The Middle East in Global Modernity: Analytic Polycentrism, Historic Entanglements and a Rejuvenated Area Studies Debate

Abstract:

I argue that theories of global modernity/world society offer a promising inter-disciplinary approach for theorizing the Middle East. They provide a conceptual umbrella for a rejuvenated Area Studies debate. I turn first to earlier (inter-disciplinary) debates of that kind and then discuss how a rejuvenated debate can reach for new shores: I address the Middle East Area Studies Controversy, and then Fred Halliday’s distinction between ‘analytic universalism’ and ‘historic particularism’. (...)


Read more: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13629395.2021.1889301