Synopsis of Ideas for Citizen Academia Network(CAN) Workshops
Creator: Professor Caroline Rooney
Coordinator and Director: Dr Rita Sakr
-Investigating the cultural, environemental and political geographies of neighbourhoods of poverty and privilege as articulations of the relationship of the state to the street in the context of political negligence and oppositional popular culture tactics.
-Tracing the different forms and phases of the reterritorialization of urban space whereby ghettoization relates to: surveillance and the panoptic police state and/or erosion of official state institutions and the growth of internal states/sites of resistance.What is the significance of a ‘neighbourhood’? Are neighbourhoods comparable to prisons? What are the types of territorial markings of poverty and privilege and how does local popular culture re-interpret them?Are there specific sites of memory for each? Can the cultural be political in spaces of inequality? Can communities reinvent their neighbourhoods internally or are they always policed/restricted from the outside?
-Evaluating the challenges facing new/emerging/potential democracies in which revolutionary political collaborations across divergent socio-economic groups are threatened by persistent inequalities undermining trust (For example: How can Tahrir Square as public space be related to the act of Tahrir/liberation across the unequal social geographies of the nation? How can an emerging or potential democracy encompass poor neighbourhoods that are expressive of the erosion of democratic rights? Is oppositional popular cultural a liminal space, a trans- space, a heterotopia? Is it always socio-economically situated?)
-Focusing on the centrality of recent uprisings and riots whereby divisions are being alternately undermined and re-emphasised through protests, refugee movements, and the reterritorialization of ethnocentric and racist sentiment.
-Revisiting the concept of citizenship and the precarious spaces of the disenfranchised ‘citizen’ (unemployed, migrant, refugee, minority ethnic or religious group etc) in the politically negligent state.
-Studying the place of political Islam as a social and political agent in neighbourhoods of both poverty and privilege (for example Tripoli, Beirut, Aleppo, Cairo, Istanbul). What are the urban socio-economic practices of political Islam and how do they resist/respond to/subsume popular culture initiatives?
-Addressing the need to historicize, archive, memorialize these social, cultural, and political geographies.
-Looking at the dynamics of violence within and across neighbourhoods of poverty and privilege and the roles of multiple agents in this respect.
-Approaching the dimensions of street art with respect to social and spatial justice, diminishing resentment, and enabling trust across communities: What is the actual state and potential for popular culture initiativesthat crisscross neighbourhoods of poverty and privilege (For example: in Beirut, Collectif Kahraba…). Is there a possibility to translate initiatives that transcend the boundaries of warring communities into similar initiatives across unequal neighbourhoods?
-Exploring ways in which communities and local NGOs in the disadvantaged neighbourhoods of developing societies or new democracies are able to contribute to their transformation and betterment, and to identify areas of leadership in this regard.
--Researching the role that popular culture and community arts initiatives are able to play in transforming the disadvantaged sectors of developing societies and new democracies through drawing on local resources and advancing social and economic inclusiveness, together with the role played by community leaders in this regard.
-Examining perceived forms of political negligence as represented in popular culture in relation to questions of state intervention, social autonomy, and economic opportunity.
-What would emerge from these workshops is a collection of essays, offering a comparative analysis of how the popular imagination engages with the perception of economic and/or political inequalities and divides. The project will further serve to identify common aspirations
across regions and expand the platform for engaged scholarship. The lead CAN representatives of each country will collaborate with the principal investigator and research associate to produce the collection and disseminate results.