8-9 July 2011 at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
The era of globalization has created new needs for social science knowledge. Beyond the need to produce new knowledge about more „foreign‟ societies and policies, the arrival of a “multi-polar” world makes knowledge about different regions indispensible. This reflection goes far beyond the understanding of social realities of individual nation states: the “global” has become a new social reality for each nation-based society, across all these societies.
Social sciences do not only need to contribute to an understanding of „foreign‟ social realities and provide the analytical categories that allow conceptualizing international change and its effects - such as “modernization”, “globalization”, or “multi-polarity”. They also need to simultaneously incorporate the international dimensions required to seize the effects of globalization on the historically nationally constructed societies, and produce knowledge that integrates this new international social reality.
However, due to emergence of categories used by the social sciences in the context of nation-states, namely in Europe/North America, any international collaborative knowledge production is confronted with the fact that these categories have strong conceptual ties with particular nation-states and their societal cultures. This worldwide spread of Western categories created the international standards of a scientific universalism. Social sciences in countries beyond the West, to which the concept of nation-state had been exported, rarely gained a sufficiently powerful tradition to interrogate the original concepts and categories of the social sciences that emerged in the context of the European societies.
The emergence of a multi-polar science world with many emerging and strong science communities in East-Asia, India and Latin America and, last but not least, in the Arab countries, indicate the end of the exclusive reign of Western social sciences and the beginning of a new era of international social science collaborations.
In order to observe the reconfiguration of space and power through globalization, we need to allow conflicting interpretations of globalization, open to the plurality of cultural realities and schemes of interpretation, as a pre-requisite to the construction of truly universal social sciences and humanities. This process will very likely need numerous reformulations and multiple dialogues and interactions among the individuals, groups and institutions that generate knowledge on social realities. This creation of a new multi-polar global social science will inevitably have to go through a phase that we might call “scientific multi-versalism”: Incorporating conceptual contradictions in an epistemological paradox of a pluralism of universalism.
This conference is presented by The Lebanese Association for Sociology, Knowwhy Global Research, the American University Beirut, World SSH Net, the International Social Science Council and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Middle East. It is and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Middle East. It is a lead-up event to the ISSC 2012 World Social Science Forum.
Event Information
Date: 8-9 July 2011
Location: College Hall, Auditorium B1, American University Beirut, Lebanon
Agenda
- Section 1: Approaches towards internationalisation
- Section 2: Theories traveling between spaces of knowledge production
- Section 3: Collaboration and encounters
- Section 4: Approaches towards multi-versal knowledge production
- Preparatory Discussion Forum
- Download the Final Program (PDF; 174KB)
Inauguration and welcome talks |
|
09.00 – 09.15 |
Peter Dorman, President, AUB |
Section 1 (Morning 8 July 2011) Approaches towards internationalisation: social sciences and humanities in the era of globalisation |
|
09.15 – 09.45 |
A world social science system beyond the hegemony of the Western concept of science |
09.45 – 10.15 |
Internationalization of social research: A case in Lebanon |
10.15 – 10.45 |
Coffee break |
10.45 – 11.15 |
Indigenised while internationalised: Tensions and dilemmas in China’s modern transformation of social sciences |
11.15 - 11.45 |
Arab social sciences and it’s internationalisation – some epistemological issues |
11.45 - 12.15 |
Isn't anthropology already a multiversalist discipline? Assessing the status of anthropology in Asian social sciences |
12.15 - 13.00 |
General Discussion Section 1 |
13.00 – 14.00 |
Lunch break |
Section 2 (Afternoon 8 July 2011) Theories traveling between spaces of knowledge production |
|
14.00 – 14.30 |
The ‘internationalization’ of social sciences as an ‘obstacle’ in understanding the on-going Arab revolts |
14.30 – 15.00 |
La lecture africaine de Michel Foucault |
15.00 - 15.30 |
Teaching Giddens in the Arab world |
15.30 – 16.00 |
Coffee break |
16.00 – 16.30 |
A periphery’s bind: geographical location, conceptual resources and public engagement in Lebanese social scientific practice |
16.30 - 17.00 |
Scientific knowledge on migration in/from Africa or Arab countries |
17.00 – 17.30 |
Knowledge production: A perspective from the periphery? |
17.30 – 18.00 |
Between Arab and Western universities: similarities and differences in the graduate studies |
18.00 - 18.30 |
Research priorities in Egyptian sociology |
18.30 - 19.00 |
Sociological university production in Lebanon: A bibliographic analysis |
19.00- 19.30 |
General Discussion Section 2 |
Section 3 (Morning 9 July 2011) Collaboration and encounters |
|
09.00 – 09.30 |
Cultural translation, civilization encounter and social reflexivity. A note on Sociology in Japan |
09.30 – 10.00 |
Scientific collaboration within the Mediterranean: the practical making of ‘International’ knowledge |
10.00 – 10.30 |
The Franco-Maghrebi co-opoperation: between national traditions and the new liberalism of the EU |
10.30 – 11.00 |
Coffee Break |
11.00 – 11.30 |
La pratique de la sociologie au Maroc à l'épreuve de l'internationalisation des savoirs |
11.30 – 12.30 |
General Discussion Section 3 |
12.30 – 13.30 |
Lunch break |
Section 4 (Afternoon 9 July 2011) Approaches towards multi-versal knowledge production |
|
13.30 – 14.00 |
The dynamics of global social knowledge transformation processes |
14.00 – 14.30 |
An alternative concept of culture with an Islamic outlook |
14.30 – 15.00 |
Observing the call for Islamisation of the scientific social science knowledge |
15.00 – 15.30 |
Coffee break |
15.30 – 16.00 |
Alternative intellectual practice in Tamil Nadu and their possible lessons for Arab social sciences |
16.00 – 18.00 |
General Discussion Section 4 and Concluding Discussion |
18.00 |
Farewell and end of Conference |
18.00 – 19.00 |
Business meeting of the World SSH Net |
Prior to the conference an online discussion forum about issues crosscutting the individual
papers will be available. The World SSH Net will offer an opportunity for such a discussion forum.