New Article: Kallius et al, Politics of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Hungary

Kallius, Annastiina, Daniel Monterescu, and Prem Kumar Rajaram. “Immobilizing Mobility: Border Ethnography, Illiberal Democracy, and the Politics of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Hungary.” American Ethnologist (early view; online first).

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URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/amet.12260

 

Abstract

In the summer of 2015, more than 350,000 migrants moved through Hungarian territory. Almost immediately there emerged in response a dialectic between, on the one hand, depoliticizing narratives of crisis that sought to immobilize the migrants and, on the other, concrete political mobilization that sought to facilitate their mobility. While state institutions and humanitarian volunteer groups framed mobility in terms that emphasized a vertical form of politics, a horizontal counterpolitics arose by the summer’s end, one that challenged hegemonic territorial politics. The state’s efforts to immobilize resulted only in more radical forms of mobility. Outlining an ethnography of mobility, immobilization, and cross-border activism, we follow the dramatic yet momentary presence, and subsequent absence, of migrants in an evanescent rebel city marked by novel political solidarities.

 

 

 

New Article: Cohen and Ram, Tourism is not only the vector of biological invasion but also the victim

Cohen, Oded, and Yael Ram. “Tourism is not only the vector of biological invasion but also the victim: Evidence from Israel.” Tourism Recreation Research (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2015.1086130

 

Excerpt

Using the case of Israel, We shall attempt to show that tourism is the victim of biological invasion rather than its vector. The choice of Israel is purposive because it is situated on the crossroads of three continents (Asia, Africa and Europe) and has been the epicenter of human mobility for thousands of years, and thus it became the habitat of many alien species. The worst cases of biological invasion in Israel concerning species that were introduced via land/ocean use changes were intentionally introduced for ecological purposes (e.g. dune stabilization) or accidentally introduced via infested shipments.

 

 

 

New Book: Kotef, Movement and the Ordering of Freedom

Kotef, Hagar. Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On Liberal Governances of Mobility. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.

 

We live within political systems that increasingly seek to control movement, organized around both the desire and ability to determine who is permitted to enter what sorts of spaces, from gated communities to nation-states. In Movement and the Ordering of Freedom, Hagar Kotef examines the roles of mobility and immobility in the history of political thought and the structuring of political spaces. Ranging from the writings of Locke, Hobbes, and Mill to the sophisticated technologies of control that circumscribe the lives of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, this book shows how concepts of freedom, security, and violence take form and find justification via “regimes of movement.” Kotef traces contemporary structures of global (im)mobility and resistance to the schism in liberal political theory, which embodied the idea of “liberty” in movement while simultaneously regulating mobility according to a racial, classed, and gendered matrix of exclusions.

 

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements

• Introduction
• 1. Between Imaginary Lines: Violence and Its Justifications at the Military Checkpoints in Occupied Palestine / Hagar Kotef and Merav Amir
• 2. An Interlude: A Tale of Two Roads—On Freedom and Movement
• 3. The Fence That “Ill Deserves the Name of Confinement”: Locomotion and the Liberal Body
• 4. The Problem of “Excessive” Movement
• 5. The “Substance and Meaning of All Things Political”: On Other Bodies
• Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

 

HAGAR KOTEF is based at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University.

 

 

New Article: Dibiasi, Changing Trends in Palestinian Political Activism

Dibiasi, Caroline Mall. “Changing Trends in Palestinian Political Activism: The Second Intifada, the Wall Protests, and the Human Rights Turn.” Geopolitics (early view, online first)

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2015.1028028

 

Abstract

This paper asks where and why Palestinian protests take place and how particular manifestations of territorial dislocation affect the dynamics of Palestinian political activism. Political, social and territorial transformations over the Oslo period had resulted in the fragmentation of Palestinian resistance, a development that had become most evident during the second intifada through the absence of mass-based non-violent protest. Israel’s complex control over Palestinian territory and mobility has been a key factor in driving this fragmentation. In contrast to checkpoints, forbidden roads, and closures, the construction of the Separation Wall had a very different impact, and amid the continuation of a violent and fragmented uprising, it presented a focal point for cohesive organised non-violent local protest. This paper examines to what extent the construction of the Wall has engendered a different type of protest, conception of activism and new forms of cooperation, that break the trend of the second intifada.

New Article: Guggenheim and Taubman-Ben-Ari, Driving Attitudes and Road Experiences among Ultraorthodox Women in Israel

Guggenheim, Noga and Orit Taubman – Ben-Ari. “Women who DARE: Driving Attitudes and Road Experiences among Ultraorthodox Women in Israel.” Gender, Place & Culture 21.5 (2014): 533-49.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2013.802670

 

Abstract

This study seeks to gain insight into a unique group, ultraorthodox women in Israel, and their views and attitudes on driving and road experiences. Ultraorthodox women are generally contending with spatial and mobility restrictions due to stringent gendered spaces and social norms in their communities. Specifically in Israel, throughout the ultraorthodox sector, women are strictly forbidden to drive. In this research, we put the emphasis on driving dilemmas that have received marginal attention both socially and empirically. A qualitative method was used, based on face-to-face in-depth interviews, with women from three major ultraorthodox communities. The findings reveal that the driving ban for ultraorthodox women in Israel generates ambivalence and conflict, and exacts a heavy social price. Moreover, in line with approaches of feminist geography, it raises issues of gender relations and cultural implications, such as restricting the space and the mobility of women in order to keep them in a subordinate position. The results are discussed in terms of gender roles, cultural exclusion, and spatiality, on both the practical and emotional levels. The study opens a window to a unique sector of the Israeli population, revealing unique dilemmas with which ultraorthodox women grapple daily in their community.

