Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Update on San Diego and other things

Dear Caucus Members:
As the San Diego conference nears, I would like to ask you to be sure to try to attend the innovative virtual panel that we are sponsoring. We have completed the test run on Skype and are keeping our fingers crossed that all goes well. Here are the details. Remember this has never been done before at ISA!
Townhall meeting with virtual panelists from Asia, Africa and Latin America to discuss questions of civil society and access to information. Monday April 2, 8:15 am in Room 304, Hilton Bayfront Hotel, San Diego.
Virtual participants:
Professor Andres Serbin, Venezuela and Argentina
Professor Alan Chong,Singapore.
Professor Emmanuel Dandaura, Nigeria
Professor Imad Salamey, Lebanon.

In studio responding: Prof. J. Braveboy-Wagner, Prof. Naren Kumarakulasingam Prof. Imad Mansour; Doctoral candidate Charity Green, Prof. M. Bahramzadeh.

Please be sure to attend this as well as other presentations to show your support for the caucus.


IMPORTANT:
As you know, we are honoring Prof. Ali Mazrui at a (box) luncheon on Tuesday April 3, in the Indigo D, Hilton Bayfront, 12.30-1.30. Since space is limited, you must let me know if you will attend. Moreover, I am asking anyone who has favorite positive memories of Prof. Mazrui to please WRITE these down in a note which can be handed to him. Because of the short time allotted for the luncheon, we will only have one preliminary speaker aside from Prof. Mazrui himself..

ALSO IMPORTANT:
Anyone who would like to serve on the Executive Committee of the Global South Caucus should contact me ASAP. Slots are open. In particular we are interested in persons who will expand our outreach globally. We also need a Communications Director!

Best,
JBW




Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Conference: Call for Papers

Message from:
Dr. Clive Gabay
Lecturer in International Politics
School of Politics and International Relations
Queen Mary University of London
Tel: 020 7882 5832
E: c.gabay@qmul.ac.uk



Apologies for cross-posting:

‘Post-post’ independence? African political thought, contemporary protest and the international

19th-20th July, Queen Mary University of London.

In the past year anti-government protests have broken out in a number of sub-Sahara African countries, including Cote D’Ivoire, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Uganda and Mozambique. Some of these protests have emerged recently, whilst others have longer histories but have only recently come to international prominence. Responses from western countries and donors, and the western media have tended to view these as ‘post-post independence’ phenomena, that is, as a rejection of the failures of the post-independence political leaders and settlements, and an embracing of Western discourses on individual rights. This workshop seeks to explore the political economy and genealogies of these protests in order to question how far this wave of protests, as well as other contemporary protest and social movements in sub-Sahara Africa, should be seen as a ‘coming of age’ awakening to western discourses on rights. Instead, the workshop will explore the enduring legacies of independence-era political promises and contemporary forms of African radical political thought.

Potential paper-givers are invited to submit abstracts of no more than 200 words addressing any or all of the following themes, or any other theme pertinent to the overall workshop aims:

i) The continuing resonance and reworking of independence-era
political promises and thought through contemporary sub-Sahara African protest and social movements, including variants on African social democracy, Afro-socialism, nationalism and pan-Africanism;
ii) The influence of contemporary African radial political thought on
current protests and social movements
iii) How protesters mediate western discourses on rights through
locally-generated independence discourses;
iv) The deployment of independence-era thought in government responses
to protest, be that rhetorical or through social and economic programmes.
v) The ways in which western actors interpret protest in sub-Sahara
Africa, and the extent to which differences emerge between regional and global interpretations of the protests and how different conceptions of ‘Africa’ emerge from these interpretations.

Potential paper-givers are also encouraged to give thought to relevant non-academic speakers who might contribute to the value of the workshop, in particular activists and public intellectuals engaged in some of the struggles addressed by the papers, whether from exile and ex-pat communities in the UK, or from Africa. Please note that this is not an essential condition of workshop participation.

Please submit paper abstracts of no more than 200 words, and suggestions for non-academic speakers to c.gabay@qmul.ac.uk by Friday 24th February 2012


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Dr. Clive Gabay