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1. Racial Formations in Africa and the Middle East: A Transregional Approach

Author:
Hisham Aïdi, Marc Lynch, Zachariah Mampilly, Diana S. Kim, Parisa Vaziri, Denis Regnier, Sean Jacobs, Wendell Marsh, Stephen J. King, Eric Hahonou, Paul A. Silverstein, Afifa Ltifi, Zeyad el Nabolsy, Bayan Abubakr, Yasmin Moll, Zachary Mondesire, Abdourahmane Seck, Amelie Le Renard, Sumayya Kassamali, Noori Lori, Nathaniel Mathews, Sabria Al-Thawr, Gokh Amin Alshaif, Deniz Duruiz, Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Efrat Yerday, Noah Salomon, and Ann McDougall
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
In February 2020, the editors of this volume organized a POMEPS workshop that explored the origins of the disciplinary divide between the study of Africa and the Middle East, examining issues that span both regions (i.e., cross-border conflict, Islamist politics, social movements and national identity, and Gulf interventionism.) In February 2021, we convened another workshop, sponsored by POMEPS and the newly-founded Program on African Social Research (PASR, pronounced Pasiri) centered on racial formations and racialization across the two regions. Both workshops centered around the need for a genuinely transregional scholarship, one which rejects artificial divisions between ostensibly autonomous regions while also taking seriously the distinctive historical trajectories and local configurations of power which define national and subregional specificities. The workshop brought together nearly two dozen scholars from across multiple disciplines to explore the historical and contemporary politics of racial formation across Africa and the Middle East.
Topic:
Islam, Race, War, Immigration, Law, Slavery, Judaism, Colonialism, Borders, Identity, and Amazigh
Political Geography:
Africa, Sudan, Turkey, Middle East, Asia, South Africa, Yemen, Palestine, North Africa, Egypt, Madagascar, Tunisia, Oman, and Gulf Nations

2. The COVID-19 Pandemic in the Middle East and North Africa

Author:
Marc Lynch, Eleanore Ardemagni, Jesse Marks, Elizabeth Parker-Magyar, Allison Spencer Hartnett, Ezzeldeen al-Natour, Laith al-Ajlouni, Carla Abdo-Katsipis, Lucia Ardovini, Yasmine Zarhloule, Yasmina Abouzzohour, Brent E. Sasley, Ehud Eiran, Sally Sharif, Diana Galeeva, Matthew Hedges, Elham Fakhro, Kristin Diwan, Guy Burton, Ruth Hanau Santini, Justin Schon, Alex Thurston, Adam Hoffmann, and Robert Kubinec
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
This special issue of POMEPS STUDIES collects twenty contributions from a wide range of young scholars writing from diverse perspectives, which collectively offer a fascinating overview of a region whose governance failures, economic inequalities and societal resilience were all suddenly thrown into sharp relief.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Economics, Islam, Nationalism, United Nations, Governance, Authoritarianism, Refugees, Inequality, Conflict, Pandemic, Resilience, COVID-19, and Identity
Political Geography:
China, Middle East, Israel, Yemen, North Africa, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Morocco

3. Africa and the Middle East: Beyond the Divides

Author:
Hisham Aïdi, Marc Lynch, Zachariah Mampilly, Nisrin El-Amin, Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, Noah Salomon, Samar Al-Bulushi, Wolfram Lacher, Federico Donelli, Lina Benabdallah, Ezgi Guner, Afifa Ltifi, Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem, Alex Thurston, and Alex de Waal
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
The papers, published in this collection, ranged widely over issues connecting West Africa, the Horn, the Sahel and North Africa thematically, politically, militarily and culturally. The goal of this volume is to get American political science to break down the barriers between academic subfields defined by regions and open the fields to new questions raised by scholars from and across Africa and the Middle East.
Topic:
Islam, War, Regime Change, Media, Conflict, Political Science, Revolution, and Capital
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Sudan, Turkey, Middle East, Libya, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, West Africa, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, East Africa, Sahel, and Horn of Africa

4. The Politics of Islam in Europe and North America

Author:
Marc Lynch
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
There has traditionally been a wide divide between the study of the politics of Islam in the Middle East and in the West. Middle East-focused research in American political science has focused in great depth on issues such as political mobilization, social service provision, electoral performance, and Islamist ideologies. American research on Islam in the West, by contrast, has often focused on cultural conflicts, immigration, terrorism, and anti-Islamic campaigns. Today’s European scholarship on Islam distinguishes itself by a wide spectrum of methods, topics, and fieldworks, with a trend toward strong ethnographic research. Over the last two decades, a prolific and pluralist field of scholarship on Islam and Muslims in Europe and the U.S. has emerged and brought to the fore innovative perspectives and understudied topics. On June 28, 2018, POMEPS and Sciences Po CERI convened a workshop with a dozen scholars of Islam and politics in Europe and North America to engage with these various perspectives. Their work in POMEPS Studies 32: The Politics of Islam in Europe and North America illustrates the richness of the field of the politics of Islam in Europe and the U.S.
Topic:
Islam, Politics, Religion, Diaspora, Political Activism, Sunni, Shia, Jihad, and Tradition
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Germany, and North America

