strategic role in curbing migrant activism in Europe ; how gendered and sexual subjects are interpellated to exercise political agency in postcolonial Europe and India ; how debt is reorganizing the geopolitics of Europe’s orientalism ; how genealogies of multiculturalism point toward a continuous problem of difference management in the UK ; and how a hybrid Muslim family law is being forged in the UK legal system.

Thursday 6 March 2014 9:00 – 9:30 Coffee and Registration 9:30 – 10:00 Welcome by Martin Bean (Vice-Chancellor, The Open University) and Tim Blackman (Pro Vice-Chancellor, The Open University)

10:00 – 10:30 Engin Isin Why Citizenship after Orientalism ?

10:30 – 13:00 Session 1 : Feminist Legacies and Challenges to Orientalism

Chair : Darren Langdridge Alessandra Marino - Performing Citizenship : Acts of writing

Leticia Sabsay - Abject Choices ? Orientalism, Citizenship and Autonomy

Tara Atluri - Haunted Citizens : Of Ghosts, Gang Rapes and Bureaucratic Fictions

11:30 – 11:50 Coffee 11:50 – 13:00 Q&A on Session 1

13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH

14:00 – 16:30 Session 2 : Decolonizing the Lineages of Citizenship

Chair : Raia Prokhovnik

Aya Ikegame – Overlapping Sovereignties : Gurus and Citizenship

Deena Dajani – Foolish Citizens

Jack Harrington – The Imperial Citizen : British India and French Algeria

15:15 – 15:30 Coffee

15:30 – 16:30 Q&A on Session 2

16:30 Introduction to ‘In Conversation’ by Kevin Hetherington (Dean, Faculty of Social Science)

16:30 – 18:00 John Clarke (OU) In Conversation with Samia Bano (SOAS), Humeira Iqtidar (King’s College) and Gada Mahrouse (Concordia University)

Closing remarks by Engin Isin

18:00 – 19:30 Evening Reception (TBC)

Friday 7 March 2014

10:15 – 10 : 30 Introduction by Jef Huysmans

10:30 – 13:00 Session 3 : Deconstructing Secular Citizenship

Chair : Kath Woodward

Dana Rubin – Against Modernity : Jewish Ultra-Orthodox and Religious-Nationalist Colonialism in West Bank Settlements

Iker Barbero – Against Orientalism : Migrant Activism and the Claim for Justice

Lisa Pilgram – Legal Orientalism and Citizenship : British Muslim Family Law

11:30 – 11:50 Coffee

11:50 – 13:00 Q&A on Session 3

13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH

14:00 – 16.30 Session 4 : The Indebted Citizen : Inheriting Orientalism Chair : John Clarke

Andrea Mura – Indebted Citizenship : Acting Out Austerity

Zaki Nahaboo – Multicultural Society Must be Defended ?

Engin Isin – Citizenship’s Empire

Close of Conference : John Clarke and Engin Isin

Précédents colloques internationaux organisés par Œcumene :

La citoyenneté déorientalisée ?

Information : [http://www.oecumene.eu/events/2nd-s...]

L’équipe du projet Œcumene est heureux d’annoncer que notre deuxième Colloque : La citoyenneté déorientalisée ? aura lieu les 12-13 Novembre 2012 au Collège Goodenough à Londres. Le symposium est organisé par le projet de recherche Œcumene : la citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme.

Penser à la « citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme » implique d’aborder deux questions théoriques. Tout d’abord, qu’est-ce que nous entendons par l’orientalisme, trente ans après l’enquête séminale Edward Saïd ? Comment l’orientalisme peut-il être réarticulé au-delà de ses formes culturelles ou de représentation ? Deuxièmement, qu’est-ce que nous entendons par la citoyenneté comme mode possible de la subjectivité politique ? Toute articulation de la subjectivité politique qui édicte une revendication de droits, ou pour le droit de revendiquer des droits, doit-elle être compris en tant que citoyenneté ?

La possibilité de concevoir des pratiques de la citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme pointe vers des expériences qui permettent de découvrir, réarticuler et provoquer des formes subjuguées de la politique. En prenant en compte les intersections entre l’orientalisme, le colonialisme et la citoyenneté, en explorant les possibilités de la politique démocratique pour décoloniser la citoyenneté et pour déranger les allégations universelles aux droits, nous demandons quelles sont les images de la citoyenneté qui font leur apparition par rapport au processus de dé-orientalisation ? C’est cette expérimentation elle-même, plutôt que ses résultats, qui constitue « la citoyenneté depuis l’orientalisme » en tant que champ d’investigation.

