tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67038162024-03-08T02:17:11.293+00:00Para Ingles VerOccasional observations and reflections on politics and societyGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.comBlogger656125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-70650050857824522112012-06-24T13:12:00.003+01:002012-06-24T13:12:43.344+01:00On the coup in Paraguay
It’s been
awhile since I last posted. It’s been a
busy time, with doing some fieldwork – mainly interviewing people – for a
report which I’m trying to get done by the end of this week. However, I had some spare minutes yesterday
to draft the following about events in Paraguay. Just now I’ve had an email from one of the
editors of our book on the Latin American right, who notes Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-64716936759169870042012-04-28T09:53:00.001+01:002012-04-28T09:53:55.420+01:00Latest publications out
After
several rounds of writing and revising, this has been a good start to the year
in publication terms. I have just had my
third academic article published, which I am especially pleased with. It’s in Third World Quarterly and is on the
Islamist political party, Hamas, and its vision of development. I’m happy with it because it’s the first
Palestine/Middle East related Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-88039781424265054632012-03-20T12:39:00.000+00:002012-03-20T12:43:27.075+00:00
Comparing Israel and South Africa and its limits
Last night
I accompanied a friend to watch ‘Roadmap to Apartheid’, a documentary which
draws together the experience of apartheid in South Africa with the discrimination
and oppression visited by Israel on the Palestinians. The analogies were well done, with footage
from South Africa before 1994 set alongside with that from Israel and the
Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-81624720629835376212012-03-10T11:39:00.000+00:002012-03-10T11:39:17.449+00:00
The Corniche, Beirut
Lebanon, then and now
Beirut has
changed substantially when compared to my last trip there. That’s to be expected, given that I first
visited the city 15 years ago. And while
I knew that it had changed, it wasn’t until I got there that I realised how
much. It was brought home to be from the
first day I was there, as I walked from my accommodation on RueGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-69393114330300002252012-03-10T11:23:00.000+00:002012-03-10T11:23:16.437+00:00
Recent presentations
I’m now
back behind the office desk after spending the last two weeks travelling, first
to London and then to Beirut. In London
I presented my paper on poverty reduction in Brazil and the government’s (still
relatively) new poverty elimination plan at the Institute for the Study of the
Americas. I was also hoping to present
it at the symposium being organised byGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-31272011070739040442012-02-21T06:41:00.002+00:002012-02-21T06:41:43.734+00:00
Upcoming events
Next week I'll be presenting on poverty reduction and elimination in Brazil in London. I'm booked to present at the Institute for the Study of the Americas on Tuesday (28) and at a symposium organised by Middlesex University in Trafalgar Square on Wednesday (29). That said, I have no idea how long I will be able to present for - I'm still waiting to hear back!
Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-26198458325451280922012-01-20T19:58:00.000+00:002012-01-20T19:58:08.205+00:00
Brazil under Dilma
My latest
reflections on Brazil and its foreign policy are now up at the Ideas blog. I haven’t written there for awhile so it was
about time that I did so. It was only
after I sent it in that I realised I had written something else of Brazilian foreign
policy, only a few months earlier and based on the workshop we had at the LSE
in the summer. So the next Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-48138724495954736092011-12-06T21:23:00.002+00:002011-12-06T21:53:41.647+00:00Journal uncertainty
I’m coming to the conclusion that academic journals are like London buses: you wait ages for one to reply to your submitted article and several all reply at the same time. So it has happened in the past couple of weeks when several journals sent decisions on papers I submitted, one from last month, another in July and two others after I made the changes requested by theGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-17710905351764441342011-12-06T21:16:00.000+00:002011-12-06T21:16:04.120+00:00Thoughts on Brazil's development model - shared in public
It was a flying visit back to London at the weekend for the Latin America 2011 conference. This is an annual event organised by the various solidarity groups and bringing together activists and academics. I had been invited to present on the Brazil panel, along with Joaobe Cavalcanti (an Anglican priest based in London who is Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-80523743301451740272011-11-02T11:52:00.002+00:002011-11-02T11:52:48.800+00:00Water as resistance
There seems to be a general thread across different aspects of the Palestinian ‘development’ domain. This was brought home to me at yesterday’s workshop, hosted by Birzeit’s International Studies department, on water resources and management. There were a couple of interesting presentations about the situation facing the Palestinians. Indeed the most interesting were those Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-47302391994347066832011-10-09T11:23:00.004+01:002011-10-09T11:42:04.208+01:00Todos somos palestinos
Last night a friend was showing me the video she was making of the rallies in support of the Palestinian Authority (PA) president Abu Mazen's homecoming following his speech at the UN. It was full of people waving Palestinian flags and posters of the leader himself. Many of them were wearing the black and white checkered Palestinian scarf known as the keffiyeh.
Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-29339314405192379032011-10-09T11:09:00.001+01:002011-10-09T11:42:26.412+01:00Some reflections on gender
At the moment I'm preparing a presentation for a workshop and the launch of a report on gender equality and development which we're hosting with the World Bank next week. This should be interesting and details of the findings that my colleagues worked on at the beginning of the year make for interesting findings. Granted, the fieldwork was collected inGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-3491930762773655532011-09-20T21:42:00.001+01:002011-10-09T10:58:39.584+01:00Looking to New York
You would have to have been locked away in solitary confinement not to know that this week is when the Palestinian state juggernaut goes to the UN and seeks international recognition of the fact. Walking across Clock Square (or is it now Arafat Square?) my friends and I came across the work team putting up a stage and sound system. Palestinian flags made up the Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-45815333795697111842011-09-17T10:11:00.001+01:002011-09-17T10:16:18.499+01:00Palestinian politics, unity and the role of religion
I attended the first day of Muwatin’s (the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy) two-day conference on the Arab revolutions and the political and intellectual challenges stemming from them yesterday. I won’t be able to get to today’s presentations as I have other commitments. Although the quality of the presentations andGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-55086941767993371632011-09-10T11:43:00.001+01:002011-09-10T11:45:20.524+01:00Between fact and fiction?
Flitting back and forth between Ramallah, Birzeit and Jerusalem, I don't normally come up against the occupation. However, during Friday night some settlers wrote abusive grafitti on the walls outside the main entrance. One can only imagine that they are trying to provoke things, ahead of the UN vote later this month. Needless to say, the feeling in Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-25161611425086057672011-08-09T19:56:00.001+01:002011-09-10T11:12:53.699+01:00Achieving Palestinian statehood
[I'm on a roll today: two pieces after months of little action here. That said, the following consists of some thoughts that have been brewing in my head over the last couple of months, so it was fairly easy to put them down.
UPDATE: An edited version of the article below has gone up at the Ideas blog here.]
In just over a month the question of whether a Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-63697418494807279952011-08-09T10:47:00.004+01:002011-08-12T11:52:20.983+01:00Where are the current social protests going?
[The following article is now up at the LSE Ideas Centre blog. Although I can't tell if they've edited for length.]
Tents on Rothschild Boulevard, Tel Aviv
When the history of the present is eventually written, 2011 may well be most closely associated with the ‘Arab spring.’ Attention will undoubtedly centre on the revolutions of TunisiaGuyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-54912839090767374192011-08-02T14:09:00.001+01:002011-08-09T09:12:51.869+01:00On Brazil's global rise
(Last month I was a participant at a conference on Brazil and the Americas in the 21st century. It was jointly hosted by the LSE Ideas Centre and the Fundação Getulio Vargas. I wrote a summary of my thoughts based on the participants' contributions along with some reading I did in the following weeks for a project I'm aiming to do. I had hoped that the Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-40890071700045558692011-08-02T13:58:00.000+01:002011-08-02T13:58:46.009+01:00Donors and Palestinian development
Back in June I was part of a seminar hosted by the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) at Birzeit University to consider alternative forms of development in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). This is an issue which has vexed us for much of the time that I’ve been involved with the CDS, including a conference that was put on in September last year.
Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-73486337594645601692011-06-15T10:55:00.000+01:002011-06-15T10:55:28.759+01:00The Arab spring and its conceptual challenges
I haven’t been posting lately. This is partly because I have been focused on writing the first drafts of some papers that I intend to spend the summer revising before submission. But it’s also to do with the fact that I took an extended trip, to Jordan and Egypt. In Cairo I attended a conference on the Egyptian revolution at the American University Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-6188365299181985822011-03-02T09:20:00.000+00:002011-03-02T09:20:46.762+00:00Slipping standards?
It seems that having a PhD does not go well with politics as events in Germany and Libya seem to attest. While most criticism is bound to be directed at the individuals concerned, I find myself wondering what the supervisors and examiners were - or rather, weren't - doing in all of this. Didn't they question the dissertations in front of them? Didn't they Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-5142620832417550082011-02-28T09:07:00.002+00:002011-06-15T10:57:11.661+01:00Palestinians and Israeli reality
One of my criticisms of the Israeli peace camp has been that it does not seem entirely familiar with development taking place on the ground, within Palestinian society. In making that claim I am being rather sweeping and possible unfair; it may well be that there is greater awareness of the nuances within Palestinian political and social life by Israelis than I Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-91923588139939588862011-02-26T09:50:00.002+00:002011-06-15T10:57:41.762+01:00A tale of disconnection
The last two days have offered an interesting juxtaposition between the reality of the occupation and the relatively disconnected nature of the Israeli peace camp. Both were troubling.
Yesterday I was in Hebron where there were protests against the closure of Shuhada Street in the old city. Nearby the Israel army provides a round-the-clock presence for 400 Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-11201665126478306102011-01-24T08:19:00.001+00:002011-06-15T10:58:13.303+01:00First thoughts about the Palestinian Papers
Of course, it can’t go without saying something about the leak of the Palestine Papers by Al Jazeera and the Guardian yesterday. I must find time to work my way through some of the documents. But what are the implications likely to be in both Palestine and Israel? Like Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian, I’m inclined to think that the fallout will be Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6703816.post-7823276104260738922011-01-24T07:55:00.003+00:002011-06-15T10:58:39.869+01:00Envisioning Palestinian economic policy
There were three papers presented at the MAS conference on Sunday. Two were general, one by Samir Abdullah that examined the development gap and internal distortions between the West Bank and Gaza and the other by Numan Kanafani, which proposed some models to achieve economic integration between the two areas. A final one, by Abd Al Fatah Abu Shokor, Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17854839236434857958noreply@blogger.com0