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Reimagining Work

Reimagining Work

Reimagining Work offers a profound and timely exploration of one of humanity’s most enduring questions: what is the true nature and purpose of work? In an age when automation, financialization, and global inequality challenge the moral foundations of economic life, this study returns to first principles—reconsidering how civilizations have understood work as both a material and ethical force.

At its core, Reimagining Work situates the concept of labor within a comparative dialogue between Ibn Khaldun—the fourteenth-century North African historian, philosopher, and founder of the science of civilization (ʿilm al-ʿumrān)—and leading Western economic thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Max Weber, and John Maynard Keynes. Through this dialogue, the study illuminates not only the intellectual lineage of economic thought but also the deep divergences that shape modern understandings of value, productivity, and human purpose.

Drawing on the Systems Thinking Framework, the work challenges the reduction of labor to a mere factor of production. Instead, it presents work as a structuring principle—a force that organizes societies, sustains moral orders, and determines how wealth and meaning are distributed within civilizations. Ibn Khaldun’s pre-Enlightenment vision, which places work at the center of social and spiritual life, offers a striking contrast to the evolution of Western economic paradigms that increasingly separate capital from human labor.

The study’s comparative approach reveals how, over time, Western thought progressively abstracted value from work—transforming it from a human act of creation and cooperation into an instrument of accumulation. In contrast, Ibn Khaldun’s conception of work as the original and enduring source of value foregrounds ethical responsibility and social cohesion. This divergence invites readers to reconsider the philosophical roots of today’s economic crises: from labor alienation and inequality to environmental degradation and political discontent.

Moreover, Reimagining Work underscores the determinant role of the State in shaping dominant worldviews—highlighting how institutions legitimize or marginalize particular notions of labor and worth. By integrating historical insight with systems analysis, the study opens new avenues for imagining economies that prioritize human well-being over profit, sustainability over exploitation, and moral order over material excess.

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The Grammar of Systems Thinking in Ibn Khaldun’s Writings

Ibn Khaldun’s Systemic Language in the Muqaddima Ahmed E. Souaiaia, University of Iowa Here, I examine Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima through what I call the grammar of systems thinking, arguing that his writings exhibit a sophisticated systemic logic articulated through language, method, and explanatory practice rather than through formal theory. Addressing the common anachronism objection—that identifying Ibn Khaldun as a systems thinker projects a modern framework onto a pre-modern author—the cited evidence demonstrates that Ibn Khaldun consistently employed a vocabulary and analytical structure grounded in order (tartīb), rules (aḥkām), causality (asbāb and musabbabāt), connection (ittiṣāl), organization (intidām), and instrumentalization (istidhār)—some of the key principles of the systems thinking framework. His concepts function together as a coherent grammar governing his explanations of natural phenomena, human action, economic activity, and political power. Ibn Khaldun integrates co...
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Processing Theory in Islamic Thought

In " Processing Theory in Islamic Thought: A Comparative Analysis of al-Mawardi and Ibn Khaldun with Implications for Islamic Education ," published in the November 2025 issue of Tadibia Islamika, Muhammad Farid Asysyauqi undertakes a sophisticated re-examination of medieval Islamic scholarship through the lens of modern cognitive psychology. The article moves beyond the traditional bifurcation of al-Mawardi as merely a jurist and Ibn Khaldun as solely a sociologist, positing instead that both scholars constructed intricate theories of information processing that prefigure contemporary educational psychology. By employing Optimal Matching Analysis (OMA) to dissect classical texts like Adab al-Dunya wa al-Din and al-Muqaddimah, Asysyauqi constructs a compelling narrative that bridges the gap between twelfth-century theology and twenty-first-century information processing theory. The narrative begins with al-Mawardi, whose contribution is reframed from simple moral instruction ...
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Ibn Khaldun’s Systems Thinking Approach to Property and Political Legitimacy

Abstract This article examines Ibn Khaldun’s foundational economic principle that active human work—expressed through the ever-present, transformative agency of the hand ( yad )—produces rightful ownership ( kasb ) that cannot be surrendered except through compensation ( ʿiwaḍ ). This dynamic relationship between labor, possession, and reciprocal exchange not only legitimates individual property but also establishes the systemic conditions under which the State may impose taxes without descending into injustice. In grounding political and fiscal legitimacy in the natural processes of human work rather than in inherited legal categories, Ibn Khaldun articulates a worldview that sets him apart from classical Muslim jurists and places him in a category of his own within Islamic intellectual history. This same systems-thinking framework—through which he analyzes value, authority, and historical change—has rendered him profoundly misunderstood or entirely un-understood by many modern scho...
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Ibn Khaldun in Contemporary Scholarship

Rethinking a Complex Worldview Across Economics, Sociology, and Philosophy Abstract   Recent decades have witnessed a striking resurgence of scholarly interest in the work of Ibn Khaldun, a fourteenth-century North African thinker long celebrated yet insufficiently theorized. Although often described as the founder of sociology or an early political economist, Ibn Khaldun developed a far more comprehensive and internally coherent system for understanding human civilization, one that linked economics, social cohesion, moral psychology, urban development, historical cycles, and statecraft within a single conceptual architecture. Modern scholarship, however, has often treated Ibn Khaldun selectively, isolating one or two concepts—asabiyya, state cycles, taxation—without appreciating the systemic totality of his thought. This article surveys recent works on Ibn Khaldun. Taken together, these works reveal both the richness of Ibn Khaldun’s intellectual legacy and the persistent gaps...
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The Bridge of Becoming: Reimagining Work and Capital through Ibn Khaldun and Western Economic Thought

 Abstract This study reimagines the foundational role of work in economic life through a comparative analysis of Ibn Khaldun and key Western economic thinkers, including Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Max Weber, and John Maynard Keynes. Drawing on the Systems Thinking Framework, the research positions work not merely as an economic activity but as a structuring principle that shapes civilizations, value systems, and social organization. Unlike modern paradigms that prioritize capital accumulation, this study explores how Ibn Khaldun’s pre-Enlightenment perspective centers work as the original and enduring source of value, production, and moral order. By contrasting this with Western theories that progressively decouple wealth from labor, the paper proposes a re-evaluation of economic systems toward a more equitable, sustainable, and human-centered model. The study also underscores the determinant role of the State in shaping dominant worldviews, offering a critical perspective on the i...
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Knowledge in the Shadow of Power

Ibn Khaldun and the Systems of Intellectual Survival By Ahmed E. Souaiaia Abstract This article examines Ibn Khaldun’s striking praise of political authority in the introduction to al-Muqaddima , arguing that it reflects neither hypocrisy nor routine courtly convention, but a historically informed strategy shaped by the structural conditions of knowledge preservation. Drawing on Ibn Khaldun’s theory of the state ( al-dawla ) as an emergent system grounded in ʿumrān —a concept encompassing social cohesion and civilizational development—as well as patronage and institutional continuity, the article demonstrates that knowledge production is inseparable from power. By situating Ibn Khaldun’s choices alongside earlier episodes of intellectual suppression, most notably the fate of Ibn Rushd, and his own experiences of political instability, exile, and imprisonment, proximity to power is reframed as calculated accommodation rather than ideological submission. Extending the analysis to the pre...
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