Le Second Symposium "Desorientaliser la citoyennete ? Experimentations en subjectivites politiques" a eu lieu en novembre 2012.

Deorientalizing citizenship ? Experiments in political subjectivity.

12-13 November 2012 Goodenough College, London

Keynote lectures by

- Walter Mignolo (Duke University) Citizenship, Knowledge and the Limits of Humanity (II)

- Saba Mahmood (University of California, Berkeley) Religious Liberty, the Minority Problem and Geopolitics

You can find the preliminary programme via : http://www.oecumene.eu/files/oecume...

To book the event (£30 for 2 days) and for further details, please follow : http://www.oecumene.eu/events/2nd-s...

- Panel 1 ‘Orientalism, colonialism and citizenship’ : Sukanya Banerjee (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Jack Harrington (The Open University), Alessandra Marino (The Open University), Meyda Yeğenoğlu (Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi)

- Panel 2 ‘Democratizing politics, decolonizing citizenship’ : Bela Bhatia (Tata Institute of Social Sciences), Oscar Guardiola-Rivera (Birkbeck, University of London), Charles Hirschkind (University of California, Berkeley), Sasha Roseneil (Birkbeck, University of London)

- Panel 3 ‘The universal after orientalism’ : Gurminder Bhambra (University of Warwick), Sudeep Dasgupta (University of Amsterdam), Antke Engel (Institute for Queer Theory), Vivienne Jabri (King’s College London)

- Roundtable ‘Citizenship After Orientalism : An Unfinished Project’ : Discussion of Citizenship Studies Journal special issue.

http://www.tandfonline.com.libezpro... (free access to selected journal articles for participants of the Symposium will be provided prior to the event)

[The Symposium is organised by the European Research Council funded project Oecumene : Citizenship after orientalism based at The Open University. To receive up-dates regarding the symposium and other project activities, please register via www.oecumene.eu/user/register ]

* * *

Intervention de Nacira Guénif-Souliamas, membre de TERRA, à la conférence Opening the Boundaries of Citizenship (“Ouvrir les frontières de la citoyenneté”). Nacira est associée au programme "Citoyenneté après l’orientalisme".

Le 7 février 2012, à Milton Keynes,

Nacira Guénif-Souilamas – Blurred citizens. An orientalist mapping of other beings, belongings and becomings

http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2012/02/nacira-guenif-souilamas-blurred-citizens-an-orientalist-mapping-of-other-beings-belongings-and-becomings/

Panel 20 : New Cartographies of Citizenship

Dr Nacira Guénif-Souilamas (University Paris-Nord/13) – Blurred citizens. An orientalist mapping of other beings, belongings and becomings

The question as to whether young people of colonial and immigrant descent may and/or should be/become, for example, French is irrelevant, as many of them already are and all of them are always-already French, for they are born within or connected to the former borders of colonial France. Such paradoxical citizenship is subsequent to the colonial rule morphed into a new imperial order. According to this assumption, sovereignty does no more follow national borders but rather breathes through embodied boundaries. This reticular and rhizome-like configuration requires unusual ways of qualification. Some sort of proofreading, dedicated to human beings under condition of recognition, becomes a mandatory checkpoint. Each and every potential alien-citizen (i.e. citizen of a new (human)kind and/or of colonial descent) has features and attributes bound to undergo a random test, along a vast range of pixelized modes. Starting with birthplace, whitewashed color skin, wrist bones size, face visibility, fashionable black dress code, race profiling and body search, undocumented narratives, fluent accent-free idiomatic expression, sexual availability.

In order to understand the rules of this endless set of tests, one has to connect the dots left after each completion, whether successful or failed. One thus sees a map of various modes of belonging and their vicissitudes appear before one’s eyes. Yet the political translation of this set of tests is reversible, either leading to recognition or to dismissal : signs of “integration” may highlight a dangerous proximity potentially preceding an invasion ; conversely signs of “lack of integration” point at the same threat. Just as resemblance is integral to Orientalism, in all the dangerous encounters it promises and calls for, blurred citizenship is coextensive to new national perimeters. Become unpredictable and therefore under suspicion, the Other citizens are caught in the web of a refreshed Orientalist predicament. Since they no longer sit on national borders but rather travel through bodily experiments, these blurred citizens relocate themselves. Their escape from the limits and limitations comprised in this citizenry of another kind is likely and challenging, expected and dubious. In any case this citizenry idiosyncrasy is political because it points at the long-term invisible race and gender fault lines it was build upon and the class divides it has triggered and lived with.

