Arab Transformations:
Interrogating the Social Sciences

Date: March 19th-20th, 2013

Abstract | Agenda

About the Conference

The Arab Council for the Social Sciences held its inaugural conference, titled “Arab Transformations: Interrogating the Social Sciences”, in Beirut, Lebanon on March 19-20, 2013. The conference showcased papers and panels from on-going projects of the ACSS including Working Groups and Grants & Fellowships: The New Paradigms Factory, Inequality, Mobility and Development and Producing the Public in the Arab Region. The title of the first keynote by Fawwaz Traboulsi at the beginning of the conference was “Revolutions Overthrow Ideas as Well”, and at the closing session on the second day, Ghassan Hage gave a keynote entitled “Social Sciences and the Two Critiques”. The conference was organized around the following two sub-themes: New/Old Social Movements and New/Old Political Orders.

New/Old Social Movements

The transformations witnessed by the Arab region since 2011 raise questions concerning the nature of the social movements that are transforming the region in a context of sharply increasing social inequalities and the retreat of the state from its traditional economic and social functions. Many parties were caught by surprise at the rapidity of the changes that reached the top echelons of regimes as well as by the holistic nature of the social movements that combine social, economic and normative demands. The social sciences need to interrogate the relationships between older and emergent social movements, especially in terms of their understandings and strategies of: the dynamics of social change; political legitimacy of both regimes and oppositional movements; and the forms and practices of political representation. Also, important to analyze are the wider and global contexts of these movements in terms of networks, funding and power relations.

Papers of relevance to this theme examined cases related to:

  • The relationship between older and new social movements in particular countries and locations including discourses concerning the ‘organizational inadequacy’ of new movements and the call for them to renew their linkages to parties, unions and associations in order to become ‘more effective’;
  • The study of social movements in terms of their structure and aims (e.g. labor unions, women’s movements, student movements) evaluating the importance of social homogeneity and organization in the effectiveness of these movements;
  • A re-reading of the sociology of the rural and the urban and the role of rural/urban linkages in social movements, whether old or new;
  • The study of protest movements, old and new, especially those reflecting local demands. How do new discourses of ‘broader freedoms’ and ‘increased ability to express demands’ affect such movements?;
  • The study of the phenomena of violence including symbolic violence, which can either erase or recognize the ‘other’, and physical violence, whether practiced by state forces or opposition movements.
New/Old Political Orders

The uprisings in the Arab region, and the scramble to give meaning to them, have created both new geopolitical realities and new debates regarding the direction of the emerging regional political order(s). Following the apparent collapse of the old political order that had relied on Western-backed authoritarian states, non-state and transnational actors and networks–ranging from protestors and emergent social movements in cities like Cairo, Manama and Sana’a, to Hizballah and other members of the ‘Resistance Axis’, to the Islamist and Salafist movements across the region, to regional security organizations such as the Gulf Cooperation Council—have become increasingly influential players.

Papers of relevance to this theme examined cases related to:

  • Contradictory political pulls between centralizing and de-centralizing and/or fragmenting forces and logics within different countries of the region, as for example in Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon.
  • Inter-state repercussions of events and violence within particular countries, both within the region and cross regionally (e.g. spillovers from Syria into Lebanon and Turkey; or from Libya into Mali)
  • The roles of older and newer regional powers such as Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran in shaping new orders along lines favorable to their own perceived interests and those of their international patrons.
  • The global context of these geopolitical shifts, from the ailing neoliberal political economy, to the retreating US empire and neocolonial European aspirations, to the international organizations such as the United Nations, working in tandem with (or in contradiction to) the various state and non-state actors in the region.
  • The production of contested visions for, and meanings to, an emerging Arab political order(s), including new understanding of the state and of state-society relations.

Questions? Please contact:kiladjian@theacss.org

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