Open Space aims to facilitate dialogue between advanced PhD students, early career researchers and academic staff across the School of Environment, Education and Development and the Faculty of Humanities more broadly. The initiative emerged from a dialogue and an initial workshop co-organied by a group of PhD students in 2011, and is facilitated and coordinated by Professor of Human Geography, Maria Kaika. It is funded through the support of cities@manchester.
This event features two speakers:
Henrique Tavares Furtado (Politics, SoSS) - Coming to terms with the Present: The De-Politicisation of Violence in Liberal Narratives of Transitional Justice
There are many ways in which to start talking about the question of justice and reconciliation in transitional moments, that is, when societies face significant changes in political systems arising out of periods of past political violence. John Elster goes as far back as the second restoration of Athenian democracy (411 to 403 B.C.) in order to affirm that “Democratic transitional justice is almost as old as democracy itself” (Elster 2004: 3). Ruti Teitel, who claims to be the first to coin the term “transitional justice” herself (Arthur 2009; Sharp 2014), is more contained in her historical generalisation. Teitel describes a series of three historical phases – (1) the post-war Nuremberg Trials1, (2) the post-Cold War waves of re-democratization and (3) the institution of the International Criminal Court (ICC) – when national and international legal systems had to face questions of criminal accountability during times of political change (Teitel 2003). Following the work of Paige Arthur (2009) I propose to historicise questions of truth, justice and reconciliation as particular outcomes of the post-cold war scenario. In doing so I hope to describe how liberal transitional narratives are part of a late-modern, liberal efforts of governmentality that functioned to progressively excised the terror of political violence from the realm of acceptable, political activities.
Ahmad Moradi (Anthropology, SoSS) - Sensing the Revolution: Media Production in Post-Revolutionary Iran
The last half a decade has seen social movements unprecedented in range and scale sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa. The failure of most uprisings in transforming the established order, and the emergence of new forms of political engagement among anti-revolutionary forces poses a pressing question that has remained largely unexplored: In the aftermath of a social movement, what sites of mobilization emerge for pro-state groups? Considering the nexus between religious practice, new media, and new forms of political community in Iran, I will study the restoration of political order enacted by the supporters of the Iranian regime after the 2009 uprisings, known as the Green Movement. Taking the possible implications of new media on political life as my primary focus, I will do ethnography of an Iranian paramilitary pro-state organization, the Basij, to know how it formulates, expresses, negotiates and recreates state ideology and violence.
Open to all postgraduate students.
Refreshments will be provided.
