Anthropology and Cultural Encounters (ACE) 2023/2024

As a springboard for creative works and activity on the level of culture and heritage, SAMA established an academic project stream to reflect on and challenge all aspects of anthropological and sociological ethics and practices related to the Old Medina in Sefrou. University leadership, researchers, and academics in Moroccan higher education recognize decolonizing higher education is a tough call but know this needs to happen. We have a practical project that seeks to address one aspect of decolonizing the curriculum in Moroccan higher education and bring the dialogue that flows into our civic program.

SAMA engages with a team of academic translators keen to contribute over the next year to a project to translate and publish:
1) A series of anthropological texts on diverse topics related to the Old Medina in Sefrou, Morocco, from English into Classical Arabic.
2) Relevant articles written in Classical Arabic by Moroccans from Arabic into English.

Sefrou has been a significant site of research for the global North. Clifford and Hilda Geertz conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Sefrou between 1963 and 1986. Geertz created seminal contributions to the ways to represent culture through his work on the market –the Old Medina – in Sefrou. Sefrou became known as an ethnic laboratory to Anglophone sociologists spanning the globe. Subsequent publications became substantial material for Anglophone discourse that continues to be used as academic reference today.

Yet these academic references are not available to Sefrouian, or Arabic speakers in their own language thus depriving them of the opportunity to engage and critique this discourse from an insider perspective.

A follow-up phase to the publication of these articles into Arabic will be –

i. Disseminate them into academia to debate and discuss from a Moroccan perspective.

ii. Create a civic program that brings these articles into the Sefrouian public realms so that the ‘anthropologized’ may respond.

We are currently seeking funding for this project. If you would like to donate, please contact us. info@samasefrou-org