The HISDEMAB collective book edited by Abdel Qader Amer, Abdul Hameed El Kayyali and Nora Lafi (Alaan 2024) is receiving a great coverage in the Arab press:
MEO:
‘تأملات حول المشاركة السياسية’ في المنطقة العربية | MEO (middle-east-online.com)
AMNON NEWS:
OPERA MISR:
“تأملات حول المشاركة السياسية في المنطقة العربية مطلع القرن العشرين” (operamisr.com)
OBOURE:
كتاب”تأملات حول المشاركة السياسية في المنطقة العربية مطلع القرن العشرين” – عبور (oboure.com)
ADDUSTUR:
Nora Lafi, “Réflexions sur l’historicité de la délibération dans le monde arabe : Tripoli à l’époque ottomane” in Neila Saadi (ed.), Éclairages variés sur la Libye contemporaine, Tunis, IRMC, 2024,p.35-70.
Éclairages variés sur la Libye contemporaine – IRMC (irmcmaghreb.org)
Amer (Abdel Qader) El Kayyali (Abdul Hameed) Lafi (Nora) (eds.), تأملات حول المشاركة السياسية في المنطقة العربية مطلع القرن العشرين [Reflections on Political Participation in the Arab World at the Beginning of the 20th c.], Amman, Alaan Publishers, 2024, 224p.
Available HERE with Alaan Publishers
What is a good representative and how is this related to material culture? Dis:connecting citizens and Members of parliament in postwar Italy and West Germany”
November 13, 2023. 16h00-18h00 (Berlin Time). Registration: https://forms.gle/A8AJDvdaQyUiG5qD8
Abstract:
After fascism, the reestablishment of parliamentary systems brought along a central yet often neglected question of modern democracy: what was a good representative, and why? Zooming into the urban everyday of postwar Italy and the Federal Republic during election campaigns, my talk examines how and where voters and Members of Parliament met and negotiated their relationship. It scrutinizes public and private expectations of the people’s representatives and considers, vice versa, the perspectives of political parties and parliamentary elites on the electorate. What becomes clear is that the dis:connection of voters and their representatives in a period of rapid social change depended not only on mental and emotional conditions, but also on certain material circumstances of political communication.
Claudia Gatzka is a historian researching the history of democracy and
political communication, tourism and the construction of the “European”. Gatzka studied history and political science as well as European ethnology in Berlin and Bologna. She has been a research associate at the department of History at the University of Freiburg since 2015 and a teaching professor since 2020. Her dissertation on “Democracy as Local Practice. Citizens, Politics, and Urban Electoral Culture in Italy and the Federal Republic 1945-1976” was awarded the Tiburtius Prize in 2017. Among her publications: “Political education and electoral politics: Communists and Catholics as teachers of democracy in early post-war Italy” (European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 2022); “Des Wahlvolks großer Auftritt. Wahlritual und demokratische Kultur in Italien und Westdeutschland nach 1945” (Comparativ, 2013, 23-1). A post-Nazi path to participatory democracy. Popular deliberation and electoral politics in West Germany and Europe, 1940s–1970s, in: Parliaments, Estates, and Representation, Special Issue: Ruling the Assembly. Procedural Fairness, Popular Emotion, and the Access to Democracy, 19th-20th century, ed. by Anne Heyer, Anne Peterson and Henk te Velde (forthcoming).
The Art of Public Speaking (Fan al-Khitaba al- Amma): The Tunisian Public Sphere after 2011
October 16, 2023. 16h00-18h00 (Berlin Time). Registration: https://forms.gle/A8AJDvdaQyUiG5qD8
Abstract
The dismantling of the police state headed by President Ben Ali in 2011 and the subsequent ratification of the rights of freedom of expression and association marked the end of censorship and silence, which had been the communicative conditions of Tunisian public life since the establishment of the French Protectorate in 1881. The broad institutional transformations that came about in the aftermath of the revolution were reinforced by a plethora of pedagogical undertakings that targeted the Tunisian public. Thus, the emerging civil society benefited from the support of foreign donors to launch training programmes aimed at inculcating the skills of public deliberation among the citizenry. This talk engages with the unfolding of these programmes as civic trainers navigate the local and historical articulations of liberalism and of democracy. The talk examines the most intensely promoted and widely disseminated civic training programme in post-revolutionary Tunisia: debate training. The talk argues that debate training aims to inculcate liberal glossaries and dispositions for democracy across the social fabric. It places systematic observations on debate training at the intersection of transnational trajectories of international democracy promotion and the legacies of liberalism in pre and post-2011 Tunisia.
Charis Boutieri teaches anthropology at King’s College London, UK. She is the author, among others, of the monograph Learning in Morocco: Language Politics and the Abandoned Educational Dreams (Indiana University Press, 2016) and of “The Democratic Grotesque: Distortion, Liminality, and Dissensus in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia” (Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 2021) as well as “Events of Citizenship“. Her current research on the Tunisian public sphere has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust UK (2015) and the British Academy (2021).
Hajaji (Ahlem) and El Ouerghemmi (Nadia), “Zwischen Geschichte und Erinnerung: Jüdinnen und Juden in der Tunesischen Linken”, in Altieri (R.), Hüttner (B.) and Weis (F.) (eds.), Die Arbeiter*innen-Bewegung als Emanzipationsraum Jüdinnen und Juden in der internationalen Linken (vol.3), Berlin, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2023., p.41-47.
