Knowledge Production in the Arab World

Hanafi has co-authored book with Rigas Arvanitis, Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise (2015). The book received six reviews and a published debate in al-Mustaqbal al-Arabi between three scholars in the field of knowledge production: Antoun Zahlan, Adnan al-Amin and Mustafa al-Teer.^[9] The book addresses the knowledge production crisis in the Arab world, as well as the problem in the translation of knowledge into public awareness and policy. As a result of the book, Hanafi has encouraged the translation of scholarly works into Arabic, in an attempt to revitalize local and regional deliberation on societal issues. Hanafi has observed that Arab Eastern scholars fall into the trap of publishing globally and perishing locally, or publishing locally and perishing globally, thus highlighting the need to bridge the gap between these two trends.

Political sociology: camp governmentality

Hanafi's other research interests encompass political philosophy, political sociology, and the sociology of migration, covering different issues related to the Palestinian refugees and diaspora, and beyond. In these fields, Julie Peteet of Louisville University acknowledged in her 2007 article^[10] that Hanafi is the first scholar to conceptualize the Palestinians abroad as a Palestinian diaspora. In the same vein, his conceptualization of the camp as a space of exception has been widely cited in academic and policy works. In addition, Hanafi is a research director of the program “Policy and Governance in Palestinian Refugee Camps” at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI), and has facilitated these public and policy aspects. His tasks have been to follow-up the first stage of the research on governance on the refugee camps in Lebanon. This research project aims to clarify the relationship between power, sovereignty and space in Palestinian refugee camps in the Arab East, during 2009–2010. This research project resulted in many publications in English, French and Arabic, including a working paper in Arabic and English.^[11] Hanafi also took part in a multi-disciplinary research team on “Poverty assessment and targeting projects for Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon.” The research team is composed of AUB faculty (a sociologist, a nutritionist, a public health specialist, and an economist) and headed by economist Dr. Jad Shaaban.^[12]

The concept of spaciocide

This section may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject, potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral. (January 2024)

In his article “Explaining spacio-cide in the Palestinian territory”,^[13] Hanafi declared that his lived experience felt like what he called "spacio-cide". He lived in the West Bank (part of the Occupied Palestinian territories) in the time of the second intifada where the Israeli colonial authorities have transformed the West Bank into very small Bantustans where people live within an area of few kilometers square. He felt claustrophobic. This leads him to dig into political philosophy (such as Foucault, Agamben) to help him to understand everyday colonial Israeli practices in grape the Palestinian land and to makes the Palestinian territories almost unlivable place. From here he forged the concept of spacio-cide. Hanafi argues that the Israeli colonial project is ‘spacio-cidal’ (as opposed to genocidal) in that it targets land for the purpose of rendering inevitable the ‘voluntary’ transfer of the Palestinian population primarily by targeting the space upon which the Palestinian people live. The spacio-cide is a deliberate ideology with unified rational, albeit dynamic process because it is in constant interaction with the emerging context and the actions of the Palestinian resistance. By describing and questioning different aspects of the military-judicial-civil apparatuses, this article examines how the realization of the spacio-cidal project becomes possible through a regime that deploys three principles, namely: the principle of colonization, the principle of separation, and the state of exception that mediates between these two seemingly contradictory principles.

