Social Sciences in the Arab World: Forms of Presence - A Primary Reading in the First Arab Social Sciences Report

Abstract

The current report issued by The Arab Council for the Social Sciences purports to evaluate the state of social sciences and prospects in the Arab world. It also pledges to be a platform and a framework for researching the presence of such sciences in different manifestations of knowledge, particularly in the universities, research institutes and various scientific forums as well as within civil society and other information providing domains. The report underlines a level of both quantitative and qualitative progress in areas of social scientific knowledge production. However, it also underscores obstacles preventing the establishment of a genuine communication between researching groups in the field, and their contribution to the general debates in the public sphere. Some of these factors stem from the lack of academic freedom, political restraints and the weakness of the scientific community.