Monday, 11 November, 11:00 am -12:30 pm (in-person only). Room GS5, Donald McIntyre Building,Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road.
We’ve been invited to join the Transnational Anti-racism in Education Programme in welcoming Prof. Michael Burawoy (University of California, Berkeley) for the talk, Exiting Settler Colonialism: Palestine/Israel through a South African Lens. Following his talk, Prof. Burawoy will be in conversation with Prof. Maha Shuayb and Dr. Mezna Qato.
Registration is required for this event via Eventbrite.
Event Abstract
Today South Africa is regarded as a model of peaceful transition from settler colonialism to majority rule, but during the 1980s South Africa appeared to be heading for Armageddon. It passed through states of emergency as anti-apartheid protests mounted. The South African Defense Force killed an estimated twenty thousand civilians while the South African Police imprisoned without trial, tortured, and assassinated with impunity. Townships became war zones. Security forces bombed and invaded surrounding countries bringing death to untold hundreds of thousands. Yet 10 years later, institutional apartheid was being dismantled along with a negotiated transition to a liberal democracy.
For more than a year, we have witnessed another carnage, televised globally. An appendage of the US state, the Israeli Defense Force has slaughtered civilians in indiscriminate bombing of the Occupied Territories, now extended to Lebanon, and threatening to spread the war further afield. The possibility of a ceasefire, let alone a negotiated transition, seems remote. Why should these two settler colonies, with their attendant imperial connections, have taken such parallel, yet divergent trajectories with divergent consequences? A key part of the answer, I argue, lies in their material basis – the difference between a settler colony based on labor exploitation and one based on land expropriation. The first offers the possibility of compromise and negotiation while the second gives rise to irreconcilable conflict. Examining their histories shows there can be a shift from the one type of settler colonialism to the other. So, is there a South African “solution” to the escalating conflict between Palestinians and Israelis? If not, why not? If feasible, from where might it come? Would it be desirable?
Please note
Photographic ID will be required upon arrival. If you are a University of Cambridge member of staff or student, your University card will be accepted.
Only those registered will be admitted.
Upon registering, you will be asked to agree to adhere to the Transnational Anti-racism in Education Programm’s Code of Conduct. Copies of this will be displayed at the event.
View this event on Eventbrite.
Decolonise Sociology @ Cambridge 