A22 - Travailler en thèse sur le Moyen-orient : défis, positionnements et perspectives méthodologiques

This round-table discussion deals with challenges and questions faced by young social-science researchers working on the Middle-East. Laying on a multidisciplinary approach (political science, history, sociology), it was built as a special platform of thought and discussion about the methodological and epistemological issues we are confronted with in our respective Ph. D. fieldworks (Egypt 1950-today and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century).

The first paper aims at presenting the theoretical problem of the relevance of Western concepts in a non-Western context. The second paper analyzes how to find other reliable sources when the official ones come to lack. Finally, the third paper (written with four hands) explains the specificity of a fieldwork in an authoritarian context and the importance of the daily “make do”.

If these difficulties are well-known among experienced researchers, they represent the core of Ph.D students informal discussion. Here, we choose to evoke them directly within a multidisciplinary framework, in order to better understand the constant problem of data access.

Persons in charge  : Antoinette Ferrand, Sorbonne-Université, CRHXIX et Sophia Mouttalib, ENS de Lyon, Triangle, France

Depicting the Ottoman nineteenth-century as an era of major political and juridical overhaul is quite a commonplace among historians; some even go so far as considering this period as a radical break with the past, unveiling a new path drawn by those European powers that were seen as models to emulate. In order to grasp my research subject with historical depth and nuance, my PhD thesis follows the methodology developed by the German historian Reinhart Koselleck, a pioneer of conceptual history.

I therefore intend to examine from a methodological point of view the difficulties, requirements and ambitions in trying to write a conceptual history in the Arab and Ottoman traditions of thought. Working on a multilingual context (without being able to master all of its many languages) and on a plurality of documents (treatises and essays, the press, archives) by borrowing a methodological and conceptual framework which originated in post-World War II Germany, can be questioned regarding the scientific relevance of such an enterprise, its feasibility, and the risks it entails. It is necessary to bear them in mind and also to never disregard the social, economic, cultural and political contexts in which discourses and concepts are developed, as to not write a conceptual history emptied from its historical substance. Only then will it be possible to harvest the full possibilities of studying this period through the lens of conceptual history, offering us a better understanding and appreciation of the Ottoman nineteenth-century political and intellectual climate, and “a unique access to how Ottomans [and Arab-Ottomans] envisioned their place within history”.

While working on the middle classes during the Nasser years, I am confronted with the difficult identification of these social groups, either that they never appear per se in official archives, or that they are designed by Western concepts whose relevance is questionable in an Oriental context.

Egyptian literature represents a tremendous way of overcoming the deficient memory of individuals and families, in offering to the reader a gallery of characters that become the paragons of a mythologised epoch : a civil servant “whose laziness was acquired in governmental routine”, a fillāḥa who left her village longing for an “honorable and respectable life”, an idle “owner of a building, a villa, and a car”, a handyman employed by a ministry, a modern woman whose career is as sensational as her single status, an ideal husband… A “society is being created” under Egyptian writers’ pen, which represents an unmissable source for the historian.

However, what role should be given to this literary testimony in a socio-historical analysis? What is the importance of literary expression in the original language? How to determine if the novel creates or rather relays social stereotypes of its time? What place should be left to imagination? If researchers already sketched the main challenges of this issue – among others, Ivan Jablonka in 2014, with his L’histoire est une littérature contemporaine : manifeste pour les sciences sociales – it continues to be relevant in an authoritarian context, when having access to documentation remains difficult.

Based on two qualitative studies conducted in anthropology and sociology on the one hand, and in political science on the other hand, this paper will examine the modalities of fieldwork in contemporary Egypt. More particularly, it will address the strategies used to build a network of interviewees in a closed context. This presentation is based on the ongoing PhD work of two researchers studying the links between climate change and migration in the Nile Delta and the contemporary Egyptian foreign policy.

This reflection was born out of common difficulties that are expressed in different ways for each of us. In an environment of mistrust towards the figure of the researcher, being sometimes considered as an agent of a foreign government attracting suspicion, our work is built around a network of trust. The imperatives of security thus guide the choice of respondents, focusing on personal and professional connections. In the context of an ethnographic study, for example, friendships are paramount. The proximity of respondents within this network has different implications for self-presentation and the overlap that can occur. As elsewhere, but especially in Egypt where the wasta system is essential, this network must be maintained (through regular messages, presence on ground and on social networks, etc.), even once the fieldwork is over.

Finally, in the absence of recommendations or previously established contacts, we sometimes do not allow ourselves to reach out to relevant interlocutors. This leads us to lean on alternative sources (press, literature, cinema...).

We will highlight those issues that take different forms for each of us but that are common to our respective disciplines and experiences.