Category: Events

Workshop: ‘Decolonising Political Theologies’ in Conversation with James Sidaway (Zurich, 26 May 2023)

by niamhoneilll, posted in Events, Output, Political Society, Workshops

Convened by Benedikt Korf, Department of Geography, University of Zurich, with James Sidaway, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

Date: 26 May 2023, 09:00am – 12:00pm
Venue: Collegium Helveticum, Rudolf Wolfs Saal, Schmelzbergstrasse 25, 8092 Zürich

Contact:
Benedikt Korf: benedikt.korf@geo.uzh.ch 

This half-day seminar will discuss James Sidaway’s forthcoming paper ‘Beyond the decolonial: Critical Muslim geographies’ and bring it in conversation with political theologies from elsewhere – beyond ‘Muslim geographies’ and beyond ‘Europe’ in a post- and/or de-colonial spirit.

James Sidaway is Professor of Political Geography at the National University of Singapore (NUS). His input will be followed by contributions from three discussants, and a lightning session.

Please register your interest with Benedikt Korf at: benedikt.korf@geo.uzh.ch 

Download programme

Research Colloquium, Spring Semester 2023: “Beyond Area Studies”

by niamhoneilll, posted in Colloquium

In this semester, the colloquium will focus on current debates in and critics of Area Studies and the various attempts to save them (e.g. new area studies, global area studies). We will discuss theoretical and methodological implications of using socio-scientific concepts across regional or historical contexts for our understanding of Area Studies and, in particular, the role of relationality with regards to both the scope of inquiry (as opposed to the object of inquiry) and the configuration of the region or area of study.

programme

Mon 06.03.2023, 12:30-14:00 CET
Introduction: Beyond Area Studies
Benedikt Korf (Department of Geography, University of Zurich)

Mon 20.03.2023, 12:30-14:00 CET
Area studies, geography and critical Muslim studies
James Derrick Sidaway (Department of Geography, National University of Singapore)

Mon 03.04.2023, 12:30-14:00 CET
The Globality of Higher Education Research as an Area Study
Patrício Langa (University of the Western Cape/Eduardo Mondlane University)

Mon 24.04.2023, 12:30-14:00 CET
Area studies and other containers
Aline Schläpfer (Department of Social Sciences, University of Basel)

Mon 22.05.2023, 12:30-14:00 CET
Review session

The colloquium takes place online via Zoom. If you are interested in participating, please use the registration form to register for one or several sessions.

Register

PhD candidates and advanced MA students can earn credits (1 ECTS credit point).

PhD candidates and students at the University of Basel can register for the course via MOnA (course no. 67655-01).

PhD candidates and students at other Swiss universities can register via the University of Basel Student Administration Office.

Workshop: “The Cultural Life of Democracy” (Zurich, 3-4 Nov 2022)

by Pascal Schmid, posted in Democracy, Events, Political Society

Convened by Harshana Rambukwella and Benedikt Korf, Department of Geography, University of Zurich

Date: 3 & 4 November 2022
Venue: Völkerkundemuseum, Universität Zürich

Contact:
Harshana Rambukwella: h.rambukwella@gmail.com 
Benedikt Korf: benedikt.korf@geo.uzh.ch 

This workshop is a modest attempt to broaden the critical discourse on democracy by using Sri Lanka as an empirical locus, but adopting a comparative gaze beyond Sri Lanka, and to explore the possibilities of fashioning the ‘cultural life of democracy’ as a conceptual and methodological heuristic to explore democracy and democratization as an actual political practice rather than a political ideal. Politically and intellectually the project aligns with the ‘post-colonial’ spirit of exploring ‘alternative’ accounts of democracy but is also cautious of how populist-authoritarian iterations of democracy have rationalized themselves through claims to alterity. Challenging the dominance of what Chakrabarty (2000) calls ‘hyperreal Europe’ there have been attempts to understand democracy in relation to postcolonial social experience. These include, drawing on the practice of adda in Calcutta society as a form of public sphere (Chakrabarty 2000), rethinking democracy from the margins in Chile where the isolated Chachapoyas region has historically resisted integration by self-consciously constructing itself as a pre-modern and pre-political society (Nugent 2002) and examining Islamic forms of democratic participation in Arabian societies that do not follow the Turkish ‘secularist’ model (Rane 2010). Collectively, these can be understood as forms of democratic participation that do not follow a rigid definition of democratic norms. This approach to ‘provincializing’ democracy has also yielded a number of studies that attempt to map civic life in South Asian societies (Orsini 2000; Dass 2015; Scott et al. 2016). The workshop thereby aligns with the agenda of the SINERGIA project “Reversing the Gaze”, which seeks to unsettle the Eurocentrism of democratic theory.

