Researchers discuss the logistics of successful fieldwork but not the mental health considerations that fieldwork and the research process introduce. Successful fieldwork and fruitful academic careers hinge on acknowledging and managing our mental health. We discuss peer-support networks, secondary trauma, coping skills, therapy, and researchers’ mental health options before, during, and after fieldwork.
What determines support for violent versus nonviolent strategies? I argue that strategy preference is motivated by an individuals’ assessment of their society’s cohesion. Perception of strong social cohesion, as existing literature argues, should increase individual support for nonviolence, as it gives people confidence that their society will be able to carry out that strategy effectively. I build on this work to show that perception of social cohesion does not always reflect individual conditions; in situations where social cohesion is weak, violence becomes attractive specifically to those who recognize this reality. The paper tests these arguments in the case of Palestine, using survey data and experimental methods, specifically polling data from the Arab Opinion Index in the West Bank and Gaza. The evidence shows that individuals who perceive society to be more cohesive prefer violence less. However, respondents may perceive social cohesion as weak, even while they personally enjoy strong social ties and greater social embeddedness. In this scenario, they are more likely to prefer armed resistance because they use their social ties to gain information and assess risk more effectively. Individuals who are networked in political power structures, members of political parties and those with higher levels of education, are those that both enjoy greater social ties and prefer violence to nonviolence. Their social situation helps them to recognize the weakness of social cohesion in society at large and, based on this perception, make certain choices. This suggests that violence in the Palestinian territories is not a spontaneous eruption, but rather a strategic choice that individuals endorse on the basis of a reasoned assessment of available options and constraints.
Arab social science scholarship, and IR in particular, has been systematically underfunded and sidelined by governments across the region. As such, IR scholars in the Arab world have struggled to produce scholarship in hostile and authoritarian environments, let alone address efforts to decolonise. Of the few initiatives of indigenising social science that exist in the Arab world, the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI) and its founding institution, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), are the main examples. In this intervention, I will review the attempts to indigenise and decolonise IR within these institutions. I focus on how the DI is implementing three main approaches: increasing access to the discipline, rethinking how we teach IR, and facilitating theory production from the region. I demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the three abovementioned approaches by drawing attention to performative measures on the part of regional scholars, and pretending localism on the part of scholars in the Global North, which together help to perpetuate neomarginalisation. The shortcomings discussed permeate and distort attempts to decolonise the discipline within the Arab world.
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