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19 – 30 September 2011, Rabat, Morocco

CODESRIA and SEPHIS are pleased to announce the first edition of the African-Arab Advanced Institute. This annual advanced institute on African-Arab relations will be held alternatively in North Africa and in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Institute is conceived as a high-level knowledge-building, agenda-setting and networking forum for scholars in the prime of their careers desirous of experimenting with new fields of knowledge and exploring new conceptual terrains.

CODESRIA-SEPHIS
African-Arab Advanced Institute
Inaugural Session
Theme: The Changing Political Economy of Afro-Arab Relations
Date: 19-30 September, 2011
Venue: Rabat, Morocco

CODESRIA and SEPHIS are pleased to announce the first edition of the African-Arab Advanced Institute. This annual advanced institute on African-Arab relations will be held alternatively in North Africa and in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Institute is conceived as a high-level knowledge-building, agenda-setting and networking forum for scholars in the prime of their careers desirous of experimenting with new fields of knowledge and exploring new conceptual terrains. The Institute is underpinned by a desire to extend and transform the frontiers of African and Arab Studies by simultaneously challenging and transcending the inherited boundaries set by the colonial encounter and Cold War-inspired area studies. Participants in the Institute will be drawn from across Africa and the Arab World and will work together during ten days around a specific theme. The inaugural session of the Institute will take place in Rabat, Morocco, from 19 – 30 September, 2011. It will focus mainly on:

The African-Arab Advanced Institute

Africa is one continent whose peoples share a common position of subalternity in global relations, and a number of common historical experiences and cultures. The historical ties and exchanges that exist between Africa and the Arab World are numeros.

The number of Arabs and non-Arab people using Arabic as a working language is estimated at 300 millions, two thirds of whom are Africans. The Arabic script is used by a much larger number of people, some of whom use it to write African languages, which is what has given birth to Adjami. There is therefore a considerable degree of overlap between Africa and the Arab World, geographically and sociologically, and there are intense trade and economic exchanges between these two worlds.

Furthermore, there is a long history of higher education in the Arab World, and very old traditions of scholarship, and there is a huge body of literature in Arabic that is unknown to non-Arabic speaking African scholars. Similarly, there are a lot of books written in English, French and Portuguese that have not been translated into Arabic, but the extensive Arabisation policy promoted in a number of North African countries has made it more difficult for many scholars of this part of Africa, particular the young scholars, to participate in scholarly and policy debates in Africa conducted in English, French and Arabic.

There is also a growing number of African intellectuals who studied, and many students currently studying in the Arab World. All these people are operating at the margins of the African intellectual community.

More generally, the study of Africa was bounded in a context defined globally by colonialism and the Cold War, and regionally by the post-1945 consolidation of apartheid. In this configuration, North Africa was said to be a part of ‘the Orient’ and, thus, of the area called ‘Middle East’, while apartheid South Africa was considered an exception to be studied separately. The domain of African Studies came to be developed around the land area between the Sahara and the Limpopo. Socially, Africa was Bantu Africa; spatially, it was equatorial Africa. This notion was, however, never accepted in the post-colonial academy in Africa, including in the programmatic work of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) that emerged as the pioneer and apex African social research organization on the continent. Established in 1973, CODESRIA defined the study of Africa as including both the continental land mass and the Indian Ocean islands, and set up research networks accordingly.

Part of the ‘Arab World’ is in Africa. As has been noted above, out of the estimated 300 million inhabitants of the Arab World, 200 million (i.e. two thirds) live in Africa. Culturally, many millions of Sub-Saharan Africans are also linked to the Arab World through religious networks (Islam).

The post-Cold War and post-apartheid era calls for a careful and sustained problematisation of received boundaries in the study of Africa. It is suggested that this endeavor requires comparative studies which, while thematically focused, deliberately transgress these boundaries with a view to exploring historical terrains that were obscured by the dominant paradigm, and charting new grounds in identity theory and politics. In so doing, it is hoped that the study of African-Arab relations will not only be revitalized but, equally important, that new important insights will be developed that will contribute to a radical re-direction of our reading of African history, sociology and politics away from the hegemonic occidentalist bias that has been predominant. Furthermore, in exploring the historical legacies resulting from the flow of peoples and goods across boundaries and the contemporary patterns that are playing themselves out, it is expected that the initiative would explode various myths about the nature, content and direction of the complex interfaces between peoples and cultures in the making of politics, economy and society in Africa and the Arab World.

