Southern insights on the orient and western orientalisms

This is not another critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism. We know that there is still some space for further discussion on this matter and that there are still people wanting to engage with it, but this is not our concern here. Nevertheless, the term has become inescapable for people like us, researching into and teaching on Arab and Islamic contexts and topics – and even more so when our strategic location is constantly under surveillance in times of Islamophobia and Islamophilia, wary eyes asking if we are with Muslims or against them, or, in a more sophisticated way, with good Muslims or their evil twins, bad Muslims (Mamdani 2004). Strangely, and dangerously, our position regarding Islam – as a monolithic and petrified religion – is presumed to be part of our own academic identity. Said’s book or – as he wrote among other, very insightful things – his metabook – is timeless, both for good and for the wrong reasons. Here, however, we will be using the word ‘Orientalism’ in a narrow sense, referring to the production of humanities and social and cultural sciences on Arab and Islamic contexts and topics and, simply, discarding the nihilistic upshot of some post-Orientalist debates, assuming the political dimension of our researches and outputs. After all, and as Mitchell, appropriately out, Said’s main (and often misunderstood) simple question addressed in Orientalism was ‘How does one know the things that exist?’ and ‘To what extent are the “things that exist” constituted by the knower?’ (Mitchell 2003, referring to Said, 1978: 5). And even if he was neither the first to address this nor, for sure, the last, we need to state it for the sake of transparency and, ultimately and paradoxically, for the sake of science.This article was funded by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within the scope of the Project UID/ANT/04038/201

Património Industrial Ibero-americano: recentes abordagens

Neste livro, que é um contributo importante para o avanço do conhecimento sobre o Património Industrial no mundo ibero-americano,estão reunidos um conjunto de textos de jovens investigadores que abordam os seguintes temas: a importância de incrementar a ligação entre os testemunhos do património industrial e os recursos documentais para o seu estudo; o desenvolvimento da investigação sobre património industrial na universidade de modo a que se produza uma actualização e normalização das metodologias próprias da arqueologia industrial aplicadas, nomeadamente ao conhecimento e registo activo do património industrial; a importância do trabalho de equipas de carácter multidisciplinar; a necessidade de aplicar critérios rigorosos em relação às práticas de reabilitação do património industrial; o reforço do interesse patrimonial de paisagens, edifícios, instalações e infraestrutura pertencentes aos diferentes processos industriais; e destacar o papel fundamental que os grupos e associações de cidadãos desempenham na defesa e disseminação do património industrial