Race and ethnicity, class and gender provide us with combined observation lenses to explore a Europe made stranger to oneself. Along this process, citizenry is metamorphosed. Its old components are reworked and crafted so that nationality becomes irrelevant, homeland exchangeable, belonging plastic, and embodiment replicable and replaceable. How then does this new political entity, still called citizen, spell itself ?, what does it rely on, if ever, to stand by itself ?, what kind of bounds and ties does it choose and/or comply with ? These are some of the questions I suggest to document and unfold through iconic and discursive items chosen from the provincialized Europe visual and written archive. Eventually, they may lead to another set of questions : why citizenship is still desirable and worth fighting for ? What precious privilege, intrinsic quality, attached to it, makes it so invaluable and unquestionable ? A close look at southern Arab blurred borders may then prove useful. http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/201...

Voir également la participation de Nacira Guénif-Souilamas à :

First Symposium : Sexual Democracy, Imperialism and Cultural Translation Workshop,

http://www.oecumene.eu/blog/first-symposium-sexual-democracy-imperialism-and-cultural-translation-workshop

Voici la Newsletter d’Oecumene d’Octobre 2013, en anglais :


OECUMENE DIALOGUE OCTOBER 2013


Dear Oecumene friends and colleagues,

We are very pleased to send you the October edition of Oecumene Dialogues our monthly newsletter.

Summary of items covered in this issue :

1) Event : Citizenship, Narrative and Neo/colonial Histories 2) Event : Hamid Dabashi confirmed keynote for Final Conference 3) Blog : ’Sharing songs : Decolonising ethnography, disrupting scientific orientalism’ by Brendan Donegan 4) News : Videos of Citizens’ Dialogue with MEPs available 5) News : Leticia Sabsay interviewed for Iconos Magazine 6) Related projects : First Global Forum on Statelessness


1. EVENT : CITIZENSHIP, NARRATIVE AND NEO/COLONIAL HISTORIES


Organised jointly by the Postcolonial Literatures Research Group and the Oecumene : Citizenship after Orientalism Research Project at the Open University.

The symposium addresses narratives of citizenship as a political category in colonial and neo/colonial contexts. Citizenship has been a subject of renewed interest in the social sciences over the past two decades and has generated a proliferating body of theory which reflects on its political-historical genealogy, its emergence from a limited concept of membership to the nation-state, and its viability as a continually re-enacted political identity. In cultural history, literary criticism and postcolonial studies, however, the engagement with citizenship has been less immediate, as studies of the neo/colony have retained broader terms such as identity, ethnicity, subjectivity, nation and cosmopolitanism as favoured critical categories. This one-day symposium seeks to re-situate citizenship at the heart of current critical debates and asks how new ‘civic’ reading strategies might illuminate the politics of citizenship and its neo/colonial histories, especially where citizenship is the subject of literary and cultural narratives.

Keynote speakers : Javed Majeed (King’s College London) ; Allison Drew (University of York).

Symposium venue : Open University, 1-11 Hawley Crescent, Camden Town, London NW1 8NP Directions and map : http://www3.open.ac.uk/contact/maps...

To book one of the limited number of places please register for the event as soon as possible (and no later than Friday 15th November) by sending an email titled ’Citizenship narrative symposium’ to oecumene-project@open.ac.uk mailto:oecumene@open.ac.uk.

For further information see http://www.oecumene.eu/events/citiz...


2. EVENT : HAMID DABASHI CONFIRMED KEYNOTE FOR FINAL CONFERENCE


Dates have been set for the Final Conference as 6th - 7th March 2014. Please put these dates in your diaries. Professor Hamid Dabashi will be the Keynote Speaker at this event. More information will be sent out shortly.


