Critiques of Power

 

The Working Groups Program (WGP) aims at bringing scholars from across the Arab region and beyond, who are at different stages in their academic careers, to work collectively and comparatively on a particular research theme. This collaborative work not only enables the WG to explore and develop new and innovative research agendas from interdisciplinary perspectives but also allows its members to network effectively and share academic knowledge, skills and experience.

 

The Critiques of Power Working Group (CoP)

The Critiques of Power (CoP) Working Group was formed by the Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS) in 2017. Bringing together scholars from different fields and institutions, the CoP Working Group aims at an interdisciplinary critical engagement with Arab thought and in the process, at revisiting and expanding the archive of Arab theorizing on multiple forms of power. 

 

Through rereading the seminal works, while also attempting to unearth some of the lesser known theoretical productions on power in the region, the CoP Working Group focuses on how and when these works were produced and circulated, by whom, from where, and to what ends.

 

The group aims to not only carry out intergenerational and interdisciplinary conversations between texts, ideas and concepts, but more importantly, to assess whether their critical tools could be put to use in critical practices in, and for, our present. 

 

This yield to the present drives the CoP Working Group’s commitment to engaging with independent organizations and groups in the region who are critically reflecting on issues of power in their work. 

 

This Working Group is funded by a grant provided to the ACSS by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

 

Working Group Members  

Activities