Public sociology

Hanafi's work on public sociology has been focused on a central question: How can sociology matter beyond the structures of the academic journal? Hanafi has stated that he believes that good scientists are not always popular, and yet he is an advocate of greater involvement of academics and universities in their local societies and the acknowledgement of different regimes of knowledge. In this context, he cites Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff's concept of the Triple Helix of university-industry-government relationships^[16] but states that it has ceded its place to the Quad Helix, as there is a missing link with civil society. Civil society, for him, is playing a major role in using knowledge produced within the university and in generating knowledge-based debates in public sphere, including religious spaces, where social science has historically been unable to penetrate, and at times openly hostile. These encounters are not only salient in helping civil society, but they bring faculty research into conversation with the public. He thus advocates for this dual conversation, and a reciprocal relationship where a meaningful dialogue would take place, fostering mutual learning that not only strengthens public knowledge but also enriches research work itself and help set relevant research agendas. Many of his research projects, and his involvement in the IFI program ‘Policy and Governance in Palestinian Refugee Camps,’ were a sort of action-research. There, he experienced what he called “Complex entanglements: Moving from professional to public sociology in the Arab world”.^[17] Through these projects, he worked with various organizations of Palestinian and Lebanese civil societies, popular committees, and political factions to improve mainly the governance in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and the Arab East at large. Another purpose was to raise many issues about different modes of knowledge production and public sociology. The Portal for Social Impact of Scientific Research in/on the Arab World (Athar) that he founded was an instrumental tool in this regard. Being a Palestinian refugee, he has been active in empowering the Palestinian refugee communities. He was one of the main organizers of a March for the Palestinian Civil and Socio-economic rights in Lebanon on June 27, 2010. Around 5,000 people participated in this march coming from all refugee camps but also from Lebanese localities such as al-Shuf Mountain towards the Lebanese Parliament in Beirut. He also frequently give lectures in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, the Occupied Palestinian territories, and Syria, and participate in empowering these communities by providing them with free consultation, and attending some of their organizational meetings. Furthermore, Hanafi founded in 2005 the monthly Sociology Café, which aims at creating a forum for informal discussions between students, professors and the public on critical issues related to life in Lebanon and the region. Hanafi's research focused on four types of research activities (professional, critical, public and policy), however, he states that said work is challenged by the double delegitimization of social science by the authoritarian political elite and some religious authorities. To illustrate that, he carried out ethnographic research on the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (governmentality in the refugee camps, reconstruction of Nahr el-Bared camp, civil and socio-economic rights). The outcome was not only published in international academic journals but also in Arabic and in local newspapers. This steered local debates that denounced in the same times and in varying degree the Lebanese authority and the Palestinian political factions. The research was followed by a large demonstration for the Palestinian refugee rights in different localities in Lebanon. Moreover, he participated in a Palestinian negotiation team to change the Lebanese discriminatory laws. This research also critiqued some scholars who overlook the socio-economic rights of the Palestinian refugees claiming that this would undermine the right of return. Those scholars, in the name of the political exception of the refugee camps, “theorized” keeping the camp in a misery as an urban exceptional space. Practicing public and policy sociology is indeed not an easy enterprise he started publishing exclusively in English and French as professional research before being evolved toward more complex forms of traditional and organic public sociology. Here he faced another problem how to conduct public research without losing its critical edge, even toward the deprived groups such as the Palestinian refugees, it seeks to protect. The moral of his story could be good scientists are not always popular.

Selected books

• Bayna ‘alamayn. Rijal al-a’mal al falastiniyyin fi al-shatat wa bina al qayan al falastini (Between Two Worlds: Palestinian Businessmen in the Diaspora and the Construction of a Palestinian Entity) (1996) two editions: Cairo, Dar al-Mostaqbal al-arabi, & Ramallah: Muwatin (Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy), January (Arabic).
• La Syrie des ingénieurs. Perspective comparée avec l'Egypte (1997) Paris : Karthala.
• Entre Deux Mondes. Les hommes d’affaires palestiniens et la construction de l’entité palestinienne (1997) Cairo : CEDEJ.
• Business Directory of Palestinian in the Diaspora (1998) Jerusalem: Biladi (In English, French and Arabic).
• Hona wa honaq : nahwa tahlil lil ‘alaqa bin al-shatat al-falastini wa al markaz (Here and There: Towards an Analysis of the Relationship between the Palestinian Diaspora and the Center) (2001) Ramallah : Muwatin, Jerusalem : Institute of Jerusalem Studies (distribution Beirut : Institute of Palestine Studies)
• (Ed.) Crossing borders, shifting boundaries: Palestinian Dilemmas (2008) American University in Cairo Press.
• Adi Ophir and Michal Giovanni and S. Hanafi (Ed.) The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (2009) New York: Zone Books. This book caused some troubles in AUB since he broke with it the red lines of boycotting-Israel policy adopted by the Lebanese state.
• Are Knudsen and S. Hanafi (Eds.) Palestinian Refugees: Identity, Space and Place in the Levant (2010) Routledge
• Is the morning coming soon? (Kuwait: Nohood Center)
• Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise. (with R. Arvanitis) (in Arabic, Beirut:CAUS and in English, Routledge -2016)
• From Relief and Works to Human Development: UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees after 60 Years. (Edited with L Takkenberg and L Hilal) (Routledge- 2014).
• The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in The Occupied Palestinian Territories (Edited with A. Ophir & M. Givoni, 2009) (English and Arabic) (NY:Zone Book; Beirut:CAUS), The Emergence of A Palestinian Globalized Elite: Donors, International Organizations and Local NGOs (with L. Taber, 2005) (Arabic and English); Pouvoir et associations dans le monde arabe (Edited with S. Bennéfissa, 2002) (Paris:CNRS).

Selected journal articles

• Hanafi, Sari (March 2013). "Explaining spacio-cide in Palestinian territory: Colonization, separation, and state of exception". Current Sociology. 61 (2): 190–205. doi:10.1177/0011392112456505. S2CID 145321717.