Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive

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CHAPTER ONETHE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:CONCEPTS AND PROBLEMATICSOF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETYIntroductionThis chapter presents a general theoreticalframework for the knowledge society, basedon four major axes linked by the concernsand issues invoked by the project to create a“knowledge society” as an integral part of acomprehensive programme of Arab renaissance.The first of these axes presents the premisesand principles guiding the knowledge society.The second deals with the conceptual structureof the discourses that have attempted to shedlight on the changes in modern societies sincethe information revolution. Here we haveconstructed an operational definition of theknowledge society in the Arab world, based onthe ideas put forward in the Report’s variouschapters. The third axis constructs the systemsof reference that have guided, and continue toguide, knowledge discourse in the contemporaryworld and allows us to become acquaintedwith the dimensions and options underlyingearlier reports on the same topic. The fourthaxis examines some of the problematic issuesposed today by information and knowledgedevelopment in contemporary society, believingthat reflection on these issues will influence effortsto close knowledge gaps in the Arab world andachieve comprehensive human development.While subsequent chapters of the Reportexamine the quantitative and qualitativedimensions of the most significant foundationsof knowledge, this chapter deals with thetheoretical structure of Arab knowledgeperformance and constructs the intellectualframe of reference that underlies it. It seeksto provide insights that will help us acquirekeys to the knowledge society, develop the fieldof knowledge in the Arab world, and supportactive intercommunication with the knowledgeadvances of our age.PREMISES AND PRINCIPLES:THE KNOWLEDGE-DEVELOPMENT-FREEDOMTRIADTwo fundamental premises lie behind thedriving concepts of the Arab KnowledgeReport and provide orientation for its variouschapters, be it this chapter concerned withinquiry into the concepts, problematicsand frames of reference, chapter 2 dealingwith the enabling environment, or thosechapters on the knowledge society’s mostsignificant foundations and manifestations.The first premise is that there exists atriadic relationship among knowledge,development, and freedom. When wespeak of the relationship between humandevelopment and knowledge, we evokethe teleological dimension that placesknowledge at the service of development.When we speak of freedom, we have inmind the social and political frameworksthat support knowledge and innovationthrough creative interaction between theexpansion of freedom and the creation ofknowledge.The second premise concerns therelationship between development andthe building of a knowledge society, as itis widely recognised that knowledge tendsto engender social development, includingeconomic, social, and cultural efforts toovercome the deficiencies that limit theexpansion of human well-being.Knowledge is a human right anda means to overcome many of thedifficulties and obstacles facing mankind.Today it is increasingly becoming a vitalrequirement of development. Currentdata from countries with high levels ofThere exists atriadic relationshipamong knowledge,development,and freedomKnowledge isa human rightand a means toovercome manyof the difficultiesand obstaclesfacing mankindTHE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: CONCEPTS AND PROBLEMATICS OF THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY27
The successfuldeployment ofthe knowledgeproduced inall spheres ofeconomic and socialactivity contributeseffectively to theexpansion ofhuman choice andemancipationBOX 1-1This report uses the term “knowledge”to embrace all forms of a society’sepistemological and cultural assets andviews it as a major organizing principalof holistic human development.Knowledge in this sense seeks toexpand options and opportunitiesavailable to the individual Arab andto achieve for him or her freedomThe relationbetweenknowledge anddevelopmentshould not beunderstood ina frameworkof mechanisticdeterminismintellectual and technological propertyconfirm that the successful deploymentof the knowledge produced in allspheres of economic and social activitycontributes effectively to the expansionof human choice and emancipation. Thisin turn results in the achievement ofcomprehensive human development.It is important to stress here thatthe relation between knowledge anddevelopment should not be understood ina framework of mechanistic determinism.On the contrary, this relationship must beunderstood in light of the historical debatethat establishes interactions betweenthese fundamentals and thus creates themanifestations and poles of the knowledgesociety, as we aim to show.The Concept of Knowledgeand an honourable life. Knowledge—whether we are talking in terms of itsacquisition, production, indigenisationor deployment—thus becomes a tooland goal that affects all levels of societyequally and involves all of fields, fromthe scientific, technical, cultural, andtraditional to accumulated communitywisdom.THE CONCEPTUAL BUILDINGBLOCKSThe concepts prevailing in the literature onthe information age fall into two categories.The first category is that of central conceptsthat outline the intellectual space of theage; these are still in a stage of theoreticalformation and development. The secondis that of intermediate concepts that gointo the production and reproductionof the discourse on knowledge. Thoseconcerned with the knowledge society haveformulated a group of concepts that seekto capture the transformations occurringwithin new realms of knowledge. Theseconcepts, however, are plagued withambiguity and conflicting significations,and this increases confusion and widensthe gap in an age in which the gainsfrom knowledge are indispensable. Thedifficulty in terminology is exacerbated bythe novelty and speed at which new termsare introduced to the literature. Most termsare no more than four decades old andhave been in common use for only threedecades. They lack “epistemic saturation,” 1for they are still marked by an operationalcharacter, and this renders agreement ontheir limits of application difficult.It follows that our goal in creating aconceptual structure for our work isto be able to delineate the limits ofepistemic saturation and, at the sametime, to scrutinise the operationaldimension behind the concepts in orderto reach a minimum of agreement onthe significations assigned to