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The limits of knowing the International Relations of the Arab World through the study of the Arab League
Abstract
For the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, teaching and learning are part of the same process of knowing. Anchored on this premise, this paper seeks to answer two interrelated questions: How do we come to know the International Relations (IR) of the Arab world? How much knowledge about the Arab League should one have to be able to understand the IR of the Arab World? Theoretically and methodologically informed by Paulo Freire’s philosophy of education and by IR scholarship concerned with worlding beyond the West and regional worlds, this study addresses these issues making use of the following qualitative methods: discourse analysis of syllabi of IR of the Middle East and related courses; active participant observation in the classroom and semi-structured interviews with graduate students enrolled in the IR of the Arab world course at a federal university in Brazil during the 2019 and 2020 academic years; and dialogues (in Freirean terms) with Arab scholars, intellectuals, activists and diplomats. Amongst the conclusions reached by the study are the following: a) the advancement of knowledge on how states, institutions and social movements deemed to be “Arab” interact with each other, and with their non-Arab counterparts, both at the regional and global levels demands a course of its own at the postgraduate level instead of being subsumed under the wider umbrella of IR of the Middle East; b) in such a focused postgraduate course, studying the Arab League’s history, institutional practices and processes, engagements with other regional organizations and bilateral agreements is necessary, but not central; c) knowing the International Relations of the Arab world is only possible through the permanent dialogue between the teacher, the students, and the Arab peoples as subjects and not only objects of study; d) a postgraduate course on the International Relations of the Arab world should comprise a discussion on the role of regions in world politics and how the Arab world constitutes one of these regions, a critical assessment of the meanings historically and currently attached to the signifier “Arab” and its political implications, the characteristics of Arab political economy, the historical and political evolution of the LAS, Arab migrations and diasporas, the role the Arab media plays in regional and global politics, how Arab cinema and literature propagates a sense of Arab (plural) identity, and the Arab knowledge production in IR.
Discipline
International Relations/Affairs
Geographic Area
Arab States
Sub Area
Arab Studies