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2024
The Seminar for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Basel is offering one fully-funded doctoral position for the research project "Futures Interrupted: social pluralism and political projects beyond coloniality and the nation-state". This five-year project, started in January 2024, is led by Falestin Naïli (principal investigator) and is funded through a Swiss National Science Foundation Consolidator grant. The project: This collective project aims to renew our perspective on the period between the end of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of the age of nations in the Arab world by paying particular attention to local actors. The focus on unrealized social and political projects promoted by local actors allows us a look at the Arab world beyond the colonial framework and beyond the prevailing nation-state model. It also offers a view of alternative articulations of belonging and political community, using case-studies stretching from North Africa to South West Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. Futures Interrupted will be particularly attentive to the ways in which these unimplemented or unfinished projects dealt with the social pluralism which characterized the region at that time and which, in many parts of the area, was upset by the colonial division into separate states that occurred mostly after the First World War.
This essay examines the function of the concept of the nation-state in the Arab world. The essay comparatively assesses the meaning of the nation-state and how it has been received in the Arab World, relying on the results of a study conducted amongst Arab thinkers, politicians and statesmen since the end of World War I. The first section outlines the pertinence of the earlier debate with regards to both the concept and the context of framing nations within a post-Ottoman political environment. In the following sections, the article discusses the emergence of the nation-state and its characteristics in general and then examines the Arab nation-state specifically, from its sense of belonging and positive ideology to the inevitable clash of identities. Finally, it critically analyses the failure of integration within nation-states in the Arab World and their struggle for legitimacy based on new modern constitutions.
Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals
State Building, Modernization and Political Islam: The Search for Political Community(s) in the Middle East1997 •
To appreciate the dynamics involved in identity formation and re-formation is the key to understanding the processes by which nation and state building in the Middle East have adapted to modernization and political Islam. Soltan affirms that four identities–primordial, national, regional and universal– cast the basic scope of Middle East politics. And these, far from facilitating a national consensus or healthy coexistence in each country, have instead found that they interact in an arena of the remnant of the colonial period –the territorial state, whose legitimacy must not only be measured by the commitment to serving much broader Arab or Islamic interests, but whose moral and ideological grounds for existence are often ironically disguised in the supra-national rhetoric of nationalists.The specificity of the Middle East, that is to say the pace and form of its development, the rise of diverse fundamentalist movements, and the historical significance of the globalization process o...
2012 •
This book explores the conditions of state formation and survival in the Middle East. Based on Historical Sociology, it provides a model for study of the state in the Arab world and a theory to explain its survival. Examining states as a ‘process’, the author argues that what emerged in the Middle East in the beginning of the twentieth century are ‘social fields’—where states form and deform—and not states as defined by Max Weber. He explores the constitutions of these fields—their cultural, material and political structures—and identifies three stages of state development in which different cases can be located. Capturing the dilemmas that ‘late-forming states’ face as regimes within them cope with domestic and international pressure, the author illustrates several Middle East cases and presents a detailed analysis of state developments in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He maintains that more than the domestic characteristics of individual states, state survival in the Middle East is also a function of the anarchic nature of the international (and by extension the regional) states-system. The first to raise the question on the survivability of the territorial states in the Middle East while engaging with both International Relations and Comparative Politics theories, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East politics, Comparative Politics and International Relations.
" You shall know a word by the company it keeps " 1 John Robert Firth rightly says. A single word in isolation has no sense. Same is the case with individuals, societies, cultures, and nations. In a way or another, the horse is distinguished when connected with other set of animals such as camels, oxen or mules. Similarly, an individual, a culture or a society is defined when it is combined with its opposites, binaries or contradictories. In other words, identity, whether individual, ethnic, racial, national, socio-political or even hybrid is realized only when it's compared or associated with a set of relations or concepts which, collectively, participate in forming one's/societies identity as whole. As we all know, the construction of one's identity takes longer time; keeps evolving with the passage of time; and affects and being affected inwardly and outwardly. This humble research argues the status of the Arab unitary Identity in the age of globalization and how, from the second half of the twentieth century (known as Post-colonial period), the tyrannical men of power and dynastical or monarchical regimes, negatively, contributed to the decay of the Arabs' oneness; and consequently lead to the pitiable contemporary Arabic situation. This dreadful situation caused a big trauma in the Arab identity and accordingly resulted in a crisis, devastation and loss of identity. Thus, this paper tries to tackle the heart of the matter of identity and classifies the impact of the disintegration of Arabs on the shattered aspirations of the young Arab generations. It also questions the rise and fall of Arab hopes for founding a territorial entity based on a unified identity, focusing on issues that contribute to the prevailing impasse at the beginning of the 21st century. In summing up, the present paper sheds light on the challenges the Arab-Spring generation encounters, particularly, at the Post-Arab Spring era; and how their struggle for collective Arabic identity is perceived by others.
The authors argue that the condition of the state apparatus occupies a central position in the management of ongoing and looming regional challenges. More specifically, they put forward that dealing with the difficulties facing the region lies in addressing the state capacity gap. The article aims to show the persisting relevance of ‘stateness’ in the region. For the authors, without evaluating the nature of the state in the region, analyses seeking to address the region’s numerous problems and crises would be incomplete. In that regard, the authors illustrate that the two fundamental characteristics of the state, civic stability, and security are under direct threat, namely, (i) the lacking state capacity to deal with increased social and political mobilisation and the legitimacy underpinned by representation and inclusion and (ii) the monopoly over the use of violence and territorial control. Adding to the complexity of the dynamics at play in the region is the fact that these two aspects are highly intertwined. That is, the authors underline that each problem of governance, which is not resolved through civic mechanisms, renders pseudo-state structures like ISIS a more viable option, thus facilitating the turn of local people to these groups in their quest for basic state services and protection. Within the context of the dominant theme addressed throughout this article, the authors suggest that the policy-makers of this region should not miss the points that state-making is a social experiment and that a state can survive when it has a broad social base, which can only be achieved through inclusive state-building projects. They emphasize that any prospective state project should attempt to create popular demand by incorporating local elements and adopting a society generated approach. At the same time, this article also calls for international and regional cooperation in endorsing state-building processes and in promoting a sense of a “Middle Eastern Westphalia”.
ODÜ Sosyal Bilimler Araştırmaları Dergisi
Milli Mucadele Donemi Propaganda Calısmalarında Kurumlararası Koordinasyon2023 •
2023 •
Documenta Praehistorica XXVI, Neolithic Studies, University of Ljubljana, pp. 71-87.
Neither person nor beast – dogs in the burial practice in the Iron gates Mesolithic1999 •
European Journal of Cognitive Psychology
The effects of pressure to report more details on memories of an eyewitness event2000 •
2016 •
Revista Espaço Acadêmico
Inclusão social via inclusão digital, uma construção possível?2009 •
Australian Humanities Review
‘Strange Disclosures’: The Story of the Criminal Forger and Absconder, Elias Rosenwax and his Capture in Levuka by ‘Evarama, the Native Fijian Policeman’, 18712012 •
Jurnal Akuntansi
Persepsi Akademisi Dan Praktisi Terhadap Opini Hasil Pemeriksaan Audit Laporan Keuangan Pada Lembaga Pemerintahan DI Indonesia2019 •
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Effective Elements for Workplace Responses to Critical Incidents and Suicide: A Rapid Review2021 •