Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Integrative Research Institute Law & Society (LSI)

Theorizing in a Global World: Arab Perspectives

This Working Group (WG) project seeks to study historical, social and political as well as ideational and academic transformations happening in contemporary Germany through the lens of Arab-German scholarly engagements as well as the interaction with Arab societies and politics. The research will be based on the work of research clusters which include different WG members. The two focal clusters are “Transnational Knowledge Circulation and Intellectual Currents”, and “Security and the Liberal Order”. These clusters will be forums for Arab-German interdisciplinary scholarly exchange, and allow for the emergence of long-term organic research collaborations.

Arab engagements with critical transformations in Germany and the West are understood to stem from the Arab world’s own colonial and neocolonial post-World War Two trajectory and in relation to Western Europe. Such a starting point allows for the tracing of the relationship between Germany, the Arab world and the Global South more broadly, as well as racialized minorities in Germany. Arab engagements with critical transformations in Germany and the West will be grounded in critical approaches to (neo-)liberalism and post- and decolonial theory. Amongst the questions to examine are the scope of the history of German-Arab solidarities; a rethinking of secular knowledge in German and Euro-American academia through Arab thought; forms of political and economic domination through the structures of NATO and EU free trade agreements; the realities of various forms of racisms in Germany; the possibilities of solidarity in the face of rising right-wing movements in Germany and Europe, as well as the realities of post/migrants and refugees in Germany. By turning both to Arab knowledge production and ramifications of Western, especially German practices, on the Arab world, we expect to contribute to tackling prevalent biases in an academic discourse dominated by Anglo-American perspectives.

 

 

Hybrid Workshop of the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA)

13 December 2021 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. CET

More Information here:

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