Bounded Knowledge: Doctoral Studies in Egypt

Much scholarship has been devoted to debates around how global inequalities of knowledge production arise from asymmetric power relations and disparities in access to material resources, as well as values and practices that prioritize certain academic disciplines and research outputs over others. The central role played by universities in producing both knowledge and researchers is similarly acknowledged, with the doctorate increasingly recognized as a crucial phase in establishing both. Bounded Knowledge: Doctoral Studies in Egypt explores these debates from a uniquely Egyptian perspective. It provides a fresh, historical analysis of how doctoral studies evolved in Egypt and an ethnographic inquiry into the actual conditions of knowledge production in the country’s public universities, with focus on the humanities and social sciences. Although it is commonplace to speak of international collaborations in knowledge production, institutional settings and material conditions are so uneven as to make the fiction of equality impossible to sustain. The chapters in this book, by social scientists within and outside Egypt, look closely at how such academic hierarchies are reinforced in the context of the internationalization of research. They also look at the ways in which notions of socially responsible research, common the world over, are translated in the particularly Egyptian context: how research topics are discussed, how doctoral studies are organized, and ultimately, how society thinks about research.

Table of Contents:
Contents Contributors Acknowledgments 1. Doctoral Studies in Egypt: producing knowledge and its limits—Daniele Cantini 2. Doctoral Studies in Egypt: a brief sketch of its political history —Daniele Cantini 3. Doctorate Studies at the Sociology Department, Cairo University. A case study—Nefissa Dessouqi 4. Internationalization of Higher Education: Faculty of Economics and Political Science/Cairo University—Ola Kubbara 5. Heritage-Related Knowledge Production: A Study into Postgraduate Dissertations at Alexandria University (1985–2016) —Ahmed Mansour 6. Knowledge Production on Women’s Issues in Egypt: A Reading into the Experiences of a Sample of Female Researchers—Nefissa Dessouki 7. Joining the ‘world-class’ university club? History, geopolitics and doctoral education in the Arab world—David Mills 8. Social Sciences at Cairo University before and after February 2011: Changing perceptions of Academic Freedom—Jonathan Kriener 9. ‘Scholactivism’: Feminist Translation as Knowledge Production for Social Change— Hala Kamal Afterword—Mona Abaza

About the Author :
Daniele Cantini is a social anthropologist based at the University of Halle, Germany, where he also serves as coordinator of the Graduate School “Society and Culture in Motion." His regional focus is the contemporary Middle East, in particular Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, where he lived for many years and conducted research on youth, university systems, subjectivity, religion, migration, and knowledge production. He is the author of Youth and Education in the Middle East: Shaping Identity and Politics in Jordan (2016).

Review :
Bounded Knowledge offers unique insights into the vastly understudied subject of knowledge production in the social sciences and humanities in Egyptian universities. The authors deftly tackle critical issues around internationalization, censorship and academic freedom, gender, and religion in the academy. This edited volume is a valuable sociology of knowledge in itself, and a highly welcome addition to the literature on doctoral education, state power, and counterpower in Egypt. This is a vital read for scholars and students of higher education in Egypt and the Arab region. In this ethnographic inquiry, the authors take us on a journey into the doctoral phase in humanities and the social sciences in Egyptian universities. As they do that, they provide significant insights into what constitutes knowledge, the material conditions of knowledge production in Egyptian academic institutions today, and how doctoral students navigate a difficult terrain before they earn a formal academic credential. Much more than a review of doctoral studies in the social sciences at Egyptian universities, Bounded Knowledge successfully integrates different genres, multiple narratives, and competing frames: the transmission and uses of knowledge, institutional design, and social practices. A pioneering analysis of doctoral education in Egypt, Bounded Knowledge focuses on the social sciences. This is to my knowledge the first full-scale discussion of doctoral education anywhere in the Arab world published in English.