The project “The socio-cultural life of sociological concepts: Arab contributions to global theory” started in April 2025. It is led by Prof. Mohammed Bamyeh (University of Pittsburgh) as an Einstein Visiting Fellow and Prof. Florian Zemmin as the host, at Freie Universität Berlin. The project addresses the problem that key concepts used in sociological analysis have different meanings and histories in different world regions. Central concepts that are often assumed to be applicable across various societies emerged to standardize ways of organizing social observations globally. This standardization often goes along with imposing concepts born in one specific time and place onto other regions. It moreover is underpinned by and perpetuates power asymmetries in the global production of knowledge.
Addressing these wider issues, the project more specifically explores how sociological concepts have been used in various times and places and thus began to be understood in different ways. The project is designed to produce a critical, historically informed, and comparative lexicon of approximately 60 key concepts as used in Arabic and English and, if pertinent, French—focusing on the Arab World and the two main colonial languages of the region. The lexicon is conceived as one infrastructure of global knowledge production and theory. As such, the project will help those interested in global social theory to identify spectrums of meanings and establish thereby more saturated and nuanced conceptualizations and analyses. Next to the lexicon, the project includes a podcast series on key concepts, and three exemplary case studies, conducted by a Postdoctoral researcher and two PhD fellows.
Both the series of podcasts and of concepts are documented on this website, while the project also contributes some findings for the lexicon.
For any queries in relation to the Einstein project, please contact Mohammed Bamyehor Nayera Soliman.