[MGSA-L] Princeton Hellenic Studies Workshop: March 5, 2013

[Dimitri H. Gondicas]

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

Workshop


The Citizen, the Suspect and the Civil Servant:
British Colonial Legacies of Emergency in Cyprus


Yael Berda
Sociology


How did British colonial administration affect political membership in postcolonial Cyprus? Did colonial practices of classification, identification and surveillance of the population contribute to the conflict?  In this presentation I explore the administrative practices and routines of British rule in Cyprus, focusing on the employment of emergency laws. Population was classified on two axes: one based on demographic traits the other on suspicion - the threat one posed to the colonial government. I argue that the ways that British administration classified population and categorized civil servants shaped the boundaries of citizenship and exclusion in postcolonial Cyprus in its first decade.  I compare findings on Cyprus to my research on administrative legacies in Israel and India, states that share a juridical framework and consequences of partition.  Despite the similarities, I show that the legacy of emergency in Cyprus is distinctly different than those in India and Israel.

Yael Berda is an Israeli lawyer and Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Princeton University. She holds an LLB, Hebrew University and M.A. in Sociology, Tel Aviv University. Her dissertation examines the persistence of bureaucratic legacies following independence in former colonies, focusing on population management practices and the construction of political membership in post colonies afflicted by partition plans: Israel, Cyprus and India. Her first book is The Bureaucracy of the Occupation in the West Bank: The Permit Regime 2000-2006 (in Hebrew, 2012).

Tuesday, March 5, 2013
6:00 p.m.
Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
Reception will follow

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