Dans le cadre du séminaire "Perspectives et territoires de la recherche au Proche-Orient".
Ifpo, Damas, Abou Roumaneh
American studies of the question of democracy in the Middle East are often concerned with how to produce a new kind of political person. Democracy, they say, requires people to be equipped with civic virtues, such as tolerance, trust, and respect for diversity. There is no reliable evidence that such virtues facilitate the emergence of more democratic forms of politics. Interestingly, however, some research projects now go further, and use methods designed not only to measure the presence or absence of these virtues, but to equip people with tools to strengthen them. In other words, political scientists are trying to change the world to make it conform better to their theories. Other scientists and social scientists, such as economists, have for a long time worked with a similar relationship to the world they study. Can we use these experiments to think differently about how democratic claims become effective?
Timothy Mitchell is a political theorist who studies the political economy of the Middle East, the political role of economics and other forms of expert knowledge, the politics of large-scale technical systems, and the place of colonialism in the making of modernity.
