al-Masalek wa al-Mamalek: A Treatise/Letter in Political Geography

Through a theoretical framework, a comparative approach, and practical production, this online workshop seeks to explore the complex entanglement between the geographic and the political.
Each session is divided into three main components:
1-Theoretical Framework: Introducing key concepts for understanding the relationship between geography and political science.
2- Case Study: Analyzing real and field-based examples.
3- Discussion and Production: Collective engagement through guided questions and participatory generation of ideas and outputs.

The online workshop starts from the structure of spatial experience as vital records and delineations of daily negotiation, where every urban and spatial element—from cobblestones to infrastructure networks, to street widths and open spaces—carries the drivers of spatial experience, shaped by its relation to both symbolic and material capital, as well as its potential for deconstruction. We examine how geography and urban planning transform cities into spaces for the production of identity, discourse, bodies, and meaning; how borders become tools of sorting, classification, and sites of otherness; and how infrastructure penetrates our bodies and controls our choices.
The online workshop relies on "everyday practices" as a window for understanding the interweaving of the bodily, the geographic, and the political: our movements, stillness, distances, and places. Through this lens, space is re-understood not as a given, but as a material and subject of influence and interaction, where politics emerges from the details of daily life rather than solely from institutions.

The online workshop moves from analysis to the phase of production, where participants develop concrete projects that reimagine the relationship between body and space. These projects may take the form of living maps, artistic installations, movement records, alternative planning proposals, or written/research outputs (to be published later in coordination with the institute and the workshop facilitator)—each digging into the political, material, and symbolic layers of space.

This online workshop is a space for reflection, deconstruction, and production, laying the foundation for critical action, where critique becomes a shared social practice and space transforms into a horizon for collective living and alternative geographic possibilities.

Instructor

Abdalla Bayyari is a researcher at the Institute for Palestine Studies, writer, academic, and art practitioner. He is a member of the editorial board of Palestine Studies Journal. His research interests include decolonizing geography, mobility studies, and spatial resistance. His current research projects explore the interplay between geography, urbanity, and body in the Israeli colonial apparatus through counter-cartographic practices. Bayyari is a member of the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA), Urban Affairs Association, and Geographic Association. He is a visiting lecturer in many universities and institutes. Several of his writings have been published via various platforms. His upcoming works include 'Ruins and Emptiness in the Israeli Colonial Apparatus' (in English, 2024), 'Barefoot Resistance: On Producing Space Through Mobility' (in English, 2025), and 'On Urbicide: Production and Destruction of Space in Colonial Apparatus' (in English, 2025). Bayyari has also recently published a paper in Arabic titled 'Where Does Urbicide Begin?' (Idafat Journal, Issue 65, Summer 2024).