scholarly journals Nationalism, cosmopolitanism and statelessness: An interview with Craig Calhoun

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barzoo Eliassi
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
The Right ◽  
Diasporic Identities

This interview with Professor Craig Calhoun expands on issues of nationalism and cosmopolitanism in relation to the question of statelessness. Since the 1990s, Calhoun has worked on nationalism, ethnicity and cosmopolitanism. For Calhoun, nations still matter despite post-national and cosmopolitan elaboration and repudiation of so-called parochial and provincialised identities like nation or national identity and citizenship. In this interview, Calhoun dis-cusses the material, political and cultural situations of the Kurds in the Middle East and the role of Kurdish nationalism in the context of statelessness. Calhoun finds class-based understanding of inequalities between the Kurds and their dominant others in the Middle East as problematic and incomplete since the cultural, political and material inequalities are intimately interlinked in rendering the Kurds to a subordinated position in the states they inhabit. The interview also engages with diasporic identities and examines how countries of residence can impinge on the identity formation of diasporas and how they obstruct or facilitate migrants translating their citizenship status into the right to have rights (Arendt). An important issue that Calhoun discusses is that there are both asymmetrical power relations between dominated (Kurdish) and dominating nationalisms (Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian) and within the same nationalisms.

Southward and Otherwise

ARTMargins ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Uroš Pajović ◽  
Naeem Mohaiemen
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
East Africa ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Shadow Play ◽  
Yugoslav Wars ◽  
Blind Spots

This project comes out of a conversation between Mohaiemen and Pajović, about the relative absence of Non-Aligned Movement co-founder Josip Broz Tito, from the three-channel film Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017, dir: Mohaiemen). In the film, a series of conversations between Vijay Prashad, Samia Zennadi, Atef Berredjem, Amirul Islam, and Zonayed Saki sketch out the shadow play of warring forces inside the Non-Aligned Movement, especially around the decolonizing nations of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia that found an option to look toward an "Islamic" supra-national identity. Because of that focus, the role of Central and Eastern Europe, especially that of Yugoslavia under Tito, is absent from the film. Pajović's text re-integrates the Yugoslav bloc into Two Meetings and a Funeral. While Pajović's text concludes with a hopeful view of the potential of the Non-Aligned Movement, Mohaiemen's images and superimposed quote from Tito express an ironic doubling back. Indira Gandhi's Indian coalition of 1971, while maneuvering for Bangladesh independence from Pakistan, encountered Tito's confident comment that such problems of “tribalism” were only happening in Asia. Yugoslavia had solved the “Balkan problem”– this was spoken confidently twenty years before Tito's nation would split apart during the Yugoslav Wars. The geopolitical struggles that Tito fails to see in 1971 are harbingers for the blind spots that would cause Non-Alignment's collapse.

scholarly journals Gadamer, Levinas, and the Hermeneutic Ontology of Ethics

Philosophies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Christopher King
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Hermeneutic Approach ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Philosophy

Much debate has been held over the question of whether Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic approach to ethics and the other can do justice to the alterity of the other, as exemplified in Emmanuel Levinas’s approach to ethics as first philosophy. The challenge to Gadamer and to hermeneutics more generally, comes obliquely from Levinas and more directly, from Robert Bernasconi, who argues that Gadamer cannot account for an otherness that ends in incomprehensibility as one finds in encounters between persons of asymmetrical power relations—oppressed and oppressor, privileged and marginalized. Bernasconi’s critique has resulted in a flurry of hermeneutic responses that insist that Gadamer’s hermeneutics can, if understood in the right way, accommodate the other and serve as the foundation for robust ethical treatment of the other. I argue in this paper that participants in this debate have been insufficiently attentive to the ontologies that underlie the accounts of self and other in Gadamer and in Levinas. Because Gadamer and Levinas begin from different ontologies, their accounts of ethics and of the ground of ethics differ.

Ontological Counter-securitization in Asymmetric Power Relations: Lessons from Israel

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 932-956
Author(s):  
Amal Jamal
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Indigenous Identity ◽  
Asymmetric Power ◽  
Securitization Theory ◽  
Ontological Dimension ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
Analytical Category

