Project Details
Projekt
Decolonial Epistemologies? Knowledge(s) about Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation (ṣulḥ/muṣālaḥa) in Syria and Jordan
Applicant
Dr. Esther Meininghaus
Subject Area
Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 538105787
This project aims to carry out fundamental research on knowledge(s) about the concept of sulh/musâlaha or “conflict resolution/reconciliation” in Syria and Jordan to contribute to advancing our understanding of newly emerging Middle Eastern epistemologies, or theories of knowledge. Sulh/musâlaha represent societal processes to resolve conflict in which usually elders act as groups of mediators who gather evidence, negotiate, lead rituals, and pronounce rulings in armed and civic conflicts in the region. Adopting a decolonial perspective (Southern epistemologies), this project hypothesizes that knowledge(s) about sulh/musâlaha have been shaped by experiences of political, i.e. colonial and autocratic oppression and that by deconstructing such oppressive processes, these knowledge(s) allow us to identify parts of newly emerging Middle Eastern epistemology/ies. The comparison of knowledge(s) on sulh/musâlaḥa in Southern Syria and Northern Jordan is central to allow for theorizing: Both areas were formally separated through the drawing of colonial borders in 1920, while their communities have remained connected through kinship and trading ties. As a main research question, this project asks: In what ways has political oppression shaped knowledge(s) and ways of knowing about conflict resolution/reconciliation (sulh/musâlaha) in Southern Syria and Northern Jordan between the colonial period and today? This project pursues three main objectives: 1) to analyze what constitutes knowledge and ways of knowing in the case of sulh/musâlaha during the colonial period; 2) to understand how such knowledge(s) may have changed thereafter during periods of different forms of political repression through the Ba’thist dictatorship in Syria vs. the Hashimite monarchy in Jordan; and 3) to systematically compare whether and how knowledge(s) of sulh/musâlaha processes may have changed since the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011 on both sides of the border. Methodologically, the project will rely on archival research and ethnographies, including informal conversation and interviewing, mappings of semantic fields and biographical drawing during ten months of fieldwork carried out by myself and a doctoral researcher.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Australia, Jordan, Netherlands, USA
