Event Date: November 8, 2017 - 1:30pm to 3:00pm
Location: Faculty of Social Sciences 5028, 120 University Private , Ottawa
Presented by CIPS, the International Theory Network, the Human Rights Research and Education Centre as well the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies.
Drawing on ethnographic material from the Shatila camp in Beirut and the informal gathering of Jal el Bahr in Tyre, in southern Lebanon, this talk explores the possibilities suggested by various forms of collaborative practice within these marginalized communities. As the Palestinian national movement weakens, and the refugee community becomes more fractured— spatially, socially, and politically—new forms of sociality and provisional association, mostly forged in the informal economy, are emerging in and around camps. How refugees tackle immediate material concerns, express grievances, and demand civic entitlements (even in the absence of citizenship), reveals forms of reciprocity and activism that do not fit prevailing models for Palestinian political subjectivity in this context.
Diana Allan is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Development Studies at McGill University. She is the author of Refugees of the Revolution: Experiences of Palestinian Exile, which came out with Stanford University Press in 2013. She is also an ethnographic filmmaker, trained in the Harvard University’s visual anthropology program. For more information, please consult her faculty page: https://www.mcgill.ca/anthropology/people/fulltime/dianaallan.