The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East

by Armando Salvatore, Sari Hanafi, Kieko Obuse

Overview

The sociology of the Middle East has been an expanding field of inquiry since the aftermath of World War II when the Middle East became central in key sociological debates on modernization theory and their critical responses.

The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East connects this historical trajectory with the emergence of the sociology of Islam, inspired by Max Weber. It explores how within the global community, the Middle East has become a terrain of heightened concern within the post-Cold War context, where the promising rise of civic (and often religiously motivated) sociopolitical movements in the 1980s and 1990s has been slowly overwhelmed by the affirmation of jihadist networks, authoritarian states, and complex supranational security apparatuses. This foundational volume engages in a critical examination of the field, starting with a historical sociology of the making of the idea itself of the Middle East and linking it with the legacy of colonialism and the evolving dynamics of global power. In repurposing the sociology of the Middle East within a growing interdisciplinary multifield, the Handbook develops the critical argument that the exploration of social dynamics in the Middle East cannot be disjoined from the analysis of culture and politics.

With a diverse and international list of contributors, the Handbook provides a critical resource for academics and students in the field by offering a comprehensive, if diversified, perspective to investigate longstanding regional and new transregional dynamics impacting on the life of people in the Middle East.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190087470
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/11/2022
Series:	OXFORD HANDBOOKS SERIES
Pages:	944
Product dimensions:	9.81(w) x 7.16(h) x 1.92(d)

About the Author

Armando Salvatore is the Barbara and Patrick Keenan Chair in Interfaith Studies and Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies at McGill University. He has held professorial and research positions at Humboldt University Berlin, University of Naples 'L'Orientale,' National University of Singapore, Leipzig University, and Australian National University, Canberra. His most recent single-authored book is The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility (Wiley Blackwell, 2016). Among his other recent publications is the chief editorship of the multi-authored work The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam (Wiley Blackwell, 2018).

Sari Hanafi is currently a Professor of Sociology, Director of Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies and Chair of the Islamic Studies program at the American University of Beirut. He is the President of the International Sociological Association. He is as well editor of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology. Among his recent co-authored books is Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise (with R. Arvanitis, 2015). In 2019, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the National University of San Marcos.

Kieko Obuse is a Visiting Researcher at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, Japan and an Affiliate Member of the School of Religious Studies, McGill University. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and was formerly a Lecturer at the College of Religious Studies, Mahidol University, Thailand. Her main research interests are Buddhist-Muslim relations, Islam in Japan, and Thai Buddhism. She is currently working on a monograph titled Buddhist-Muslim Engagement: Doctrinal Negotiations in Southeast Asia and Japan. She is a co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2020-2021 online edition, 2022 print edition) and the book review editor of The Journal of Religion in Japan (Brill).

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. What Went Wrong?: Western Sociology and the Fiction of the Middle East
Armando Salvatore, McGill University, and Kieko Obuse, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies and McGill University

Part I: Legacies of Conflicts and Movements of Transformation

2. A Cognitive Arab Uprising?: Paradigm Shifts in Arab Social Sciences
Sari Hanafi, American University of Beirut
3. Colonialism in the Region: Foundations, Legacies and Continuities
Mark LeVine, University of California, Irvine
4. The End of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of Nation States
Frederick F. Anscombe, Birkbeck College, University of London
5. The Question of Palestine: From the Balfour Declaration to the Deal of the Century
Honaida Ghanim, Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies MADAR, Ramallah
6. Political Ideologies in the Middle East and North Africa
Michaelle Browers, Wake Forest University
7. The Many Faces of Zionism
Ilan Pappé, University of Exeter

Part II: Inflecting State-Society Relations

8. History and State Coercion in the Arab Spring: Against Presentism and Methodological Nationalism in the Study of the Arab State
Atef Said, University of Illinois at Chicago
9. The Social Life of Non-Profit and Third Sector in the Middle East
Benoit Challand, New School of Social Research, New York
10. A State of Discord: A Sociohistorical Reflection on Contested Statehood in Libya
Sherine El Taraboulsi-McCarthy, ODI
11. Key Issues in the Political Economy of the Gulf Cooperation Council States
Adam Hanieh, SOAS, University of London
12. Labor Migration to the Persian Gulf Monarchies
Zahra Babar, Georgetown University in Qatar
13. The Politics of Education in the Middle East: Problems and Challenges
Nadim Mirshak, The University of Manchester

