Abstracts (Pdf)

2008 Abstracts / Résumés 2008 Abboud, Samer Teaching the Arab World and the West…as an Arab in the West In this paper I reflect on my experiences teaching the undergraduate course The Arab World and the West with respect to my own identity as a Canadian-born Arab. I draw on various sources of data, such as personal journals, student and peer reviews, and student work to analyze two semesters teaching this class in radically different contexts: the University of Exeter, a top tier research university in southwest England, and Susquehanna University, a small, liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania. I concentrate on the dual pedagogical challenges of teaching an area studies course. First, there is the challenge of understanding and negotiating the way my students position me, how I perceive their perceptions of me, and how my own positioning of students affects my pedagogical choices. Second, I am confronted with the challenges presented by divergent academic contexts. At Exeter, I taught the course in an interdisciplinary institute that trained its students in the language, history, and culture of the Arab world. In contrast, my Susquehanna University students all majored in Political Science, and for many this course represented their first academic exploration of the Arab world. These reflections lead to larger questions of how professors might approach pedagogy in a changing academic landscape. How do we transplant courses from one context to the next? Is it possible to transport the learning goals of interdisciplinary courses into the way we teach courses offered through disciplines such as Political Science? What do we sacrifice and what do we gain in this process? Abboud, Samer The Political Economy of Resistance: Hizballah Hizballah, the Shi’a Islamist movement in Lebanon, has developed into a highly complex organization that links the activities of its armed wing, political apparatus and socioeconomic civilian support system with the ultimate goal of creating what its leadership calls a ‘resistance society’ (mujtamaa’ al-muqawamma). This socio-political community revolves around armed resistance to Israeli occupation and the distribution of social and political services. As such, they have articulated a notion of community that seeks to empower the Shi’a of Lebanon in the face of the dual injustices of Israeli occupation and the Lebanese government’s historical neglect of the country’s southern regions. This presentation argues that the material support for the sustenance of this political community emanates not from Iran and/or Syria, as conventional wisdom holds, but rather through a highly complex network of legal and illegal economic activity that financially sustains the movement. This network links economic activity in local (Lebanese), regional (Middle East, West Africa) and global (Europe, North America) contexts. The movement thus draws on varied legal sources such as religious donations and commercial entities (e.g. gas stations, supermarkets, and construction companies) that operate in Lebanon and the wider Middle East region, as well as illegal activities like drug trafficking, particularly across the Israeli border. This study will shed insight into the complexity of Hizballah’s activities and the financial sources that sustain them, demonstrating that Hizballah must also be seen as an economic actor deeply embedded in local/global, legal/illegal economic activity. Abele, Frances and Papillon, Martin Tracing the Contours of Neoliberal Citizenship: Aboriginal Peoples and Welfare State Restructuring in Canada Social citizenship in Canada is undergoing a profound redesign under the influence of neoliberal ideas and more recent ‘third way’ perspectives. As Jenson (2004), Esping-Andersen (2001) and others have suggested, social policies today are less about promoting redistribution and universal equality amongst citizens as they are about fostering autonomy and “enabling” individuals and groups participation in the market economy. While a similar path might be emerging in different countries in this respect, the literature on welfare state restructuring also suggests the impact of these transformation is not uniform. Similar policy perspectives are implemented differently and have different effects in different contexts, depending on the institutional and policy legacies as well as the specific configuration of power relations in that given context. Pushing this argument further, we suggest similar welfare state reforms may have different outcomes for the citizenship regime of different groups in society. We test this hypothesis building on the case of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. To do so, we analyse federal social and economic development policies towards Aboriginal peoples adopted in the 1950s and 1960s with those of the last two decades, comparing the conception of social citizenship underlying them. We argue that while the shift in policy perspective and objectives is largely consistent with the broader directions of neoliberal-inspired welfare state reforms, the institutional and political contexts of Aboriginal politics and policies serve as mediating factors in shaping the specific outcome of the reforms adopted. The analysis allows us to trace the contours of a new (neoliberal) citizenship regime for Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Abu-Laban, Yasmeen and Bakan, Abigail Palestinian Resistance and International Solidarity: The Israeli State, the Boycott/ Divestment/Sanctions Campaign and Hegemony In recent years an organized transnational movement has developed calling for a movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) aimed to protest the Israeli state’s illegal military occupation of Palestine. The movement also aims to expose and challenge a series of corresponding repressive policies including militarized violence directed against Palestinian men, women and children; the confiscation of land from Palestinians; the demolition of Palestinian homes; and the daily racism invoked by a series of policies directed at Palestinians which encumber their freedom of mobility, access to education and ability to earn a living. The BDS campaign, and in particular the call for an academic boycott of Israeli academics, has been highly controversial, and has been met by a concerted counter-response. The response been associated with claims that the campaign is destined to be ineffective; that it is counter-productive to peace and/or security; that it is contrary to norms of academic freedom; and that it is in fact not motivated by progressive but reactionary sentiment, tied to anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. Adopting a Gramscian approach, and drawing from Charles Mills’ concept of the racial contract, we will examine the origins and history of the BDS campaign and the debates it has engendered in the context of Israel/Palestine, and various international state and non-state actors. We argue that the effectiveness of boycotts as a strategy of resistance and cross-border solidarity is closely connected to the struggle for hegemony. The effectiveness of this particular boycott has been hampered by an international racial contract which, from 1948, has assigned a common interest between the state of Israel and international political allies, including Canada, while absenting Palestinians as simultaneously non- white, the subjects of extreme repression, and stateless. Adams, Christopher Electing New Democrats: The Manitoba Provincial Elections of 1999, 2003, and 2007 Since defeating the Progressive Conservatives in 1999, Gary Doer and the Manitoba NDP have held power in Manitoba with three successive majority governments. By studying the three most recent elections, the author shows how the NDP’s victories have been based on intra-provincial regionalism, as indicated by its success across Manitoba’s northern region as well as in the Winnipeg’s downtown and North End, as well as by winning the support of the working class, women, Aboriginal people, and the middle class. In many ways, the elections of 1999, 2003, and 2007 reflect the same voting patterns that have existed in the province since the NDP’s breakthrough in 1969, yet they also reveal how the province’s middle class has undergone an electoral realignment since the late 1990s. This realignment has been caused by 1) the changing economy and occupational structure of the province’s middle class and 2) strategies used by the NDP to capitalize on these changes. The research is primarily based on Elections Manitoba results and surveys conducted from 1999 to 2007 by the author’s firm (Probe Research). Adjagbe, Mathieu et Banyongen, Serge L'impérialisme américain et l'(in)sécurité humaine dans les Grands Lacs Africains Le retour de l’état de guerre suite au 9/11 ramène le débat sur l’impérialisme américain. Pour les uns, la guerre contre la terreur ou l’opération « liberté en Irak » n’est qu’un cheval de Troie et s’inscrit dans le projet de domination globale des États-Unis (Monthly Review 2002). Pour les autres, il s’agit d’une stratégie impériale pour s’assurer le contrôle des ressources énergétiques par l’installation des bases militaires dans des régions d'intérêts stratégiques pour l’hyperpuissance (Foukas et Gorkay 2005). Pour une frange de néolibéraux (Ikenberry 2006) et néoréalistes (Cooper 2002), l’impérialisme postmoderne vise la démocratisation et la construction des failed states. Néanmoins, la "sécuritisation" de l’Afrique qu’implique l’impérialisme américain soulève bien des controverses. Pour Keenan (2006) ou Abrahamsen (2004), le nouvel

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