5. Islam in a Changing Middle East: New Analysis of Shia Politics

Author:
Marc Lynch, Ali Kadivar, Elvire Corboz, Farzan Sabet, Shirin Saeidi, Kevan Harris, Diana Zeidan, Toby Matthiesen, Laurence Louer, Marsin Alshamary, Hussein Abou Saleh, and Morten Valbjørn
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
POMEPS Studies 28: New Analysis of Shia Politics The study of Islamist movements has often implicitly meant the study of Sunni Islamist movements. An enormous amount of political science scholarship has dissected the ideology, organization, and political strategy of Sunni Islamist movements.However these academic communities that study Sunni Islamism often proceed without any interaction with the academic communities that study Iran or Shi’a politics in Arab countries. Studies of Iran and of Shi’a movements similarly often proceed in isolation from the literature on the Arab world or Sunni Islamist movements. This is unfortunate, because Sunni and Shi’a Islamist political dynamics engage many similar theoretical or intellectual issues and could offer each other critically important comparative perspective. Therefore, on October 13, 2017, POMEPS convened an interdisciplinary workshop of scholars of Shi’a politics to discuss these questions and to probe the similarities and differences between the two academic communities. We are delighted to publish this collection of essays resulting from that workshop. The essays range widely, both thematically and geographically, and together offer a deeply informed and often surprising portrait of political changes across very different contexts. They also reveal the profound methodological and intellectual divides between the academic communities studying Sunni and Shi’a Islamism. The essays in this collection range broadly over these issues and represent a starting point for the development of a research community. In the coming years, we hope to see much more attention paid to the comparative study of Sunni and Shia Islamism across diverse contexts. Bridging these linguistic, analytical, methodological and political divides would be an important step forward in the broader understanding of Islamist politics.
Topic:
Government, Islam, Politics, Religion, Sectarianism, Islamism, Revolution, Welfare, Sunni, Shia, Monarchy, and Alawites
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Lebanon, Syria, and Gulf Nations

6. Islam and International Order

Author:
Marc Lynch, Barak Mendelsohn, Reyko Huang, Lawrence Rubin, and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
Abstract:
Islam has rarely been far from the center of the world’s political and security agenda in the decade and a half since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack against the United States. The range of issues to which Islam has been deemed central is staggering, from transnational terrorism and counterinsurgency in Iraq to the possibility of democracy in the Middle East. These long-running debates have been galvanized over the last few years by the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, shocking acts of terrorism from Paris to Tunisia, and the failure of the democratic experiment with Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt. In April 2015 the Project on Middle East Political Science and the Transatlantic Academy hosted a workshop for a sustained discussion of emerging questions on Islam and international order. The two-day workshop brought together a broad, interdisciplinary group of scholars, including area specialists and generalists, from the fields of political science, religious studies and history. The workshop, part of the POMEPS Islam in a Changing Middle East initiative, built on the Transatlantic Academy’s 2015 theme of religion and foreign policy. Peter Katzenstein of Cornell University, in his keynote address, put the question of Islam squarely within the racial and civilizational politics of a declining American imperium. This historical and global perspective provoked a wide-ranging discussion. Islam has played many roles in many different regional and global political orders, as Cemil Aydin, Bruce Lawrence and Jonathan Brown evocatively explained. And, as Amitav Acharya forcefully argued, Islam has routinely frustrated the expectations of popular grand theories of world order. The workshop ranged widely over the question of how to think about Islam within global, regional and domestic political arenas, from a diverse range of empirical cases and theoretical literatures. Can Islam really be understood as an actor, with interests and a coherent identity? Is there something unique about Islam that prevents it from being treated theoretically like other cultural traditions such as nationalism, ethnicity or ideology? Should Islam be seen as a causal variable or as a context through which actors pursue their interests and fight their political battles? What are we doing, conceptually and politically, when we describe political thought as “Islamic political thought,” movements as “Islamic movements,” or democracy as “Islamic democracy”? The essays prepared for this workshop are available here as POMEPS Studies 15. Several key themes ran through the discussions. First, several of the memos specifically focus on the emergence of the Islamic State. Marc Lynch surveys the central analytical arguments that have been deployed to explain the Islamic State Caliphate’s development, noting the very different policy responses each might elicit. Barak Mendelsohn and Reyko Huang evaluate the Islamic State in the history of jihadist groups and insurgencies, and Lawrence Rubin argues that ideational balancing will prevent the Islamic State from becoming a normal state.
Topic:
Islam, Religion, Islamic State, Political Science, and International Order
Political Geography:
Middle East