Fifth Conference 2021

Call for Abstracts

Arab Council for the Social Sciences Fifth Conference

“Interrogating the Social Sciences in the Vortex of Crises: Waves of Discontent and Demands for Change”

December 2021

Casablanca 2 | Cairo 7 | Beirut 10

The Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) is a regional, independent non-profit organization headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon and working across the Arab region as well as globally. The ACSS is dedicated to strengthening social science research and knowledge production among individuals and academic/research institutions in the Arab region.

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The Arab Council for the Social Sciences held its fifth conference titled “Interrogating the Social Sciences in the Vortex of Crises: Waves of Discontent and Demands for Change”in December 2021. The theme of the Conference reflects the continued desire of the Council to promote new approaches and paradigms emerging across the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities and to better understand the constraints and potentials that shape the Arab region.

The theme:

The years 2019 and 2020 represent a distinctive and historical moment for the peoples of the Arab region, as was the case for 2010-2011, given the significant popular and political movements arising in several countries of both the Mashreq and Maghreb. A number of social forces have emerged, or were enhanced, through social and protest movements that took on a variety of forms and used various means of expression. These collective and radical movements demanded changes in the apparatuses of the state, accused ruling political elites of ignoring the intellectual, political, cultural and demographic transformations of their societies, and called for new relations among citizens themselves as well as with their national state. The protests demanded change concerning numerous structural problems as the region entered into a vortex of new crises, including issues of citizenship, socio-economic policy choices, social inequality, unequal access to social services, and the aggravation of problems related to environmental and natural resources. Furthermore, it has been remarkable to see the emergence of simultaneous movements and protests that reference one another, not just across the region, but also globally from East Asia to Latin America, on forms and expressions of resistance as well as imaginations of a different future.

The simultaneity of the spread of the pandemic and economic and social crises in several countries of the region, led to the adoption of certain policies that have aggravated these crises for many vulnerable groups. These failures led to a blunt questioning of current forms of globalization and democracy and raised many questions and doubts concerning political systems after the pandemic exposed the lack of trust in authorities and the absence of social protection. The pandemic also highlighted the ways in which some states used the pandemic for political ends and to enhance their international relations and "soft power" over other states. This new reality raises a fundamental question: Will all these changes bring about the restructuring, or at least a reevaluation, of the capitalist system?

The issues facing the Arab region are part and parcel of what the whole world is encountering, and thus the Fifth ACSS Conference will address these issues in the Arab region as a lens for studying and analyzing the global sphere.

The Fifth Conference of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences was organized around four main sub-themes as follows:

1) Inequality and Resistance

Inequalities in representation, political power, and access to material resources are a fundamental characteristic within and between communities, states, and regions in the modern world. Yet their particular manifestations, the structural and contingent factors that produce and reproduce them, and the myriad of ways they are resisted are historically, geographically, and politically specific. Of particular interest are those analyses that identify and make sense of inequalities between class, gender, ethno-linguistic, and/or religious/sectarian groups. What particular forms of inequalities between such groups exist, what institutional arrangements and praxes make them possible, and how do different forms of resistance to these inequalities manifest? Presenters are encouraged to consider how different notions of scale and space, as well as continuities and change across temporal periods, can help shed light on the nature of these inequalities and resistance to them. While there are many aspects of these phenomena, we are particularly eager for research and analysis that highlight one or more of the following elements:

Material Inequalities: A key feature of the region over the past several decades has been increasing rates of poverty and unemployment combined with decreasing purchasing power. Such dynamics correlate with other material relations, such as the access to credit, housing, and utilities—to name a few. We invite presentations that map out such material inequalities at a variety of scales (e.g., neighborhoods, cities, rural areas, the urban-rural divide, or region) while accounting for the structures and institutions that reproduce them. We encourage presenters to grapple with the fact that inequality can at many times be an acknowledged phenomenon on the part of the dominant class. As such, how might we make sense of the strategies for maintaining or exacerbating material inequalities, either directly or through strategies more directly linked to shifting patterns of capital accumulation?

Recognition, Representation and Inclusion: In addition to inequalities between classes and regions, many communities feature unequal power relations between groups wherein difference is defined by gender, ethno-linguistic identity, and religious/sectarian attributes. We invite presentations that map out the specificities of these power relations in particular times and places, while taking the simultaneous reproduction seriously of both the inequality in power relations and the assumed or experienced cohesion of the group identity. Here too we are interested in the structural and institutional context that makes such inequalities and identities possible. We encourage presenters to grapple with the intersection of different forms of inequality and how such intersections complicate deterministic claims about group identity or generalized claims about inequality.

Resistance: Scholarship over the past several decades has highlighted the centrality of individual and collective agency in the negotiation of various forms of inequality. We invite presentations that map out modes of resistance at the individual or collective level, both licit and illicit, whether they be against local, national, regional, or international parties and systems. We are particularly interested in those analyses that identify strategic decisions and/or strategic effects of the mapped modes of resistance, rather than simply taking at face value the oppositional nature of certain phenomena. We also encourage approaches that question the conceptual and empirical frameworks adopted in the study of resistance and social movements in the region, and how our understanding of inequality and resistance can bring us back to the literature, theories, and concepts of these movements under newly emerging conditions.     

