Entangled circulations and decoloniality: Rethinking from southeast Asian Islam

Chair:

Welcome everyone to today’s session. We’re really excited to have Ali Kassem with us, who will be talking about ‘Knowledge production in the ‘Arab-majority’ world and unlearning in the field: Toward alternative research politics.’

Ali is a sociologist and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Arab Council for the Social Sciences. His work broadly interrogates the intersections of epistemology, power, and the politics of knowledge.

Ali, thank you so much for being here with us.

Ali:

Thank you so much for having me, and thank you all for being here today.

What I want to share with you is part of a broader research trajectory, and a lot of this is work in progress. So please do feel free to engage critically and share any thoughts, questions, or feedback at the end.

Today, I will be talking about the production of knowledge in the so-called “Arab-majority” world, specifically looking at what it means to engage in processes of “unlearning” — both as researchers and as individuals situated within particular epistemic landscapes.

Now, to start with, I want to lay out a few points that guide my thinking here.

First, I want to move away from the notion that knowledge production is something neutral or isolated from broader structures of power. Knowledge is always implicated in relations of domination, resistance, and contestation. Second, I want to complicate the idea of ‘the Arab world’ as a fixed or singular entity. There’s a risk, I think, in falling into the trap of imagining ‘the Arab world’ as somehow homogenous — culturally, politically, epistemically — and this is something that needs to be interrogated if we are to think about alternative research politics. Third, I want to insist on the importance of historicizing — both our objects of study and our own positionalities as researchers. Research is never innocent. It is embedded in histories of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and other forms of global hierarchy.

Now, when I talk about unlearning, I mean a process that is both personal and collective.

It is about confronting the ways in which we, as researchers, have internalised dominant epistemologies — epistemologies that often privilege Eurocentric ways of knowing, of being, and of relating to the world.

Unlearning, in this sense, is not just about adding new knowledge. It’s about critically interrogating the foundations of what we take to be knowledge itself.

It’s about challenging what counts as valid knowledge, who is authorized to produce knowledge, and what purposes knowledge serves.

And here, I draw inspiration from decolonial, feminist, and critical race scholars, many of whom have emphasised the necessity of epistemic disobedience — the refusal to uncritically reproduce dominant ways of knowing and thinking.

So today, I’ll focus on three main points:

• First, the structures of knowledge production in the Arab-majority world;
• Second, the politics of fieldwork and research methodologies;
• And third, the necessity of unlearning as a political, ethical, and epistemic imperative.

Let me begin by talking about structures of knowledge production.

Now, historically, knowledge production in the Arab-majority world has been shaped by a range of factors: Colonial legacies, authoritarianism, capitalist integration, and the influence of Western academic institutions and funding bodies.

This has created what some scholars call an ‘epistemic dependency’ — a situation where local knowledge production is often geared towards satisfying external audiences, external standards, external expectations.

Now, this epistemic dependency is not just about citing scholars from the Global North — although that’s part of it.

It’s about the very questions we ask, the frameworks we use, the methodologies we deploy.

Often, research agendas are set externally — by donor priorities, by international organisations, by the pressures of publishing in so-called ‘high-impact’ journals that have their own standards of what constitutes rigorous or valuable research.

And this has profound implications for the kinds of knowledge that are produced — and equally, for the kinds of knowledge that are marginalised, dismissed, or rendered invisible.

For example, think about the widespread dominance of quantitative methodologies in certain fields.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with quantitative methods, their elevation as the ‘gold standard’ often sidelines other forms of knowing — oral histories, ethnographies, storytelling, community-based research, and so on.

Moreover, the production of knowledge is not just about researchers. It is about institutions — universities, research centers, funding agencies, journals, and so on.

And these institutions are themselves embedded in political economies that prioritise certain kinds of outputs, certain forms of expertise, certain kinds of ‘impact.’

In many Arab-majority countries, universities have been systematically underfunded, surveilled, and constrained.

Academic freedom is often precarious, and research that challenges dominant political or economic structures can be dangerous — not just intellectually, but materially.

This creates a situation where scholars are pushed to conform — to avoid certain topics, to frame their work in ways that are acceptable to powerful actors, to seek validation from external institutions rather than from the communities they are part of.

And this is where the question of unlearning becomes crucial. Unlearning is about recognising these dynamics — not just as external constraints, but as internalised structures that shape how we think, how we write, how we engage with the world.

It is about refusing the fantasy of neutrality or objectivity, and instead embracing a politics of situatedness — acknowledging that our knowledge is always partial, always positioned, always implicated in broader structures of power.

It is about being attentive to the histories and geographies that produce us as subjects — and about taking responsibility for the ways in which we participate in reproducing or contesting dominant forms of knowledge.

So moving now to the second point, the politics of fieldwork and research methodologies.

Fieldwork is often romanticised as this neutral, apolitical process. We’re told that we go ‘into the field’ to ‘collect data,’ as if we are simply gathering objective facts.

But in reality, fieldwork is saturated with power relations — between researchers and participants, between institutions and communities, between different epistemologies.

And these power dynamics are not incidental — they shape what kinds of knowledge are produced, how they are produced, and for whom.

For example, in many cases, researchers from the Global North come into Arab-majority contexts, ‘extract’ knowledge, and leave — often without any meaningful engagement with the communities they study.

Even when local researchers conduct fieldwork, they are often pressured to mimic the methodologies and theoretical frameworks of the Global North in order to be legible to international audiences.

This raises serious ethical and political questions.

Who benefits from the research?

Whose voices are amplified, and whose are silenced?

How is knowledge about Arab-majority societies commodified and circulated within global academic markets?

