Arab social sciences: The glocal, symbolic liberal and dialogical paradigms

This article is a synthetical one, drawing on previous work on knowledge production in the Arab world in the last 15 years, as well as the reports produced by the Arab Council for the Social Sciences. It will contribute to the debate about how scholarship in the Arab region has struggled with some dichotomies (tradition/modernity, East/West, immanent nature/transcendent supernatural, imperialism/cosmopolitanism, reason/faith, rational/irrational, English language/vernacular language, and universalism/contextualism) before being able to partially transgress them. After a brief overview of the themes in the Arab social sciences, I present different research trends that have evolved from the mainstream critical “glocal” (global/local) paradigm to the more polarized “identity politics,” ones such as the symbolic liberal paradigm. Finally, I will show how a potential dialogical turn can overcome the identity politics paradigm.