Dr. Yazan Doughan

Biography

Yazan Doughan is an assistant professor whose anthropological work traverses the linguistic and socio-cultural branches of the discipline. His research engages closely with social legal theory, conceptual social history, and moral philosophy. Doughan’s work combines ethnography and genealogy with historical analysis to unpack questions of social justice in contemporary postcolonial contexts, particularly with Jordan as his primary field site. His current research project, a book concerning the Arab Spring protests in Jordan, uses ethnographic insights to examine the paradoxical status of 'the rule of law' in post-Cold War social justice narratives. This project also investigates the concept of 'corruption' in the context of neoliberal economic reforms from the mid-1980s to the present, analyzing its implications for social and political injustices. Furthermore, he has participated in a project exploring social transformations in the Jordanian border zone amid the Syrian civil war, juxtaposing the lives of Jordanians and Syrian refugees. Doughan’s future project aims to investigate contemporary practices of customary tribal justice in Jordan, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq, seeking to highlight the complexities between secular-modern legal systems and traditional frameworks. His expertise encompasses a wide range of topics related to social movements, human rights, and postcolonial studies in the Middle East.

Research Interests