About this website
The aim of this website is to connect sociological knowledge production in Arabic and English. We understand sociology as a global science that shapes up differently in different regional, cultural, and linguistic contexts. European and US-American historical experiences and empirical observations themselves are particular. Concepts and theories constructed based on these contexts, can thus not be taken as universal. Under post-colonial auspices especially, criticism of erroneously universalizing Euro-American concepts and theories has by now firmly entered the discipline of sociology, too. Attempts to construct alternative, non-European sociologies have however not led to fundamentally different theories or variations of sociology autonomous from hegemonic European varieties. This is in the end not surprising, given the interconnectedness of societies and theory-building alike, not least of European and Arab countries. Going beyond both universalism and particularism, the aim thus has to be to connect different variations of sociology as part of global knowledge production.
While Arab sociologists through their very training are familiar with European sociological thinkers and theories, especially in English and French, the same cannot be said the other way round. This testifies to hegemony and power asymmetry in knowledge production. An additional pragmatic reason lies in disciplinary divisions within European universities, where the study of Arab countries and especially knowledge production therein tends to fall in the realm of Area Studies, rather than sociology, which can lead to a further particularization and exoticization of Arab knowledge archives. In view of these linguistic and institutional obstacles, and even more so as language is crucial when it comes to the translatability of concepts across regional and cultural contexts, we focus on sociological knowledge production in Arabic, bearing in mind that Arab sociologists also write in other languages.
Purpose and Vision
Our hope is that this site will raise the interest in Arabic sociology and facilitate engagement with it among English-speaking scholars and students. Ideally, Arab sociologists, too, will find use in the information gathered here and might be interested in some of the research projects and individual findings documented on this site. Any comments, criticism or potential contributions are most welcome. We envision this site as interactive and growing, increasingly adding sets of information and findings of research projects.
Following our intent to integrate your feedback and suggestions, this site is released in its current Beta version.
Arabic Version
An Arabic version is under construction, and planned to be released in 2027.
Contact
For any questions or potential contributions, please contact the owner and coordinator of this website, Florian Zemmin, Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Freie Universität Berlin: florian.zemmin@fu-berlin.de
Implementation
The website Arabic sociology has been implemented by the OES-Team at FUB-IT, Division Research Infrastructure, using the open source software Open Encyclopedia System (OES) developed at Freie Universität Berlin.
Additionally, Sören Lembke and Ahmad Sayyid contributed ideas on design and usability.
This website has been created with generous support of the Arab German Young Academy, which also financed the initial collection and processing of bibliographical data (mapography).
Supporters of individual research projects, whose findings are documented on this site, are duly acknowledged in the section “Projects”.
Overview of Website Sections
Mapography
The Mapography holds the bibliographical information of Arabic monographs in sociology, both original works and translations. It displays the location of publications on an interactive map, in order to make centers of knowledge production visible. You can search for works based on author, titles, or topics, as in any regular library research. Or you can get inspired by playing around with the map and the time-slider.
When searching for Arabic titles, please make sure to use the following diacritics: ʿ for the letter ʿayn, and ʾ for the letter ḥamza. Diacritics have been added for other Arabic letters, too, based on the IJMES system, but your search will produce the same results when not adding these other diacritics.
As in a library catalogue, you can search by words included in the title, by authors’ names or keywords.
In addition, you can filter by keywords, by the authors’ gender or by the place of publication. In case of translated works, the place of publication of the original work is provided, too. Applying the time slider, the works shown will be limited to those published in the time-span selected.
Whether through filtering or searching, your results will be displayed both on the map and as a list underneath the map.
Included in this mapography are some 500 Arabic monographs in sociology published between 1925 and 2004 as well as 850 monoraphs originally written in another language and translated into Arabic.
This data was collected in an AGYA working group project and is based on the following works:
Zāyid, Aḥmad, and Muḥammad al-Jawharī. 2001, 2003. al-Intāj al-ʿarabīfī ʿilm al-ijtimāʿ: qāʾima bibliyūghrāfiyya mashrūḥa [vol. 1: 1924–1995; vol. 2 1995–2000]. 2 vols. Cairo: Markaz al-Buhūth wa-l-Dirāsāt al-Ijtimāʿiyya.
Zāyid, Aḥmad. 1997. al-Bībliyūjrāfiyā al-shāriḥa li-l-tarǧamāt al-ʿarabiyya fī ʿīlm al-ijtimāʿ wa-l-anthrūbūlūjiyā. Cairo: Markaz al-Buhūth wa-l-Dirasāt al-Ijtimāʿiyya.
More recent data will be added depending on the acquistion of funding.
Lexicon
The constantly evolving Lexicon holds entries on key sociological concepts in Arabic and English, and, where applicable, French.
Podcasts
Podcasts feature interviews with Arab sociologists on sociological key concepts, of the lexicon and beyond.
Wiki
The Wiki collects information on individual sociologists and sociological institutions in the Arab world.
Projects
Under Projects, you can find the individual research projects whose findings are documented on this website.