particularconcepts in the contemporary discourseon knowledge.FROM KNOWLEDGE TOKNOWLEDGE SOCIETYTHE DEVELOPMENT OFTHE CONCEPT OF THEKNOWLEDGE IN ARABCULTUREThe term “knowledge” (ma‘rifa) is used inthe Arab linguistic and cultural traditionin several ways and with more than onemeaning. Knowledge is the opposite ofignorance, as the term “knowledgeable”(‘arif ) is given to one who is well versedin something that he undertakes. Whena multiplicity of cognitive specialisationstook shape in Islamic Arab thought in theMiddle Ages, the same word, in the sense ofone who acquires and becomes a bearer ofknowledge, began to refer to the specialistin the finer points of information within aspecific field of knowledge.Arabic use of the term ma‘rifa allowsfor a positive value since its opposite, jahl(ignorance), carries a negative value (Sa‘idYaqtin, background paper for the Report).The dictionary entitled al-‘Ayn, for example,brings together the meanings given in theentry for the letters that form the root28 ARAB KNOWLEDGE REPORT 2009
Page 1 and 2: United Nations Development Programm
Page 3 and 4: This Report has been produced throu
Page 5 and 6: This year’s report may perhapsbes
Page 7 and 8: ICT in the Arab countries and reinf
Page 9 and 10: CONTENTSPREAMBLEIntroductionPrelimi
Page 11 and 12: Quantitative indicatorsTertiary edu
Page 13 and 14: LIST OF BOXESBox 1 The Effect of th
Page 15 and 16: Figure 5-7 Published scientific art
Page 17 and 18: Table 21 Time devoted to secondary
Page 19 and 20: The knowledgefield and revolutionto
Page 21 and 22: The literature onhuman rights place
Page 23 and 24: Arabic istechnologicallypoor in com
Page 25 and 26: Intercommunicationwith the self mea
Page 27 and 28: Table 2CountryGroupGroup 1: Oilecon
Page 29 and 30: Figure 2504540353025201510508070605
Page 31 and 32: In the period2003-2007, morethan 83
Page 34 and 35: eversion, in many cases, is not ass
Page 36 and 37: Thus the Arab region in general, an
Page 38 and 39: knowledge over recent years. This w
Page 40 and 41: However, this progress remains limi
Page 42: CHAPTER ONETHE THEORETICAL FRAMEWOR
Page 47 and 48: The knowledgerevolution atthe end o
Page 49 and 50: Technology, theeconomy, andsociety,
Page 51 and 52: No one pursuesknowledge forits own
Page 53 and 54: The Report adoptsa concept ofknowle
Page 55 and 56: The goal of thiscritical review isn
Page 57 and 58: In our bidfor economicand humandeve
Page 59 and 60: The political reformproject remains
Page 61 and 62: Globalisation isdependent oninforma
Page 63 and 64: The battle overknowledge in oursoci
Page 65 and 66: The most obviousexample of the gapb
Page 67 and 68: BOX 1-9The Virtual as an Interrogat
Page 69 and 70: The upsurge intechnologicalprowess
Page 71 and 72: Collective humaneffort must bedirec
Page 73 and 74: End Notes1Epistemic saturation refe
Page 76 and 77: CHAPTER TWOARAB KNOWLEDGE PERFORMAN
Page 78 and 79: current economic crisis in the autu
Page 80 and 81: FIGURE 2-3Perceptions of corruption
Page 82 and 83: technology infrastructure, blogs ar
Page 84 and 85: nations continue to occupy their pr
Page 86 and 87: to the third oil boom, which reache
Page 88 and 89: have realised a degree of progress
Page 90 and 91: FIGURE 2-8Index of global competiti
Page 92 and 93: FIGURE 2-10Net exports of manufactu
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namely the spread of poverty, socia
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TABLE 2-2Arab Countries according t
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while some of these nine countries
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and political participation. All of
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first INTEL computer club; INTELis
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from the ages of thirteen to twenty
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solutions that allow use of the ava
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to this trajectory, a consumer, not
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specific cases.These flexibilities
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CHAPTER THREEEDUCATION AND THE FORM
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FIGURE 3-1Education and human resou
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of the qualitative knowledge capita
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TABLE 3-1CountryOpportunities for b
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Virtually the only area in which Ar
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must possess if they aspire to part
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TABLE 3-2Opportunities for the form
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General secondary education andthe
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elatively high enrolment rates of b
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Available data shows large discrepa
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TABLE 3-3Comparison of overall resu
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females. According to this data, to
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show educational accomplishments am
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inroads well beyond their current f
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FIGURE 3-6aMaths performance of eig
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BOX 3-8The Contribution of Non-Publ
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Kuwait, and the worst performers su
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emained encumbered by the prevailin
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eveal the breadth of the gap that c
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countries and providing a picture o
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information systems. The available
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89Finland, for example, whose stude
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CHAPTER FOURINFORMATION AND COMMUNI
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FIGURE 4-1ICT index values for Arab
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countries and the Arab countries. T
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Arab countries-Egypt, Algeria, Leba
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of Arabic content and its low rate
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exchange of future technology servi
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of national partnerships aimed at s