2) State and Risk Society

This theme focuses on how the social sciences question the state (in its various forms and circumstances) and its nature in the Arab region by examining political, social and economic policies as well as its management of various risks, from war, occupation and violence to the management of the pandemic. These policies relate to marginalization, exclusion, and attempts to control protest actions and various waves of discontent in the context of the globalization of risk and its repercussions on the everyday. This opens up debates concerning state-society relations as a whole as well as the changes that have been occurring in recent years.

Can the social sciences once again interrogate the field, its players and actors? And with what tools? What are the new approaches in addressing the nature of the state, its relationship to society and its global exposure? How are these approaches reflected in the study of societies in the Arab region? How do we read the imposition of the state of emergency, quarantine policies, precautionary and preventive practices, curfew and inspection, the stigmatization of certain social groups and the application of home quarantine, surveillance and punishment in areas that are non-quarantinable? Are risk, fear and exclusion new priorities and mechanisms for maintaining and controlling the status quo?

These questions call for opening up debates regarding conceptual and methodological tools for scrutinizing social policies and their relationship to inequality. They highlight the state of health structures and social welfare systems and raise questions regarding policies of exclusion, marginalization and maximization of regional, social and economic gaps. What kind of measures does the state take to compensate for the failure of its economic and social policies? Does it resort to what may be called “security-performative” measures that demonstrate the physical strength of the state through its various apparatuses? Or does it disseminate new discourses in order to regain its lost legitimacy and re-enforce its authority through intimidating society? Does it impose house quarantine and the lockdown of sectors based on the interests of powerful actors and the logic of power relations? What are the state and societal discourses regarding the state’s relationship with society? How are these discourses reflected upon by, or internalized in, societies in the Arab region today? How do they impact people’s relationships with, and perceptions of, one another including gender and generational roles and identities?

Related to this, how do we examine forms of societal social solidarity versus the state’s political/ security/protectionism policies and its industry of fear and danger? How can policies of the distribution of risk and hazard rather than wealth, and of the gap reduction between social strata be addressed once again? What changes in state structures and its social and economic policies have occurred since the first waves of discontent? Has the map of state and society actors changed and if so, in what ways? How are the global discussions about human relationships with nature and the effects of technology, globalization and commodification read in the societies of the region? How do we research “risk society” as an analytical model by exploring social solidarity in light of physical distancing and based on experiences from the field?

3) Infrastructure and Survival

Infrastructure in cities, villages, the countryside, deserts and coastal areas, are not just physical structures but rather a human intervention aimed at engineering nature and rehabilitating living spaces, which defines to a great extent the modes and styles of life for individuals and groups. Accordingly, infrastructure is linked to survival, in the sense of achieving the conditions of physical existence for present generations and sustaining life for later generations. It is also connected to basic human and gender rights, including sustainable and productive health, education, decent housing, decent and fair-waged employment, and community participation. All these dimensions fall within the framework of the concept of sustainable development and call for the interrogation of related concepts such as resilience, fragility, well-being and social protection.

Hence, from the perspective of the social sciences, achieving the necessary conditions of physical existence and sustaining life is not a natural matter, but is rather at the core of public policies that entail planning and implementation strategies. Thus, infrastructures have a dual relationship with development plans in the sense that they themselves are part of development, but at the same time, stimulate and facilitate development. Accordingly, a distinction could be made between policies of establishing infrastructures according to the type of existing economies in each country and the locations of investment and development on one hand, and the extent to which these policies achieve equity and justice on the other. Therefore, infrastructure within long-term development plans not only requires construction that meets social justice requirements, but it also requires a commitment to maintenance, improvement and keeping pace with technological innovation. The dearth of infrastructure necessary for sustaining survival is as damaging as its obsolescence and failure to take measures to prevent health and environmental risks, including emerging pandemics and climate risks, in a world in which these risks are increasingly globalized.

In spite of the weakening of social demands related to infrastructure expressed by the social movements in the region over the last decade, some of these demands do allow for a preliminary understanding and foundations through which the social sciences can question public policies with regard to infrastructure. This includes:

• Providing conditions for survival and the preservation of species, on the basis of the specific needs of every natural and living environment: urban, rural, valleys, coastal and desert, and of every socioeconomic context such as industrial, agricultural, pastoral, etc.
• Governance of infrastructure management at the level of expenditure of public budgets; supervision and maintenance of facilities and services; justice and fairness for actors, social groups and sectors; balance between public and private contributions to joint projects; the integrity of deals, bidding and feasibility studies.
• The extent of the response to regional integration, cooperation, and complementarity especially with regards to energy and climate policies and combating desertification.