Cite: Fenster and Hamdan-Saliba, Gender and feminist geographies in the Middle East

Fenster, Tovi and Hanaa Hamdan-Saliba, “Gender and Feminist Geographies in the Middle East.”

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2012.709826

Abstract

This article aimed to review the research carried out in the Middle East
primarily on gender and feminist geography and also on place formation,
urban space, movement and mobility in the social and political
sciences. This aim turned out to be challenging primarily because of the
colonial and post-colonial history of the region that continues to have
a profound effect on the development of academic knowledge among Middle
Eastern scholars as well as a restricted accessibility to material
published inside the Middle East. Despite this, the article primarily
focuses on feminist research on Middle Eastern women done by Middle
Eastern scholars and published in Middle Eastern journals and books
primarily in Arabic (and Hebrew in Israel). However, during the process
of reviewing a large variety of articles, book chapters and books that
exist on Middle Eastern women, we realized that it is sometimes
difficult and rather artificial to review the material with only this
division in mind. In the end, we reviewed the literature on gender and
feminism in the Middle East mainly highlighting local published research
and also briefly referring to research published in the West by both
Westerners and local researchers. The article begins with presenting its
research methodology. It then analyzes the website and literature
review that we carried out on the contexts, frameworks and themes of
gender and feminist geography and spatial research in the Middle East
with particular attention on the research carried out in
Israel/Palestine. We focus on the private–public spheres; migration and
diaspora and the veil as key concepts in analyzing the literature in
this section. In the last section, we explain the reasons for the
limitations on gender and feminist research in geography inside the
Middle East and mention some general conclusions.

Cite: Abu-Rabia-Queder and Karplus, Bedouin women’s mobility higher education

Abu-Rabia-Queder, Sarab and Yuval Karplus. “Regendering Space and Reconstructing Identity: Bedouin Women’s Translocal Mobility into Israeli-Jewish Institutions of Higher Education.” Gender, Place & Culture 20.4 (2013): 470-86.

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2012.701200

Abstract

This article offers a geographic perspective on the mutually constitutive
relations between institutions of higher education and Bedouin women’s
gendered spaces, identities and roles. Situated beyond Bedouin women’s
permitted space and embedded in Israeli-Jewish space, institutions of
higher education are sites of displacement that present Bedouin women
students with new normative structures, social interactions and
opportunities for academic learning. As such, they become a discursive
arena for the articulation and reconstruction of their previously held
conceptions and identities. Often the journey to institutions of higher
education signifies for Bedouin women the first opportunity to venture
out of their community. Traveling to the university as students,
returning home as educated women and embarking on professional careers
outside tribal neighborhoods and villages involves moving across and
beyond different locales. Such translocal mobility necessitates constant
negotiation between seemingly contradictory cultural constructs and the
development of varied spatial bridging strategies. The article seeks to
contribute to Bedouin gender studies by going beyond the functional
role of higher education institutions as well as the gendered
hierarchies of women’s mobility, placing emphasis, instead, on the
effects of socio-spatial contextuality that shapes Bedouin women’s
experiences.

Cite: Pullan, Conflict’s Tools. Borders, Boundaries and Mobility in Jerusalem’s Spatial Structures

Pullan, Wendy. “Conflict’s Tools. Borders, Boundaries and Mobility in Jerusalem’s Spatial Structures.” Mobilities 2013.

 

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17450101.2012.750040

 

Abstract

Transformed communications and mobility have led to the reinterpretation of urban space, so that instead of regarding it as primarily bounded and geometrically definable, it may be understood as based on a series of relations and, thus, continuously open to its own temporality. So where does this leave contested cities where differences in civic populations are so often represented through the rigid division and bounding of territory? This article examines borders, boundaries and mobility regimes in Jerusalem in terms of the spatial qualities of the city that have formed from the deceptively simple formula of more borders/less mobility. Clearly, an unbalanced and inequitable city has developed, and the research reveals that the politically motivated planning system has stamped out the fluid ‘relational’ space needed to enhance diverse interactions. Not only Palestinians but also Israelis are subject to this extreme binary vision of the city.

Cite: Bekerman and Rosenfeld, Jews in Motion

Bekerman, Zvi and Rosenfeld, Sue. “Measuring Jews in Motion.” Journal of Jewish Education 77.3 (2011): 196-215.

 

Abstract

Jewish educators are expected not only to imbue their students with Jewish knowledge but with Jewish feelings and Jewish actions as well—in short, with Jewish identity. However, in spite of a growing understanding among researchers that identity is fluid and dynamic, many of the traditional methods for assessing Jewish identity reflect essentialist concepts of identity that assume Jews and their Jewishness remain unchanging across various contexts. Our intention in this article is to review briefly some of the ways in which traditional methods of studying Jewish identity reveal problematic conceptualizations, and to suggest an alternative that seems to us more in keeping with constructivist concepts of identity.

Cite: Gvion, Higher Education and Russian Ethnicity in Israel

Gvion, Liora. "Higher Education as a Means of Constructing a Russian Ethnicity in Israel." Youth 19.1 (2011): 25-44.

 

URL: http://you.sagepub.com/content/19/1/25.abstract

 

Abstract

The article focuses on the meaning college students, who were born in the Former Soviet Union and immigrated to Israel between their 8th and 16th birthday, assign to higher education. It contends that higher education becomes a marker of Russian ethnicity in Israel. Aiming to compensate for their parents’ downward social and professional mobility, the students express pragmatic motives in their choice of majors for the prestigious occupations and seek professions with globally relevant and transferable job potential. In addition, commitment to education is a milestone in the formation of Russian social spaces, which make it possible for the students to differentiate themselves from Israelis of the working class amongst whom they often reside out of financial necessity. The study rests on constructive interviews with 30 Russian-born students, where most of them live in small peripheral towns an hour away from Tel-Aviv, and study in three different academic settings.