The Video of Nora Lafi’s lecture on “Participation, Deliberation and the Nature of Urbanity in North African Cities of the Ottoman Era” at the “Urbanities: History, Concepts, Uses” Weimar Conference (16-18 nov. 2022) of the Urbrel Programme (Max-Weber-Kolleg, Universität Erfurt) is now online:
Nora Lafi (Berlin): Participation, Deliberation and the Nature of Urbanity – YouTube
“Contesting the Redevelopment of Istanbul’s Pierre Loti Hill (1980s – 2010s): Cultural Heritage, Religious Places and the Public Interest”
July 10, 2023. 16h00-18h00 (Berlin Time). Registration: https://forms.gle/A8AJDvdaQyUiG5qD8
This presentation analyses the contestations around an urban development project for Istanbul’s Pierre Loti Hill between the 1980s and the 2010s. In particular, it examines how bureaucratic categories and frames such as the public interest, cultural heritage and religious significance have been mobilised and negotiated among diverse stakeholders in this context. Located next to the Eyüpsultan Shrine in Istanbul’s Eyüp neighbourhood, which many regard as Turkey’s most sacred Islamic place, the hill attracts numerous tourists due to its view across the Golden Horn. An urban development project from the 1980s aimed to transform the hilltop into a tourist site, but crucially, places attributed heritage and religious significance by different actors are located in the project zone. Based on the analysis of urban development plans, petitions to the municipality and the state’s heritage protection institutions, media coverage and interviews, the study traces the struggles of an Alevi foundation claiming a Bektaşi religious convent there and of the Pierre Loti Café’s owner to maintain authority over their plots in the context of unequal and changing power structures. It shows that the framing of places as religious or heritage in this context is intimately entangled, often strategic and shifts according to the context.
Annegret Roelcke is a PhD candidate at the Institut für Islamwissenschaft of Freie Universität Berlin and a research affiliate at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin. Her research investigates urban development, heritage politics, religious places and the politics of identity in Turkey and Lebanon, combining anthropological and historical approaches. Her dissertation project “Contesting Eyüp: Heritage, Religious Places and Urban Development in Istanbul” analyses republican era urban heritage politics in Istanbul’s Eyüp neighbourhood. She studied Arab and Islamic Studies at Leipzig University, Boğaziçi University Istanbul and Freie Universität Berlin, from where she holds an MA in Islamic Studies. In 2016, she received a residency scholarship by the German Orient Institute Istanbul.
“Deliberation and Autocratic Mentality in State Society: A Reading in İzzet Pacha al-Abed’s Diaries”
June 26, 2023. 16h00-18h00 (Berlin Time). Registration: https://forms.gle/A8AJDvdaQyUiG5qD8
There have always been different points of view about the nature of Sultan Abdülamid II’s handling of the issue of constitutional rule, but these points of view agree that he suspended the constitution for three long decades, and the argument always put forward by him was that “the people are not prepared for such a constitutional process.” But doesn’t the democratic process come with experience? There is no doubt that presenting criticism of such a situation falls between two complex cases, the first being anachronism, and the second being far from opinions that are closer to his ruling circle.
In this discussion, I seek to present Sultan Abdülhamid II’s personal views on the issues of authoritarianism (Mutlakiyet?) in government and the centralization of decision-making, as well as the autocratic nature and degree of deliberation he envisioned for governance. This will be through dialogues that took place between him and his Kâtib-ı Sâni (second secretary) in the ruling Yıldız Palace, Arap İzzat Holo Pacha. But as an “Ego-document”, how can it be dealt with despite the many “caveats”? What is the degree of credibility of İzzet Pacha in his diaries when he presents this view about this issue?
How did the Sultan see his constitutional functions? And his relationship to the Vükelâ (Representatives/ministers)? And the nature of the secretary’s criticism of him when he goes “home and is alone”? There is no doubt that a source close to the sultan who presented and criticized his views would constitute a new kind of understanding of that era. Either he confirms the research findings of different researchers, denies them, or even adjusts their destination. The view of the rest of the bureaucracy of the system of government and its relation to the Meşrutiyet (constitutional) of governance cannot be overlooked, and it is not only possible to rely on this source for sure as well, but it is a prelude to reconsidering the constitutional issue and its relationship with the ruler and the ruling regime, of course.
It must be emphasized that İzzet Holo Pacha’s diaries was recently discovered (in 2010), and then was printed (as a scanned version of the Ottoman Turkish, not a translation into modern Turkish) in 2019, so it may contain information that may be considered new, and therefore the importance of talking about this subject comes.
Mehmet Osmanli is a PhD researcher in modern Ottoman history at Pamukkale University. He is interested in studies of the philosophy of history and modern historiography. He is also a translator (Arabic, Turkish, Ottoman and English), specialized in the Ottoman bureaucracy and the Ottoman regime during the Tanzimat period. His research activities include studies on the Ottoman bureaucracy as well as on the Iraqi revolution of the twenties and the migration of Jews to Palestine. He translated the book Between Two Worlds: The construction of the Ottoman state by Turkish historian Cemal Kafadar from English into Arabic as well as the diaries of İzzet Holo Paşa al-Abed from Ottoman to Arabic.