Abstract This article seeks to enhance the understanding of ontological counter-securitization and the constitution of securitized subjects in the context of asymmetrical power relations. It builds on the available critique of the conceptualization of counter-securitization and the differentiation between physical and ontological securitization in order to facilitate a better understanding of the identity formation of securitized subjects as resistance. It argues that whereas the current literature deals with the differentiation between physical and ontological dimensions of securitization and recently with the meaning of counter-securitization, nonetheless the treatment of the later as a resistance is limited. It remains in the realm of the physical dimensions of securitization, rendering ontological ones unaddressed. The article argues that ontological counter-securitization emerges as an analytical category when the mismatch between the physical and ontological securitization policies is utilized as a structural opportunity for resisting asymmetrical power relations. The article exemplifies its theoretical arguments through exploring the complicated securitization policies of Israel toward its Palestinian citizens and the resistance of the latter to such policies. It argues that despite the fact that the Israeli physical and ontological securitization of its Palestinian citizens have not matched, they have been constructed as complementary and therefore have not been morally justifiable. This lack of moral justifiability has had repercussions on the legitimacy of the securitization policy, leading to the rise of the securitized subject as a securitizing agency that is able to practice counter-securitization. Since the power relations between the state and its Palestinian citizens has been asymmetrical, the latter limited their counter-securitization to the ontological dimension, manifested through politicizing their indigenous identity. The conceptualization of politicizing indigeneity as an ontological counter-securitization strategy of resistance has not been addressed in the available literature on securitization theory. Thus, exploring its analytical merits is a central goal of this article.

NELIDA FUCCARO, The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq, Library of Modern Middle East Studies, vol. 14 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999). Pp. 246. $55 cloth.

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-465
Author(s):  
SARAH SHIELDS
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
British Mandate ◽  
Mandatory Rule ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Middle East Studies ◽  
National Identity Formation

The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq offers an ambitious effort to reinterpret communal identities in Iraq during the British Mandate. Although this work focuses explicitly on Yazidis, Fuccaro engages the ongoing debate about the process of group identity formation in non-national states. In this monograph, Fuccaro argues that changing Yazidi communal identities are constructed within a broader context of government centralization, national identity formation, and British Mandatory rule. She shows that this context is crucial in understanding the reconstruction of Yazidi collective self-definitions.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF THE JUDICIARY IN EXECUTION OF ARBITRATION AWARD IN THE ARABIAN MIDDLE EAST COUNTRIES

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 200
Author(s):  
Emad Mohammed Al-Amaren ◽  
Ahmed M A Hamad ◽  
Omar Farouk Al Mashhour
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Government Agency ◽  
The Other ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Middle East Countries ◽  
Arbitration Process ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Right ◽  
Arbitration Award

<em>Arbitration has been known since ancient times, Arbitration is an ancient system known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the first origins of arbitration was in the ancient Roman era. Arbitration is a legal path that seeks to resolve disputes when parties choose to deal with it. The result of the arbitration is called an arbitration award. Where this judgment is issued as a decision of rights and it is binding for opponents subject to it, and when the opponent who has the right obtained an arbitration award for his benefit, this arbitration award does not pay off the purpose of it only after the implementation of the other opponent for what it says. The issue of Execution of arbitration award is very important, and the arbitration decision includes judgment on the parties to the dispute and giving the right to another party and may also include binding the parties as if the expenses were divided between them. As for the implementation of the arbitrators award, it is only if the arbitration award has reached a certain degree of strength, so that the objection to it does not have an impact on its executive power or its enforcement, and this is with the approval of the judiciary. The role of the observer of the arbitration procedures upon the issuance of the arbitration award, in addition to that he plays an important role through the arbitration procedures from bringing a witness or bringing papers from a government agency, and from that we reach the research point where the judiciary and arbitration are connected through oversight of the arbitration award after its issuance as The judiciary determines the fate of the entire arbitration process, as it can nullify this ruling or make it enforceable</em>

Celts, Romans, Britons

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
British Identity ◽  
Classical Reception ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Classical Cross

This interdisciplinary volume of essays examines the real and imagined role of Classical and Celtic influence in the history of British identity formation, from late antiquity to the present day. In so doing, it makes the case for increased collaboration between the fields of Classical reception and Celtic studies, and opens up new avenues of investigation into the categories “Celtic” and “Classical”, which are presented as fundamentally interlinked and frequently interdependent. In a series of chronologically arranged chapters, beginning with the post-Roman Britons and ending with the 2016 Brexit referendum, it draws attention to the constructed and historically contingent nature of the Classical and the Celtic, and explores how notions related to both categories have been continuously combined and contrasted with one another in relation to British identities. Britishness is revealed as a site of significant Celtic-Classical cross-pollination, and a context in which received ideas about Celts, Romans, and Britons can be fruitfully reconsidered, subverted, and reformulated. Responding to important scholarly questions that are best addressed by this interdisciplinary approach, and extending the existing literature on Classical reception and national identity by treating the Celtic as an equally relevant tradition, the volume creates a new and exciting dialogue between subjects that all too often are treated in isolation, and sets the foundations for future cross-disciplinary conversations.

