Panel: Arab social sciences between local structures and global discourses

International Conference – "Two decades discourse about globalizing social sciences - concepts, strategies, achievements". April 26-7 2017 Kharazami University, Tehran.

Panel title: Arab social sciences between local structures and global discourses. Panel convened by Idriss Jebari and sponsored by the Arab Council for Social Sciences.

Description: ​The origin and continued development of social sciences in the Arab region have been intimately tied to their other counterparts, particularly in Europe and North America. The two regions see a steady flow of students and academics, the exchange of ideas, theories and research orientations. Meanwhile, Arab scientists often pursue global visibility (through publications and academic engagements), thus confirming how the existing literature on the circulation of social sciences frames the Arab region as a “periphery” in global networks. This panel is a critical engagement with the ways globalization has and currently impacts Arab knowledge production in the academic social sciences. Building on the current research interests of the Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS), it interacts with several questions such as: what makes works of social science “influential”, how social scientists face challenges in their careers and in their research, and how they approach the influence of external theoretical debates on their work. The aim will be to provide a more nuanced assessment on the impact of globalized social sciences by framing social scientists as dynamic actors who easily move between levels in response to opportunities and challenges they are faced with, be they local or global.

Cynthia Kreichati, American University in Beirut “Influence of Local Social Sciences in the Arab East: challenges and theoretical considerations.” This paper will discuss the challenge of defining what counts as “influential” works in the social sciences in the Arab East. It relies on ongoing research to develop a complete annotated bibliography of influential books in the social sciences in Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon (the “Mashreq” region), and on Michael Burawoy’s typology of sociology (public, professional, critical and policy sociology). I argue that in our attempts to determine what counts as “influential” works in the social sciences, we must also integrate traditionally neglected factors such as the marginalization of local knowledge production and patterns of engagement of scholars with the public. Instead, I will discuss the relationship between “influence” and “relevance” as a way to rethink how we approach knowledge production. Furthermore, this ongoing research shows that dominant trends within the fields of Arab social sciences have often seemed disconnected from socio-cultural developments taking place in the Mashreq. I will conclude with a few observations on how to rethink knowledge production that overcome the limitations of “postcolonialism” as a critique of globalization.

Lama Kabbanji, Institut Recherche pour le Développement (IRD/CEPED) Paris. “Social sciences in Lebanon: training and careers of social scientists.” This paper addresses the “internationalization” of training and career patterns of Lebanese social scientists. Recent data shows that a large portion of Lebanese academic elites are trained abroad rather than Lebanon, including more Lebanese students enrolled in a PhD program in France than at the Lebanese University, the main university providing a doctoral diploma. This paper will seek to identify the determinants of this internationalization by retracing the training and career trajectories of Lebanese social scientists, relying on qualitative and quantitative data collected in Lebanon between 2014 and 2016. We show that a foreign diploma appears as a significant factor of career differentiation between public and private universities. The decision to study abroad seems to be highly related to career opportunities in Lebanon. While it is a determining factor for access to full time employment in private universities, the foreign diploma is not a prerequisite for temporary or permanent employment at public universities. Other factors play a major role in the recruitment of Lebanese academics, social networks in particular. This research allows us to shed a light on current dynamics of social sciences in Lebanon, in particular the divide between public and private institutions. Furthermore, it allows us to make critical observations over the shape and rules that govern academic communities in Lebanon and elsewhere, including the comparative value of academic knowledge to social networks and covenant rules.

Daniele Cantini, Orient Institut Beirut. “Doctoral Studies at Egyptian Public Universities; conditions and constraints of knowledge production.” In this paper, I present the results of a research project I conducted on doctoral studies in the social sciences and humanities at Egyptian public universities (2013-2016). This project aims at exploring the ways in which knowledge, especially at the post-graduate level, is produced and transmitted in Egyptian universities. Knowledge is intended here as a broad concept that refers to the content of the actual disciplines – issues currently discussed inside the academia, the contents of legitimate PhD theses and appropriate topics of research for young scholars. Secondly, it refers to the general context within which it is produced and the “university” will be studied as both a space where knowledge is produced and one that sets the conditions for this knowledge production. In so doing this approach considers the need of overcoming global inequalities in the production of knowledge, and the crucial nature of the doctoral phase to shape scholars capable of producing original and independent research. The project investigated doctoral programs and the theses in different academic departments from an ethnographic mode of research. It seeks to explain how the governance of complex systems is currently evolving, in order to make sense of possibilities and constraints that contribute to shape research. Finally, it offers a typology of how young Egyptian researchers deal with research obstacles.

Idriss Jebari, Arab Council for Social Sciences “Critical sociological appropriation and the pursuit of cultural decolonization. The Moroccan academic critique and theoretical debates in Paris.” This paper addresses the participation and positioning of two Moroccan social scientists in the important critical theoretical debates held in Paris during the sixties and seventies. Abdelkebir Khatibi and Abdallah Laroui, were both young French-trained academics in Rabat whose research expressed a radical and committed dimension. Their critique began by targeting how orientalist scholarship constrained Moroccan knowledge production by reinforcing problematic representation of Arab culture associated with “backwardness” and that reinforced the notion of “authentic” in Muslim societies. Soon however, their contributions expanded to offer a critical outlook on existing conceptual toolkits and their applicability to non-western social structures and for the production of an independent national historiography from Rabat. In this paper, I will review their respective strategies toward the French tradition and whether they succeeded in spurring a truly independent Moroccan social science production from the external validating gaze and ill-fitting frameworks without isolating it from international developments. This paper builds on existing literature on the “indigenization” of non-western social sciences and the emerging literature on Arab knowledge production, by focusing on the academic and publishing strategies of individual actors. I will attempt to link processes of cultural decolonization, travelling concepts and their reception, the emergence of independent knowledge-production structures in the Moroccan humanities.