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TABLE 4-2Readiness of Arab countrie
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as the implementation of programmes
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BOX 4-2Evaluating the Performance o
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of common principles that guarantee
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data from various sources and then
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FIGURE 4-11Paper consumption and in
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processing and the methods and tool
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TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEAND FUTURE INI
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within bounds that do not hinder bu
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preservation and the consolidation
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21As a result of the nature of comp
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CHAPTER FIVEARAB PERFORMANCE IN RES
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FIGURE 5-1Innovation system index f
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The extremely lowamounts spentby Ar
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It has become clearthat the wager o
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Joint researchprojects among Arabsc
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Theoretically, themore researcherst
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Average expenditureon scientific re
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BOX 5-6Jordan’s “A Professor in
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BOX 5-8For the last three decades,
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FIGURE 5-7Published scientific arti
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A review of theperiod from 2002to 2
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Social scienceresearch holds aspeci
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Most Arabic-languageperiodicals in
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Arab societies arefilled with examp
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Human capitalis among Arabcountries
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TABLE 5-12Trade in technological pr
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It is ironic thatalthough the Arabw
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End Notes1UNESCO Institute for Stat
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CHAPTER SIXBUILDING THE KNOWLEDGE S
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The most conspicuousfeature of thek
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A review of nationalplans in the Ar
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The positiveachievements inthe Arab
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One of the keyfoundations of thevis
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Freedom andinstitutionalisationare
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Priorities are subjectto a great de
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If we admit thatlanguage is avehicl
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The major challengelies in changing
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Deployment is linkedto the creation
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The variousproposals includedin thi
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ReferencesReferences in Arabic‘Ab
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the President of the ICRC Expresses
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al-Duwal al-‘Arabiyya, UNESCO’s
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Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development asF
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Castells, Manuel. (1998/2001). LaSo
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the Age of Technology).• Binsa‘
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egional and international levels an
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ANNEX 3. MEASUREMENT OF THE ARABCOU
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indicators that make up the pillar.
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countries’ rankings among the cou
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of the Arab countries and suffer fr
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Freedom House and Heritage Institut
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Endnotes* This annex was prepared b
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STATISTICAL ANNEXGENERAL INDICATORS
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Table 3: Economic IndicatorsCountry
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KNOWLEDGE PERFORMANCE ENVIRONMENTST
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Table 7: Press Freedom Index in the
Page 296 and 297:
EDUCATIONTable 9: Adult literacy ra
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Table 11: Gross enrolment ratios in
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Table 13: Adult illiterate populati
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Table 16: Net and gross enrolment i
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Table 18: Lessons in basic educatio
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Table 20: Literacy rates among youn
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Table 22: Evolution of enrolment ra
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Table 24: Student enrolment rates i
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Table 26: Distribution of graduates
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Table 28: Estimated educational lev
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Table 30: Enrolment rates in non-go
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RESEARCH AND INNOVATIONTable 32: Nu
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Table 34: Indicators on research an
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INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHN
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FIGURE b-2Growth in average number
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competition between the internet se
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Table c-4: Ranking of a group of Ar
Page 332:
United Nations Development Programm
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