3. BLOG : ’SHARING SONGS : DECOLONISING ETHNOGRAPHY, DISRUPTING SCIENTIFIC ORIENTALISM’


.... by Brendan Donegan

On an evening in early 2009 I sat on a hilltop not far from the Narmada river in western India. I was visiting a militant mass-membership organisation based in that area, as part of a field trip with health activists from a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) I had already spent many months with. Over dinner, in front of an audience of a dozen Indian activists, the head of the mass-membership organisation asked me questions that pointed to the bloody, neo-colonial hands of my country. “Oh, you’re from Britain ? Didn’t your Prime Minister Tony Blair make the Iraq war possible ? Doesn’t your country support Israel ?”

http://www.oecumene.eu/blog/sharing...


4. NEWS : VIDEOS OF CITIZENS’ DIALOGUE WITH MEPS AVAILABLE


NCVO along with CSV and The Open University in partnership with the European Parliament ran a project ’Europe : what does it mean for you ?’. As part of this initiative, the team organised a dialogue with MEPs and a book launch with professors and civil societyorganisations to discuss citizenship rights within the EU. The event was organised as part of the European Year of Citizens 2013. Videos of interviews with MEPs and recordings of the panels are now available.

http://www.oecumene.eu/news/mep-can...

http://www.oecumene.eu/news/mep-can...

http://www.oecumene.eu/news/mep-kei...


5. NEWS : LETICIA SABSAY INTERVIEWED FOR ICONOS MAGAZINE


Leticia Sabsay was interviewed by Iconos, the Latin American Review of Social Sciences, on queer politics, sexual citizenship, orientalism, and postcolonial and decolonial perspectives in Latin America.

http://www.oecumene.eu/news/leticia...


6. RELATED PROJECTS : FIRST GLOBAL FORUM ON STATELESSNESS


The First Global Forum on Statelessness will take place at the Peace Palace in the Hague 15 – 17 September 2014. The event is organised by Tilburg University and UNHCR.

http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/re...

Voici la Newsletter "Dialogues" d’Oecumene de decembre 2012. On peut voir la suite sur le site d’Oecumene :

OECUMENE DIALOGUE DECEMBER 2012


We are very pleased to send you the November/December edition of Oecumene Dialogues, our monthly newsletter.

Summary of items covered in this issue :

1) Audio recording available : Symposium ’Deorientalizing citizenship ?’ 2) Blog : ’As a citizen of the world...’ 3) Blog : ’Men as People’

You are receiving this newsletter because you are subscribed to the Oecumene website. If you do not wish to receive this newsletter anymore, simply use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.


1. AUDIO RECORDING AVAILABLE : SYMPOSIUM ’DEORIENTALIZING CITIZENSHIP ?’ 


Audio recordings of all keynote lectures and panel presentations are now available on our website. The video recordings will follow soon early next year.

http://www.oecumene.eu/events/2nd-s...


2. BLOG : ’AS A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD...’ 


.... By Brendan Donegan

During one of my visits to India I spent some time talking to people who were engaging with local processes of land acquisition for industrial development. I learned that local people took different positions on these processes. Some land owners felt that it was becoming increasingly difficult to make a living from agriculture, and anticipated that they could use the proceeds from the sale of their land to start a new life in the city. Some farmers believed claims made by the state government and companies that they would be able to get jobs in the factories that would be established, and believed that this work would be more remunerative than agriculture ; in addition, they felt that office jobs in "shirt-pants" would be more dignified and higher status than working as farmers. Some landless agricultural labourers pointed out that 1) their lack of education meant they would not be eligible for the promised factory jobs, 2) the sale of the lands they work on would force them into different fields of employment which would in all probability involve even more precarious labour conditions than those they currently experience, and 3) under existing government policy they were not eligible for compensation for loss of livelihoods.

http://www.oecumene.eu/blog/as-a-ci...


3. BLOG : ’MEN AS PEOPLE’


.... By Raghda Butros

Is being a man in the Arab world truly cause for celebration ? Not if you happen to be a fourteen to twenty-four year old male in Amman, where it has become common practice to exclude young men from public and semi-public spaces. This trend is on the rise, and reflects a deeper issue of class discrimination, which receives very little public attention, despite having serious social implications. Exclusion and class discrimination serve to bolster a public discourse which renders marginalization socially acceptable, promote unnatural forms of class and gender segregation that prevent the natural functioning of society, exacerbate factors that justify exclusion, and feed into much more complex social challenges, of which exclusion is merely a symptom. 

http://www.oecumene.eu/blog/men-as-...