Social Sciences in Palestine: Critical Reflexing

This paper aims to examine the practices and perceptions of Palestinians socials scientists in an attempt to historicize the social sciences in Palestine and to clarify divergent visions and positions both normatively and epistemologically. The evidence shows that there are differences in perceptions and approaches among members of the Palestinian scientific community regarding conceptual issues, a fact that reflects diversity of the cognitive tendencies and visions on one hand, and the effect of globalized international scientific groups on the other, in addition to the desire of the Palestinian scientific community to be engaged with the global academy.

The paper will also present different approaches of Palestinian researchers through an overview to their research and to its outputs, approaches and debates and the discussions problematizing their methodologies and references. And how to create a social knowledge that enables the study of the Palestinian social phenomena? and with what tools? and how to do we do with the results of such studies? And what is the role of researchers in the social sciences within their colonialized society, and how to adapt between the epistemological and societal commitment. And give a close reading of the approaches, various researchers use to liberate their discourse from the dominance of cultural centers, especially certain Western notions? the question here, is How to reconcile Al-Khaldouni notions of sociology with Western sociology? Presenting thus a broad overview of the debates on methodology, focusing on the debates about the methods used to "acclimatization" or "home-aization" of these sociological knowledge, all alined to the local phenomena studied. Added to this, a view of other debates related to the research tools and the language its produced in will be problematized. in other words, do we produce Arabic knowledge of the Palestinian society with English?