[Bilimsel Haber] CfP: Professions and society in the Arab Middle East

[ONUR INAL]

Call for contribution

For a thematic issue of
Savoir, Travail et Societe (Knowledge, Work and Society)

On

Professions and society in the Arab Middle East

Edited by Hocine Khelfaoui (Universite du Quebec a Montreal) and Elisabeth Longuenesse (Laboratoire Printemps, CNRS, Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin en Yvelines)

The widening access to graduate studies during the last four or five decades in the Arab countries, resulted in an increasing number of professionals, whose social status rested on the nature of the knowledge they possessed as much as on the mission that was conferred to them in the
context of the development project.

Since the beginning of the nineties, these professions have experienced important changes, as a combined result of liberalisation policies and globalisation. The labour market has been shrinking for some professions, and widening for others, and for most of them, the academic requirements
increased over the years. New forms of professional mobilities, on a national as well as on an international level, compete with old mechanisms of migrations and give a new sense to the issue of brain drain in the
context of internationalisation of certain segments of the labour market.
Physicists and other medical professions, engineers and technicians, legal professions, managers and accountants, have been diversely affected by these changes. Some benefited from them, others suffered some form of
downgrading.

The present issue of Knowledge, Work and Society aims at collecting significant contributions that would give an account of these evolutions in the particular context of Arab countries. At the same time, it would recall the historical circumstances of the emergence and structuring of high and intermediate professions, defined by a specific body of knowledge. The expected contributions will consider professions such as engineers, physicians, teachers, accountants, managers, as well as intermediary technical or medical professional occupations.

The issues in discussion might concern the conditions of qualification and professionalisation as well as the modes of organisation, regulation and institutionalisation, demographic evolutions, social status (social
recognition and legitimacy), the relation between a profession and its neighbouring professional groups, as well as to its customers and clients, and the professional practices, through the type of knowledge and
qualification which it boasts.

The modalities of insertion in the local and national socio-economic fabric should be confronted to the consequences of globalisation and the opening of the national economies on to the international markets. A
special attention could be paid to the relation to the state, as well as to the forms of social and political mobilisation in the context of authoritarian regimes.

The proposals should be sent before December 20, 2006. Papers' length should not exceed 6000 words and will be expected before March 31, 2007, to be submitted to the editorial committee and referees. The issue is expected to be published at the end of 2007.

Proposals and articles should be addressed to the two editors by electronic mail as attached documents to the following addresses:

Hocine Khelfaoui <hocine.khelfaoui at uqam.ca>
Elisabeth Longuenesse <elisabeth.longuenesse at uvsq.fr>