Decolonizing Arab organizational Knowledge: "Fahlawa" as a Research Practice. (September 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Yousfi, Hèla
• Other Names: Jammulamadaka Nimruji guest-editor.; Faria Alex guest-editor.; Jack Gavin guest-editor.; Ruggunan Shaun guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Organization. Volume 28:Number 5(2021)
• Page Start: 836
• Page End: 856
• Publication Date: 2021-09
• Subjects: Arab management -- critical ethnography -- culture -- postcolonial and decolonial studies -- border thinking -- reflexivity -- representation; Organizational sociology -- Periodicals; Organization -- Periodicals; 302.35
• DOI: 10.1177/13505084211015371
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1350-5084

Abstract

This article draws attention to how management scholars "the outsiders within" who are structurally positioned within the academies of dominant powers might negotiate the complexities of producing a locally rooted and meaningful knowledge, emancipated from the U.S. hegemony while carrying organization studies in Arab countries. Drawing upon my different ethnographic journeys as a researcher, brought up in an Arab country with a Francophone intellectual mindset and studying Arab management practices, I will discuss both the potential for and the difficulties of critical engagement with a decolonizing management research agenda. Then, and building on critical border thinking tradition, I will propose the Egyptian term "Fahlawa" as a metaphor for better describing the challenges of a decolonizing research practice that privileges contestation and perpetual bricolage over formal and universal design. Finally, I will conclude by highlighting the potential of "Fahlawa" as a survival/resistance practice to theorize what is unthought and invisible in management literature and to build situated knowledge less organized by U.S. domination.