Sociology of the Colonial Knowledge Production: Education in Morocco

Abstract

This sociological study analyzes the conditions for the production of colonial knowledge in Morocco with a focus on the foundation of Morocco’s education system at the start of the protectorate in 1912. The author offers a critical study of colonial discourse and divides colonial knowledge production into three kinds of discourse. The first is descriptive ethnography, which first sought to create a new educational field and produce new concepts, through the works of Georges Hardy, Roger LeTourneau, and Louis Bruno. The second kind of discourse is the socio-historical analysis used by Jacques Berque to study Moroccan education and its historical development, especially among the class of religious scholars. The third discourse is the sociological discourse that coalesced after the organization of colonial knowledge and colonial control of education in terms of staff, knowledge, pedagogy, and academic selection and success. Finally, the study attempts to clarify the paradigm of colonial knowledge and the logic of its production and explores how to construct a critical sociology of colonialism that lays the foundations for constructing a sociology of liberation open to contemporary questions.