All these levels raise questions regarding concepts and realities of inequality and survival, based on how phenomena are distributed in society and how they affect marginalized and excluded groups. They also pose the problem of development planning and of infrastructures in relation to globalization, especially at the level of the emergence of new types of large projects, such as building cities, capitals and ports, and the role of emerging global powers in establishing and managing these projects. 

4) Global, Regional and National Ecologies

The problematic of the state emerged as the essential issue for the social sciences as revealed by the ongoing transformations taking place in the region in the past two decades, including the failure of the state, the erosion of its legitimacy, the decline of national identity in favor of other identities, and the rise of external rival powers. This has become even clearer after general crises affecting the world and the Arab region, the latest of which is the Corona pandemic.                                   

Three decades or more of theorizing on the "demise of sovereignty" and the end of the Westphalian State system, and the emergence of a new system exemplified by globalization and manifest not only in transborder networks but also in climate and ecological issues, may have proved that the absolute sovereignty of the state has become a historical relic. However, the Corona pandemic has confirmed the composite nature of the state, as the whole world experienced a unique embodiment of globalization, with the same terrors and precautions. In other words, the pandemic highlighted the need to reconsider the question of the state.

This questioning is not new, and also emerged out of the 2008 economic crisis, with a focus on state responsibilities, its role in social protection and the damaging impact of neoliberal policies. However, the Corona crisis accentuated the stark complexity of the state in the context of actually-lived globalization, where most aspects of life (including health and climatic as well as political, social and economic issues) transcend the borders of states. And yet there is still a need for an efficient state capable of defending its sovereignty and shouldering the responsibility of formulating and implementing public policies.

This does not negate the fact that we are facing a different world, where transnational networks are a reality. The flows of ideas, people, solidarities, identities, as well as health and climatic concerns across the world are almost unimaginable. However, these networks cannot be considered a negation of what preceded them, but should be studied in terms of the nature of their interaction with the state and its system. Such a framework is essential now that the overlap between the scope of work and the vital role of the national state and its transnational interactions (not just the interactions of elements outside the state) is tremendous and cannot be overlooked.

In addition, such a problematic gives rise to a bundle of closely related problems. Taking into consideration the rise of far-right extremism in Europe and the United States and of what is known as the “populist right” as one of the outcomes of the 2008 economic crisis, does the solution lie in standing up against the movement of history, embracing an isolationist identity, and counteracting the flows imposed by global movements and developments since the Second World War?

As for the Arab region, is the authoritarian state the alternative to civil conflicts in the aftermath of the 2011 revolutions? Is such a state possible in light of a growing trend that links (or does not separate) between a state that should regain its responsibilities and sovereignty and the authoritarian form of state?

It is not productive to revisit the question of state either by assuming a post-national world or by denying globalization and focusing on a form of national localism. New perspectives and approaches in the social sciences are badly needed to understand and build upon the present moment.

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This biennial event is usually held in Lebanon, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the format was changed this year to ensure better safety measures for everyone involved. We divided the conference into three in-person, one-day events, each held in a different city across the region: Casablanca (December 2), Cairo (December 7) and Beirut (December 10). In addition, the Council focal points organized virtual roundtables focusing on Palestine and Algeria. This unique format is an outcome of adjustments to the imperatives of the pandemic; however, it also reflects the commitment of the ACSS to ensuring convening, networking and free discussion. It also reflects the ACSS commitment to regional representation and inclusion.

150 researchers (in the 3 countries) from all over the Arab region and the world presented their papers. Applicants come to us from 30 countries from across the globe. 

The conference brings in new researchers into our network and serves as a forum for researchers from different parts of the world to meet and learn more about each other's work.

For the first time, the conference included partnerships with other institutions in 2 of the countries where it was held.

Morocco: Akhawayn University and Hassan II University

Egypt: American University in Cairo

The distinguished author, Ibrahim El-Kouni, was chosen by the committee as the keynote speaker and, the session was facilitated by prominent journalist and Moroccan TV personality, Adnan Yassin.

The opening session in Cairo was given by Dr. Ahmad Dallal, AUC President, and the author of the Third Arab Social Science Report.

The Beirut opening session was a plenary on the theme of the fifth conference given by 3 members of the organizing committee and was the 10^th and final webinar of the ACSS 10^th anniversary series.

“I just wanted to thank you again for your generous assistance to me and everyone in this conference, I realize it must have been quite demanding putting this together so fast. I really enjoyed the conference, it was a rare chance to meet and learn from colleagues from across the region. I look forward to returning in the future.” Participant in Beirut

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“I would like to express my thanks for allowing us to participate in the Fifth Conference of the Arab Council for Social Sciences. It was a very rich conference with the papers that were presented, the abundant information we obtained, and for providing the opportunity to establish a network of relations with people from various Arab countries. It was very well organized, and extremely professional. Thank you for your attention to all the details of the conference in all aspects.” Participant in Egypt

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“We thank you for the all the effort made, which greatly contributed to the success of the first day of the conference. We had a wonderful educational day. It was very interactive after the pandemic deprived us of this for a long time. Thank you again.” BoT member in Morocco