Book Talk: Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship: Legacies of Race and Emergency in the Former British Empire

A book talk with Professor Yael Berda (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Thursday, March 2, 2023
12:00 PM (Pacific Time)
Haines Hall 279

Professor Yael Berda will be discussing her new book, which explores how the former British colonies of India, Cyprus, and Israel/Palestine have used their inherited administrative legacies to classify and distinguish between loyal and suspicious subjects and manage the movement of populations, thus shaping the practical meaning of citizenship and belonging within their new boundaries. This event is hosted by the Political Sociology and the Global South working group of the UCLA Department of Sociology and co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies and the UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.

Yael Berda is an Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) of Sociology & Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a non-resident fellow with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Berda publishes, teaches, and speaks on the intersections of law & society, bureaucracy and the state, race and racism and sociology of empires and colonialism. Her most recent book is Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship: Legacies of Race and Emergency in the British Empire, published by Cambridge University Press in 2023. Her second book is Living Emergency: Israel's Permit Regime in the West Bank (Stanford University Press, 2017). Berda's current projects include the study of citizenship as a “mobility regime,” how emergency laws shaped the political economy of colonial states, how bureaucracy makes contemporary homeland security practices, and what plea bargains tell us about political regimes. She was a practicing human tights lawyer, litigating in the military, district, and Supreme Court in Israel/Palestine. Berda received her PhD in Sociology from Princeton University, MA from Tel Aviv University, and LLB from Hebrew University Faculty of Law.

Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies, Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, Department of Sociology, This event is hosted by the Political Sociology and the Global South working group of the UCLA Department of Sociology and co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies and the UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.