Book Launch: Lived Resistance Against the War on Palestinian Children

9 October, 17.00-18.30
Cafe Toivo
Tampere University, Main Building
(Kalevantie 4, Tampere)
Poster by Aurora Navarro Villacampa - Aalto University

Join us for the launch of a critical new book, “Lived Resistance against the War on Palestinian Children”, edited by Heidi Morrison and published by University of Georgia Press (August 1, 2024).

Joining the event at Tampere University requires preregistration. Please find the registration form HERE

The book tour will include speaking events hosted in Turku (8 Oct), Tampere (9 Oct), and Helsinki (10-11 Oct). The book’s editor Prof. Heidi Morrison will offer her motivations for the book and an overview of key themes, while contributing author Prof. Nitin Sawhney will discuss his psychosocial research and documentary film, Flying Paper, produced with children in Gaza.

Other invited panelists will offer critical perspectives on vulnerability and resilience among children in war, as well as the historical and political situation in Palestine, and its impacts on the lives of young people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem).

Through the panel discussions with audiences we will consider how the scholarship and research in this book remains relevant today, despite the horrific effects of the ongoing genocide, settler violence and state oppression experienced by Palestinian children and their families. How are these children resisting or coping with the effects of endless wars and Occupation in their lives, and what does the future hold for coming generations? Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

Venue: City Campus Kalevantie 4, Main building, Café Toivo (17:00 – 18:30)
Panelists: Heidi Morrison, Nitin Sawhney, Kirsi Pauliina Kallio and Antti Malinen

Chaired by Professor Kirsi Pauliina Kallio (Environmental Pedagogy and Education, Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University)

The full book launch tour programme and more information, click HERE

Despite the increasing volume of scholarship that shows children as political actors, prior to this book, a cohesive framework was lacking that would more fully examine and express children’s relationship with political power. Rather than simply hitching children’s resistance to standard theories of resistance, Heidi Morrison seeks to meet children on their own terms.

Through the case study of Palestinian children, contributors theorize children’s resistance as an embodied experience called lived resistance. A critical aspect of the study of lived resistance is not just documenting what children do but specifically how scholars approach the topic of children’s resistance. With Lived Resistance against the War on Palestinian Children, the author’s account for the vessel (i.e., the body in flesh and mind) through which such resistance generates and operates.

The diverse group of chapter authors examine Palestinian children’s art and media, imprisonment, parenting experiences, bereavement, neoliberalism, refugee camps, and protest movements as aspects of their collective and individual political power. Through these outlets, the book shows consistencies and contends that these children’s relationship to political power operates from an inclusive model of citizenship and is social justice oriented, symbolically oriented, and contingently based.

The book includes a chapter, “Invisible Lives, Visible Determination: Creative Agency as Resilience among Palestinian Children under Siege in Gaza”, contributed by Nitin Sawhney.

Publisher’s website: https://ugapress.org/book/9780820366814/lived-resistance-against-the-war-on-palestinian-children/