Part III: Beyond the Religio-Civilizational Puzzle: Critical Views of Secularization and Islamization

14. The Place of Islam in the Foundation of Modern Social Theory: Tocqueville, Marx, and Weber
Lütfi Sunar, Istanbul Medeniyet University
15. Religion in the City
Timur Hammond, Syracuse University
16. The Transformation of Islamic Law in Modernity
Andrew March, University of Massachusetts Amherst
17. Varieties of Secularity
Florian Zemmin, Leipzig University
18. Religion and Politics in Turkey
Ates Altinordu, Sabanci University, Istanbul
19. The Troubled Course of Secularism in the Modern Middle East
Paul Salem, Middle East Institute, Washington DC
20. The Sunni Islamic Revival
Aaron Rock Singer, University of Wisconsin-Madison
21. The Idea of the "Islamic Intellectuals": A Chimera or a Lifeline?
Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Doha Institute
22. Iran's Islamic Revolution: The Return of the Hunchbacked Dwarf
Fatemeh Sadeghi Givi, University College London
23. Al-Nahda's Local Test: Compromise, Institutionalization and Generational Dislocation
Olfa Lamloum, International Alert
24. The Battle for the Soul of Islam
James M. Dorsey, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
25. The New Islamic State: The Rise and Fall of a New Wave of Jihadism
Farhad Khosrokhavar, CADIS, EHESS-CNRS, Paris

Part IV: Problematizing Youth and Gender

26. Excluded Generations in Non-Inclusive Nations: The Demographic Roots of Political Unrest in the Arab World
Philippe Fargues, European University Institute, Florence
27. Youth Unemployment and Alienation in the Middle East: A Critical View
Françoise De Bel-Air, European University Institute, Florence
28. Shifting Family Patterns
Bettina Dennerlein, University of Zürich
29. "When Women Change, Everything Changes": MENA Women and Making Health and Sexuality Matter
Kristin Soraya Batmangelichi, University of Oslo

Part V Dissecting Identities and Affirming Rights

30. For a Sociology of Sectarianism: Bridging the Disciplinary Gaps Beyond the "Deeply Divided Societies" Paradigm
Rima Majed, American University of Beirut
31. Ethnic Identity, Memory and Spaces of Violence
Craig Larkin, King's College London
32. LGBTQI Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Laws, Discourses, and Challenges
Serena Tolino, Bern University
33. Human Rights and Domestic Work in the Contemporary Gulf: A Critical Rights Development Review
Rima Sabban, Zayed University, Dubai
34. No Bread, No Freedom, No Social Justice: How EU-Egyptian Human Rights Discourse Undermines Democracy
Andrea Teti, University of Aberdeen, and Gennaro Gervasio, Università Roma Tre
35. A Sociology of Knowledge on Humanitarianism and Displacement: The Case of Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey
Estella Carpi, University College London, and Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, University College London

Part VI: Urban Spaces, Media Technologies, and Creative Disciplines

36. Globalization and Cosmopolitanism in the Middle Eastern City
Leïla Vignal, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France
37. What Satellite Television Has Done to the Public Sphere and to the Public in the Maghreb: Visibility and Plurality
Ratiba Hadj-Moussa, York University, Toronto
38. Social Media and Contentious Politics: Revisiting the Debate a Decade after the Beginning of the Arab Uprisings
Enrico De Angelis, independent scholar, and Yazan Badran, Free University, Brussels
39. Dismantling the Multitude: Urban Planning and the 'New Republic' in Egypt
Heba Raouf Ezzat, Ibn Haldun University
40. Music and the Politics of Culture in the Middle East
Mark LeVine, University of California, Irvine
41. Toward a Poetic Sociology of Iran
Setrag Manoukian, McGill University

Conclusion

42. Middle East or "Middle Earth"? "Re-Orienting" Orientalism and Globalizing Area Studies
Kieko Obuse, Kobe City University of Foreign Studies and McGill University, and Armando Salvatore, McGill University