Taking Sri Lanka’s current political crisis as well as its varied history of democracy as a case, this workshop invites critical and comparative reflection on postcolonial theories of democracy, electoral politics and political dissent beyond the Sri Lankan case. The term “cultural life” starts from the supposition that the cultural is often a site of political struggle, but also, that politics develops a cultural life of itself: in the events it celebrates, the rituals it performs, the narratives it produces and the mundane practices it follows in the everyday. Studying how exactly these different modes of political conduct are mobilized and negotiated gives us an insight into “actually existing politics” (Spencer 2007: 177). Studying actually existing politics raises normative questions: We recognize that discourses like ‘post-truth’ have led to an erosion of norms such as ‘civility’, a class-driven but vital norm theorized by scholars like Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu (Thiranagama et al. 2018). Similarly, populist leaders have redefined sovereignty in self-serving ways that draw on the rhetoric of decolonization. The theoretical and political challenge, therefore is in fashioning a stance that recognizes that ‘civility’, for instance, has a loaded colonial history (Thiranagama et al. 2018: 163- 64) – but at the same time does not romanticize populism or restrict democracy to a set of culturally exclusivist markers.

Specifically, the workshop intends to explore the following interdisciplinary questions:

  1. What insights can a ‘cultural’ account of democracy offer for postcolonial societies like Sri Lanka, which ‘standard’ accounts of democracy and democratization such as the study of democratic institutions, the rule of law, etc., are unable to offer.
  2. How can we trace the ‘cultural life’ of democracy in varied forms of artistic production such as art, literature, film and theatre, but also political activism and events?
  3. What are the methodological and conceptual challenges of a project of this nature with its interdisciplinary and methodologically eclectic approach?
Download programme

Workshop: “Decoloniality and the Politics of the Urban” (hybrid, 27 Oct 2022)

by Pascal Schmid, posted in Unspent Funds, Urban

The Geneva Graduate Institute, the Reversing the Gaze Project and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) invite you to participate in an upcoming workshop, exploring themes of decoloniality in relation to the politics of the urban.

Date: 27th October 2022
Time: 9:00-16:30 UK time
Format: Hybrid

What is the politics of the divide between the urban and the non-urban (semi-urban, peri-urban and the rural), in contemporary postcolonial and metropolitan contexts, as well as historical colonial contexts? The divide is fundamental to the emergence of modern states as political-economic entities – European, colonial, and developmental. It expresses a politics of concentration/scale, productivity, specialisation, and movement to be governed. Crucially, colonial histories and categories of urban and rural and their relationship to productive and unproductive labour give shape to internal hierarchies of citizenship within states. The politics of these categories manifest themselves in historic rubrics of retribalisation, and contemporary politics of internal labour migration and populist resentment. The divide is of interest as at once a material site, political framework, and historical stage for the making of colonial and postcolonial states – and potentially for the continuation of an “unfinished project of decolonisation”.

This is a unique opportunity to engage with interdisciplinary scholarship on relevant themes of decoloniality, both historical and contemporary. If you’re interested in participating in a panel, kindly submit a short abstract (no more than 200 words) to tanushree.kaushal@graduateinstitute.ch and deval.desai@ed.ac.uk with the title ‘Decoloniality Workshop Submission’ and your name and affiliation by October 3th, 2022. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Tanushree at tanushree.kaushal@graduateinstitute.ch.