As an endeavour at the generation of new knowledge, the Institute will be structured as a multidisciplinary intervention.

Inaugural Session of the African-Arab Advanced Institute: The Changing Political Economy of Afro-Arab Relations

The inaugural session of the Institute will focus on the changing political economy of Afro-Arab Relations as a point of departure. Prospective participants in the session will be invited to submit proposals of not more ten pages on any aspect of the theme of The Changing Political Economy of Afro-Arab Relations that they might be interested in pursuing. Up to 10 fellows drawn from across Africa and the Arab World, and from the African and Arab Diaspora, and from different disciplinary backgrounds, will be invited to participate in the session. The session will be convened and led by a Director designated by CODESRIA and SEPHIS to offer intellectual leadership and coordinate the output of the fellows into a joint SEPHIS-CODESRIA publication.

Among the sub-themes of The Changing Political Economy of Afro-Arab Relations around which reflection will be organized are the following:
a. Colonialism
b. Post-colonial Nationalisms
c. The Spirit of Non-Alignment and Bandung
d. The Political Economy of the Nile
e. African and Arab States in the Global Oil Politics
f. Trade and Investments
g. Regionalisms
h. State and Human Security Challenges in Africa and the Arab World
i. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and the Promise of Democracy in Africa and the Arab World

Eligibility

Participants in the Institute will be drawn from among those scholars whose proposals on the theme for which CODESRIA and SEPHIS invite applications are adjudged to be the most promising. Priority for participation in the Institute will be given to scholars from Africa and the Arab World. Participants will be experienced scholars with a well-established academic record that equips them for the challenges of the kind of radical and well-grounded innovative thinking that is designed to be a key distinguishing feature of the Institute. Authors of proposals will be invited to focus on both particular place(s) and theme(s) in developing their work. This way, each fellow of the Institute will combine a case study with a thematic focus in the work that they will carry out. Methodologically, this approach will allow for the combination of detailed empirical observation with a comparative analysis and, in so doing, will both build on the historical strength of area studies, the focus on the local, and move away from its historical limitation, the tendency to translate political boundaries (the area) into boundaries of knowledge production. The working languages of the Institute are Arabic, French and English.

Application Procedures
Laureates: Applications should include the following:
1) a Curriculum Vitae (maximum of two pages),
2) an application letter
3) a research proposal outlining the candidate’s current research project, including the methodology that is being employed or considered (at most four pages),
4) a sample of the applicant’s work

Convener/Resource Persons: Applicants for the position of Course Convener and Resource Persons should submit: 1) an application letter; 2) a curriculum vitae; and 3) a two-page course outline of three lectures specifically focusing on the issues to be covered in the sub-themes, and 4) a sample of the applicant’s work.

Applications must be written in English, French or Arabic. The deadline for the submission of applications is 07th August 2011. An international scientific committee will examine the dossiers of all candidates by 16th August 2011. Successful applicants will be notified immediately after the completion of the selection process.
Incomplete and unnecessarily lengthy applications will not be taken into consideration.
All faxed and e-mailed applications must also be accompanied by a hard copy original version sent by post if they are to be considered.

Additional information about the African-Arab Advanced Institute can be obtained via:
- the CODESRIA web site: http://www.codesria.org
- the SEPHIS web site: http://www.sephis.org

Applications and requests for more information should be sent to:
CODESRIA/SEPHIS Africa-Arab Advanced Institute
CODESRIA
Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop, angle Canal IV
B.P. 3304, Dakar, Senegal
Fax: (221) 33 824 12 89
Tel: (221) 33 825 98 22/23
E-Mail: [email][email protected]
Twitter: http://twitter.com/codesria
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/CODESRIA/181817969495