The Geography Speaker Series Presents:
Prof. Lisa Bhungalia, Dept. of Geog., U of Wisconsin-Madison
Talk title: Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine
Abstract: Though the US-led “war on terror” has been ongoing for over two decades, it is a war that has been waged largely in the shadows. This talk tracks a little-known but ever-expanding dimension of US counter-terrorism warfare, one that travels in and through a growing body of US counter-terrorism law and sanctions regimes that tether to foreign aid flows and monetary transactions around the world. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in Palestine, this talk traces how US counter-terrorism law bundles and embeds in humanitarian and development aid flows inbound to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, transporting, in turn, Washington’s counter-terrorism regime into the intimate spaces and interstices of Palestinian everyday life.
