BIOGRAPHY

Vilitcia Barghouti is a Palestinian Journalist whose published writing in Arabic covers a range of political, social, and cultural issues that concern Palestinian society. Some of her Professional Arabic writing published in refereed academic journals such as the Journal for Palestinian Studies, Maarif Journal for Researches' and Studies.  Other journalism articles published in “Al-Baidar” newspaper, the “Voice of Women,” and the “Civilized Dialogue.”

Barghouti has extensive work experience with the governmental sector in Palestine, such as with the Ministry of Local Government, the Ministry of Information, and the Land Authority. She also has broad work experience with the nongovernmental sector in Palestine, such as with the Center for Development Studies, Save the Children, and the Secretariat of the National Plan for the Palestinian Child.  In addition to work experience at educational institutions in both Palestine and the USA, such as with Birzeit University (Palestine), Al-Quds University (Palestine), Michigan State University (USA), and Western Michigan University (USA).  

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CURRENT RESEARCH

My research lies at the intersection of coloniality, indigeneity, race, labor, and capitalism, with particular attention to how settler-colonial political economies structure the organization and experience of labor in occupied Palestine. More broadly, I examine how settler colonialism shapes everyday social relations, institutions, and patterns of life in Palestine.

My current research employs qualitative methods, including content and narrative analysis, alongside archival research to examine the experiences of Palestinian workers from the West Bank employed in Israel and Israeli settlements. Drawing on these experiences, my research extends and refines Marx’s theory of alienation, or estrangement, to the context of colonized Palestine. I examine how colonial domination does not simply intensify existing forms of economic exploitation but fundamentally reorganizes the conditions through which workers relate to their labor, communities, families, and ultimately themselves.

I approach Palestine not only as an empirical case but also as a site of sociological theory production—a context from which established concepts of labor, exploitation, alienation, and social relations can be critically examined, extended, and theoretically reworked. In particular, I investigate how alienation is transformed when labor is organized within a settler-colonial political economy in which domination is intertwined with territorial fragmentation, identity categorization, political exclusion, dispossession, and systems of control.

More broadly, my research asks what Marxian theories of alienation and exploitation—and particularly Marx’s four forms of estrangement—reveal about the relationship between capitalism and colonial domination. By placing labor and workers’ lived experiences within the broader structures of settler colonialism, my work seeks to contribute to sociological understandings of how economic exploitation, colonial power, and social relations become mutually constitutive.

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