Download programme

Research Colloquium, Fall Semester 2022: “Concepts without borders”

by Pascal Schmid, posted in Colloquium

In this semester, the colloquium will discuss the changes socio-scientific analytical concepts undergo to be able to render phenomena intelligible in different settings. The standard assumption according to which concepts, when properly used, are independent of context has come under massive critique, especially within the context of postcolonial and decolonial critiques. But does this mean that concepts are hopelessly tied to context and are bearers of normative assumptions? What happens with analytical concepts when they travel from one historical or regional context to another? What is gained – and what is lost? And (why) should we make concepts crossing borders at all?

program

Mon 26.09.2022, 12:30-14:00 CET
Knowledge: Values and validity
Elísio Macamo (Centre for African Studies Basel/Department of Social Sciences, University of Basel)

Mon 10.10.2022, 12:30-14:00 CET
Traveling theory: The potentials and limitations of ideas as they ‘travel’
Harshana Rambukwella (Postgraduate Institute of English, Open University of Sri Lanka)

Mon 17.10.2022, 10:15-16:00 CET
Researching the (un)familiar (workshop)

Thu 27.10.2022, 08:00-16:00 CET
Decoloniality and the Politics of the Urban (workshop)

Thu 03. & Fri 04.11.2022
The Cultural Life of Democracy (workshop)

Mon 21.11.2022, 12:30-14:00 CET
Towards non-representational concept-making
Rose Marie Beck (Institute of African Studies, Universität Leipzig)

Mon 05.12.2022, 12:30-14:00 CET
Review session
Ralph Weber (Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel)

Download Program

The colloquium takes place online via Zoom. If you are interested in participating, please use the registration form to register for one or several sessions.

Register

PhD candidates and advanced MA students can earn credits (1 ECTS credit points).

PhD candidates and students at the University of Basel can register for the course via MOnA (course no. 65906-01).

PhD candidates and students at other Swiss universities can register via the University of Basel Student Administration Office.

Workshop: “Researching the (un)familiar” (Basel, 17 Oct 2022)

by Pascal Schmid, posted in Events, Retribalisation, Unfamiliar

Workshop in the framework of the sub-project When there are Strangers in Our Midst. Citizenship, Migration and Re-tribalisation in Switzerland

Time & date: Monday, 17 October 2022, 10:00-16:00 CET
Venue: Centre for African Studies Basel, Rheinsprung 21, 4051 Basel, room 00.002

This research workshop examines experiences of doing research in familiar and unfamiliar contexts. The familiar/unfamiliar are understood as fluid and mutually non-exclusive, and may refer to different aspects of the researcher’s biographical, social or intellectual relation to the specific regional and historical context she/he works on. The workshop focuses on methodological challenges and conceptual issues with a focus on doing research in Europe and in Africa. The workshop draws on research in the framework of the study “When there are Strangers in Our Midst. Citizenship, Migration and Re-tribalisation in Switzerland” (a case study of the Reversing the Gaze project).

Programme

10:15-12:00 – Session 1

  • Introduction by Elísio Macamo
  • Keynote by Peter Geschiere followed by discussion

12:00-14:00 – Lunch break

14:00-16:00 – Session 2

  • Presentation of current research by Winnie Kanyimba and Matthias Maurer
  • Final discussion

Speakers

Conveners

  • Elísio Macamo (Centre for African Studies Basel/Department of Social Sciences, University of Basel)
  • Pascal Schmid (Centre for African Studies Basel)

Registration form

“Concepts without borders”: Reversing the Gaze at the VAD Conference

by Pascal Schmid, posted in Concept Travel, Events, Multimedia, Output, Retribalisation

Watch the roundtable and panels convened by our project members at the conference of the Association for African Studies in Germany (VAD) in Freiburg im Breisgau (7-10 June 2022).

Rose Marie Beck, Patricio Langa, Ralph Weber, Peter Ronald DeSouza and Elísio Macamo at the roundtable “Concepts Without Borders”, VAD Conference in Freiburg i.Br., 8 June 2022
Concepts without borders: Reversing the Gaze at the VAD Conference

Roundtable chaired by Elisio Macamo (University of Basel) and Ralph Weber (University of Basel)

Speakers: Patrício Langa (UWCUEM), Peter DeSouza (Retired Professor), Rose Marie Beck (University of Leipzig), Claudia Derichs (HU Berlin)

The politics and epistemic value of positionality

Panel convened by Lerato Posholi and Ralph Weber

Translating concepts from Africa to Europe

Panel convened by Winnie Kanyimba and Matthias Maurer Rueda

Workshop: “The Philosophy and Global Politics of Concept Travel”

by Pascal Schmid, posted in Concept Travel, Events
Veli Mitova (African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, University of Johannesburg) during her presentation titled “Wilful Ignorance and Concept Travel”.