A Laboratory for a Composite India? Jamia Millia Islamia around the time of partition

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-249
Author(s):  
LAURENCE GAUTIER
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
National Integration ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Constructive Work ◽  
Entire Nation ◽  
The Right

AbstractThis article explores the role of Jamia Millia Islamia—the National Muslim University—in the formation of a composite national identity in India around the time of partition. This institution, born under the dual influence of the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements, constituted for its members a ‘laboratory’ for the nation. Through their educational experiments and constructive workà laGandhi, Jamia teachers and students sought to lay the ground for an independence that would be ‘meaningful’ not only for Muslims but for the entire nation. In so doing, Jamia members claimed the right for Muslims to be recognized as ‘unhyphenated Indians’, able to speak for the nation. This article thus discusses the efforts of Jamia members to promote an inclusive conception of ‘composite India’ of which Muslims were fully part. At the same time, it highlights the ambiguous attitude of government authorities vis-à-vis the institution. Despite Jamia members’ strong affinities with Congress leaders, notably Nehru, the school received little support from state authorities after independence. Paradoxically, Nehru's government preferred to turn towards another Muslim institution—Aligarh Muslim University—often considered the ‘cradle’ of ‘Muslim separatism’, in order to reach out to Muslim citizens and promote national integration. By exploring the motivations behind this paradoxical choice as well as the complex relations between Jamia and Nehru's government, this article highlights some of Nehru's own ambiguities towards the ‘Gandhian’ legacy as well as to Muslim representation in secular India.

Sunni–Shi’a Relations

2020 ◽  
pp. 167-216
Author(s):  
Fanar Haddad
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Arab World ◽  
National Minority ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Sunni Islam ◽  
Sectarian Identity

This chapter examines the overlooked role of demographics in sectarian identity formation and sectarian relations in the modern Arab world up to 2003. It will be argued that the demographic imbalance has created minoritarian and majoritarian outlooks. These can sometimes operate in contradictory ways between the various dimensions of sectarian identity – a national minority that is nevertheless part of a transnational majority for example. Demographics have helped shape power relations between sect-centric actors particularly at the transnational and doctrinal dimensions where mainstream conceptions of global Islam tend to be Sunni-inflected. The chapter will demonstrate the profound implications this has had for how sectarian identities are imagined and instrumentalized. In doing so, this chapter will concentrate on the extremes of sectarian polemics and sectarian ecumenism (as opposed to the more common norm of mundane coexistence and sectarian irrelevance). Finally, the role of demographics in state–sect relations and the role that the nation-state has played in minoritization, majoritization and securitization of sectarian identities will be examined. Specifically, it will look at the normativity of Sunni Islam; the often-counterproductive side-effects of state-sanctioned sect-blindness; the securitization of sectarian plurality and of sectarian outgroups; and the intersection of Arab-Iranian rivalry with state-sect relations.

Promoting the Use of Technical Standards Inindustry-Oriented Engineering Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-32
Author(s):  
Oscar Bonastre ◽  
Alejandro Bia
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Technical Standards ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Right ◽  
Correct Understanding

The role of technical standards (TS) has become increasingly important for engineering over the past years. Nowadays, undergraduates are not only our future colleagues in industry and academia, but they also constitute the future workforce of a very significant part of the industry. The accomplishments of professional activities require a correct understanding of the role of technical standards applied to the industry, especially within the computing and the telecommunications fields. One of the challenges is to find the right way to introduce technical standards to enhance the learning experience by pointing students to the best practices of the industry. We found a stimulating alternative to overcome this challenge through the IEEE Student Branch Program. This paper presents one case of success, the IEEE's Student Branch in Spain during 2014, 2015 and 2017 and the Exemplary Student Branch Award (2017 to 2019) of Region 8 (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

Interrupting planetary urbanization: A view from Middle Eastern cities

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azam Khatam ◽  
Oded Haas
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Political Citizenship ◽  
New City ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

This paper argues that the ‘city’ as a political entity is significant in struggles over the ‘urban’, by identifying two moments of ‘differential urbanization’ in the Middle East. Our study in Iran and Palestine/Israel shows that the vision of the ‘city’ as a legitimizing space for political citizenship is at the heart of conflicting imaginaries: in Iran, ‘cities of revolution’ built through housing the poor around Tehran, and redistributive politics that stand on filling the ‘rural/urban gap’, and in Palestine, the new city of Rawabi as a city of Palestinian independence, where privatized urban development contrasts colonial spatialities with anti-colonial potentials. Thus, the right to the ‘urban’ involves claims for the ‘city’ that go beyond the capitalist logic of urbanization. This theorization points to a troubling gap in the planetary urbanization thesis, which moves from collapsing the ‘urban/non-urban’ divide into ‘concentrated’, extended’ and ‘differential’ urbanization to diminishing the role of distinct sociospatial configurations in claims over the ‘urban’. Our case studies show that examining the reconfiguration of inherited spatialities in the context of particular political regimes is imperative for epistemology of the ‘urban’ in its planetary stage. Urbanization otherwise remains an uninterrupted process towards a non-spatial ‘urban condition’.

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