http://www.wereilu.com/
CFP: Eritrea & Rwanda
Posted on August 18, 2014 by Jason Mosley
*CALL FOR PAPERS: COMPARATIVE SYMPOSIUM*
*Eritrea & Rwanda*
*Post-liberation trajectories in comparative perspective*
1-2 December 2014
Oxford University
------------------------------
For Eritrea and Rwanda, 2014 has special significance for the ruling
elites, which have dominated politics in both countries for the last two
decades. In Eritrea, it marks twenty years since the formation of the
People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, the political party that
succeeded the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front after it had finally won
Eritrea its independence from Ethiopia. For Rwanda, it marks twenty years
since the Genocide and the rise to power of the Rwandan Patriotic Front,
led in particular by former Uganda based refugees. In both countries, the
continued presence of liberation leaders — Eritrea’s Isaias Afeworki and
Rwanda’s Paul Kagame — turned presidents is fuelling speculation about
succession, as Rwanda’s elections approach in 2017 and since the prospect
of a constitution drafting process was announced by Eritrea’s president in
his independence day speech this year.
Whilst critical academic engagement assessing these post-liberation states
has proliferated, especially literature examining the development of the
Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Eritrean and Rwandan Studies communities have
both at times faced criticism for being excessively polarising and
damagingly insular. This conference thus seeks to address both critiques.
In bringing together academics working on these two different countries,
whose resemblance in political ideologies and history poses interesting
questions for the state formations we see now, it seeks to provide a
productive space for sharing theoretical approaches and empirical
observations through a series of exploratory panels. These are aimed at
addressing topics not based on normative models of state formation and
behaviour, but observed themes concerning those features which, though
distinctive for each regime, appear to have interesting degrees of
comparability across the two.
Proposed themes include explorations of:
- Mechanisms enabling consolidation and retention of state control
- State behaviour in the context of regional security
- Strategies for engaging and utilising the youth in reproducing the
state, and youth responses to government policies
- Evolutionary trajectories in the post-liberation movement governments,
including the questions of leadership succession and party stability
- Historicising nationalisms and the politics of the history of the
liberation struggle
- Transnational mobilisation and diasporic politics
Applicants are not required to submit articles already offering a
comparative perspective (although comparative papers are of course
welcomed). Panels will be composed of a discussant and a minimum of three
presentations, with at least one paper representing each case study.
The symposium will be hosted by the African Studies Centre at Oxford
University, and supported by the Department for International Development,
the Horn of Africa Seminar and the Oxford Central Africa Forum.
The organisers will have limited funding which will be used to facilitate
the participation of scholars from the Global South.
*Submission Information and Guidelines*
Please email all abstracts by *September 15th 2014*. Selected papers and
panels will be announced shortly thereafter.
If selected, full papers are requested to be submitted by *November 14th
2014*.
Please email all abstracts (and papers) to eritrea.rwanda.oxford_at_gmail.com.
Any queries can additionally be directed to the conference organisers:
Jason Mosley (Jason.mosley_at_africa.ox.ac.uk) and Georgia Cole (
Georgia.cole_at_qeh.ox.ac.uk).
The call for papers can be downloaded here
<
http://www.wereilu.com/Oxford-EritreaandRwanda_CFP.pdf>.
Received on Fri Nov 07 2014 - 20:48:47 EST