On June 17, the workshop on “The Philosophy and Global Politics of Concept Travel” brought together philosophers and social scientists from India, South Africa and Switzerland to reflect on the link between concept travel, conceptual engineering and the politics of knowledge production. The discussions raised various issues about the dominance of Eurocentric concepts in social science; possible advantages and disadvantages of concept travel; and outlined some strategies for conceptually engineering concepts.

The workshop was part of Lerato Posholi and Ralph Weber’s work package in the “Reversing the gaze” project and was organized in collaboration with Prof. Veli Mitova from the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, University of Johannesburg.

Workshop programme
Details (Website of the Institute of European Global Studies)

Research Colloquium, Spring Semester 2022: “Working with the state”

by Pascal Schmid, posted in Colloquium

In this semester, the colloquium will focus on the ways in which academic and non-academic interpretations of the concept of ‘the state’ vary in different contexts. Drawing from case studies of the research project “Reversing the Gaze” as well as guest talks, the sessions will shed light on research endeavors involving the travel and translation of concepts across different regions, disciplines and research foci.

program

Mon 14.03.2022, 12:30-14:00
Is the state an ideological power?
Tebuho Winnie Kanyimba & Matthias Maurer Rueda (Centre for African Studies Basel/Department of Social Sciences, University of Basel)

Mon 28.03.2022, 12:30-14:00
The Postcolonial African State in Transition
Lerato Posholi (Institute of European Global Studies, University of Basel)

Mon 11.04.2022, 12:30-14:00
Retribalization and the State in Switzerland
Tebuho Winnie Kanyimba & Matthias Maurer Rueda (Centre for African Studies Basel/Department of Social Sciences, University of Basel)

Mon 25.04.2022, 12:30-14:00
A Colonial History of Pensions: The East India Company and One Genesis for the Welfare State
Geeta Patel (Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures/Women, Gender & Sexuality, University of Virginia)

Mon 09.05.2022, 12:30-14:00
The State, Infrastructure, and Populism
Stephan Hochleithner (Department of Geography, University of Zurich)

Mon 23.05.2022, 12:30-14:00
Review session
Stephan Hochleithner (Department of Geography, University of Zurich)

Download Program

The colloquium takes place online via Zoom. If you are interested in participating, please register via email to: rtg@unibas.ch.

PhD candidates and advanced MA students can earn credits (3 ECTS credit points). In order to do so, participants should write a report on one of the sessions.

PhD candidates and students at the University of Basel can register for the course via MOnA (course no. 64025-01).

PhD candidates and students at other Swiss universities can register via the University of Basel Student Administration Office.

Call for Papers: “Post-Pandemic Mobilisation and Management of Social Welfare Funds”

by Pascal Schmid, posted in Events, Unspent Funds

Project members Sruthi Herbert and Deval Desai host a workshop on “Post-Pandemic Mobilisation and Management of Social Welfare Funds: Implications for Equity and Citizenship” at the annual conference of the Development Studies Association (6-8 July 2022). They discuss the fiscal and administrative practices that emerged in public welfare spending after the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of equity and citizenship.

The workshop explores a matter of critical policy relevance and political importance: the fiscal and administrative practices that emerged post-pandemic to rapidly mobilise funds for the pandemic relief, and its implications for equity and citizenship. The case-study of special-purpose vehicles (SPVs) in India guides this discussion.

Sruthi Herbert and Deval Desai (Edinburgh) will be the co-convenors. They welcome abstracts for papers from scholars, writers and activists engaged in monitoring and analysing the management and use of public/earmarked funds in India or other regions of the world.

The deadline for submissions is 4 March 2022. The conference is taking place online on 6-8 July, organised and hosted by University College London.

Workshop Description
Conference website