And perhaps most importantly: how can we, as researchers, engage in practices that are more accountable, more ethical, more transformative?

This is where the notion of unlearning becomes crucial again.

Unlearning, in the context of fieldwork, means refusing the fantasy that we can be neutral observers. It means acknowledging that we are implicated in the dynamics we study.

It means being reflexive about our positionality — our privileges, our biases, our investments — and being willing to have those challenged.

It also means rethinking our methodologies — moving beyond extractive models of research towards more collaborative, participatory, and transformative approaches.

Research should not be something we do on communities; it should be something we do with communities.

It should be a process of mutual learning, of solidarity, of collective struggle.

Now, of course, this is easier said than done.

We operate within institutions that reward certain forms of research and marginalise others.

We are often under pressure to produce ‘results’ quickly, to publish, to meet donor requirements.

But part of the task of unlearning is resisting these pressures where we can — or at least being conscious of the ways they shape our work.

It is about creating spaces for alternative practices, even within the constraints we face.

And it is about building networks of solidarity with other scholars, activists, and communities who are also committed to alternative ways of knowing and being.

Finally, I want to move to the third point: Unlearning as a political, ethical, and epistemic imperative.

Unlearning is not just an intellectual exercise. It is a deeply political and ethical commitment.

It is about confronting the histories of violence and domination that shape our fields of knowledge.

It is about being willing to sit with discomfort — to recognize that we are not innocent, that we are complicit in structures of inequality, even when we intend otherwise.

Unlearning requires humility.

It requires listening.

It requires being open to the possibility that what we think we know is wrong — or at least partial.

And it requires imagining and building alternative epistemic communities — communities that are grounded in principles of justice, solidarity, and care.

Let me give you a concrete example. In one of my projects, I was working with a community that had been subjected to years of state violence and marginalisation.

Initially, I approached the research with what I thought were critical and decolonial frameworks.

But through conversations with community members, I realised that even my most ‘critical’ frameworks were still reproducing certain assumptions — about who counts as a political actor, about what kinds of knowledge are legitimate, about what forms of resistance matter.

It was a painful realisation.

It meant going back and questioning the very foundations of my project.

But it was also an incredibly important moment — because it opened up the possibility for a different kind of research relationship, one based not on extraction, but on solidarity and mutual learning.

So to conclude, unlearning is not a destination; it is a process — an ongoing, difficult, but necessary process.

It requires us to confront our own investments, our own complicities, our own limits.

It requires us to think seriously about the ethics and politics of knowledge production.

And it requires us to work towards building alternative ways of knowing and relating — ways that are grounded in justice, in humility, and in care.

Thank you.

Chair:

Thank you so much, Ali, for that really powerful and thought-provoking talk.

We’ll now open it up for discussion. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to raise your hand or type them into the chat.

Reader:

How do you personally navigate the tensions between institutional expectations — like publishing requirements — and the politics of unlearning you are advocating for?

Ali:

To be completely honest, I don’t have a magic answer. It’s a constant struggle. There are moments when I feel I have to compromise more than I would like — when I have to use certain language, or frame my arguments in ways that will be legible to particular journals or funding bodies. At the same time, I try to carve out spaces, even small ones, where I can practice what I am advocating. This might mean collaborating with community organisations, even if that work doesn’t ‘count’ according to institutional metrics. It might mean using a footnote to gesture toward different ways of knowing, even when the main body of the article has to conform more. It might mean teaching differently, engaging students in critical conversations about these structures, even when the curriculum is rigid. So it’s not perfect. It’s a messy process. But I think it’s important to recognise that even small acts of refusal, or small cracks in the system, can matter. And it’s also important to find solidarity — to connect with others who are trying to do similar work, and to support each other.

Reader:

Thank you, Ali. That really resonates. You mentioned positionality — can you say more about how you approach positionality in your own research, especially when working across lines of difference?

Ali:

Thank you, that’s another really important point. For me, positionality is not a box you check — it’s not enough to just say, I am from this background, or I have these identities.

It’s about ongoing critical reflection: How do my experiences, my assumptions, my investments shape the way I see the field, the way I frame questions, the way I interpret data? Especially when working across lines of difference — whether that’s class, race, gender, nationality — it’s crucial to be attentive to the power dynamics at play. To recognise when I am speaking over, when I am misrepresenting, when I am imposing my own frameworks. And again, it requires humility — being willing to be corrected, to listen more than I speak, to recognise that my interpretation is not necessarily the only or the best one. I think it also requires building relationships of trust and accountability with the communities we work with — not seeing them as mere ‘subjects’ of research but as co-producers of knowledge.

Reader:

You spoke about solidarity in research. Can you give some examples of what that might look like in practice?

Ali:

Sure, thank you. Solidarity in research, for me, means centring the needs, desires, and struggles of the communities we work with, rather than centring academic agendas. It might look like designing research projects in collaboration with community members — letting them define the questions that matter, rather than imposing questions from the outside. It might mean making research findings accessible — not just publishing in journals behind paywalls, but creating community reports, hosting workshops, sharing knowledge in ways that are meaningful to the people most affected. It might mean using whatever academic privilege or access we have to advocate for communities — amplifying their voices, challenging dominant narratives, pushing back against exploitative structures. And sometimes it means recognising when not to research — when our presence or our questions might do more harm than good, and stepping back. Solidarity is not just about intentions; it’s about practices, about being accountable to the people and struggles we claim to care about.

Chair:

Thank you so much, Ali. That’s a wonderful note to end on. I want to thank everyone for joining today, and of course, a huge thank you to Ali for his time, his insights, and his generosity. We’ll circulate the recording soon, and we hope to see you at future events. Take care, everyone!