Lutte nationale ou fondation étatique ?. Les intellectuels palestiniens, d’Oslo I à Intifada II
Is today’s recentering of the Palestinian “intellectual field” around NGO-activism and at the expense of a (muted) marxist rearguard imputable to political as well as social islamist militancy ? Why has the hegemonic presence of “Islam” in the Palestinian “public sphere”, not generated “new Muslim intellectuals”, whose exegetic commitment on the global scene does not preclude national and secular commitments ? Is it because the Palestinian “civil society” has been hindered, since the breakout of the second Intifada, by the disintegration of those infrastructures and institutions granted by the Oslo process and forced into emergency-driven actions—making it difficult for more autonomous discourses, of whatever tendency, to emerge ? This paper approaches these questions by deconstructing, in the Palestinian case, the prerequisits of an intellectual sphere; by delineating the structural constraints under which these actors labour; last, by illustrating their polarisation in the debate over suicide operations.
Sociologues et sociologies en Cisjordanie occupée: engagements et hétéronomies
L'etude des pratiques, representations et institutions des sociologues et politologues palestiniens enseignant et/ou effectuant des recherches dans le nord de la Cisjordanie occupee permet de cerner les contours d'un espace academique eclate mais selon plusieurs lignes de fracture. La cesure entre dynamique universitaire et dynamique de recherche semble constituer la variable structurante du paysage academique palestinien avec laquelle se conjugue une logique de polarisation spatiale des capitaux academiques permettant de mieux comprendre l'enclavement des sociologues observes, et d'expliquer les differents regimes d'engagement des acteurs interviewes a partir de leurs trajectoires.
Analysis: The Agenda 2007 Proposals: Evolution or Revolution?
On 10 February 2004 the Commission published its proposal for the financial perspective 2007-2013. A week later it adopted the third report on economic and social cohesion. These two documents form the basis of the so-called ‘Agenda 2007 reforms’. They will be the greatest challenge for the enlarged EU after the intergovernmental conference, since they will determine the financial basis for EU policy-making until the middle of the next decade. The Agenda 2007 proposals certainly hint at courageous reforms, because they place a previously unheard-of emphasis on performance and quality. Under the proposals, structural operations should generate value for money, and the funds should focus on projects which generate added value at a European level. Overall the Commission’s proposals point in the right direction, because they balance, on the one hand, solidarity for the new Member States and weak regions in the old Member States with, on the other hand, investments in future tasks. Moreover, they constitute a paradigm shift. For the first time, the Common Agricultural Policy will not be the dominant expenditure category. Now it is up to the Member States to examine the proposals politically and find a compromise between sometimes very divergent interests. It is to be hoped that, during the debate over expenditure limits and division of funds, national interests do not outweigh European interests.