Pub Date : 2018-11-13DOI: 10.17192/META.2018.11.7798
Orkideh Behrouzan
This paper provides a cultural critique of the concept of trauma by examining the generational narratives of toroma in the Iranian context and the psychologization of memory in the aftermath of the 1980s. It examines memory-work as a cultural and political resource for witnessing and historicizing the otherwise muted discourse of the Iran-Iraq War and the anomie of the 1980s Iran. The paper elaborates on the concept of rupture, as an alternative to trauma, for its recognition of the complexity, multiplicity, and diffusion of historical conditions and their afterlife. These narratives of rupture show how generations are constructed and negotiated, not temporally, but based on the political and emotional stakes of how, and what, one remembers, thereby informing the identity politics of young Iranians and generating new socialities and cultural forms. The paper approaches the psychological afterlife of social anomie as both a clinical and a cultural/political experience and raises questions about the ethics of engagement with the two constructed concepts of “mental health” and the “Middle East.”
{"title":"Ruptures and Their Afterlife: A Cultural Critique of Trauma","authors":"Orkideh Behrouzan","doi":"10.17192/META.2018.11.7798","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17192/META.2018.11.7798","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provides a cultural critique of the concept of trauma by examining the generational narratives of toroma in the Iranian context and the psychologization of memory in the aftermath of the 1980s. It examines memory-work as a cultural and political resource for witnessing and historicizing the otherwise muted discourse of the Iran-Iraq War and the anomie of the 1980s Iran. The paper elaborates on the concept of rupture, as an alternative to trauma, for its recognition of the complexity, multiplicity, and diffusion of historical conditions and their afterlife. These narratives of rupture show how generations are constructed and negotiated, not temporally, but based on the political and emotional stakes of how, and what, one remembers, thereby informing the identity politics of young Iranians and generating new socialities and cultural forms. The paper approaches the psychological afterlife of social anomie as both a clinical and a cultural/political experience and raises questions about the ethics of engagement with the two constructed concepts of “mental health” and the “Middle East.”","PeriodicalId":30565,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Topics Arguments","volume":"11 1","pages":"131-144"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41342501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-11-13DOI: 10.17192/META.2018.11.7803
Tory Brykalski, Diana Rayes
While it is well acknowledged that the effects of war and exile are devastating for Syrian youth, there has been less focus on how they interpret their experience of war and displacement. Integrating anthropological and global health perspectives, we invite two Syrian youth, Karim and Khadijah, to speak to larger theoretical questions about humanitarianism. We describe the creation of a new diagnostic term, “Human Devastation Syndrome” (HDS) by the Syrian American Medical Society. Used describe the effects of war and displacement on Syrian youth, HDS provides a lens through which Karim and Khadija introduce their own theories of devastation.
{"title":"\"It's a power, not a disease\": Syrian Youth Respond to Human Devastation Syndrome","authors":"Tory Brykalski, Diana Rayes","doi":"10.17192/META.2018.11.7803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17192/META.2018.11.7803","url":null,"abstract":"While it is well acknowledged that the effects of war and exile are devastating for Syrian youth, there has been less focus on how they interpret their experience of war and displacement. Integrating anthropological and global health perspectives, we invite two Syrian youth, Karim and Khadijah, to speak to larger theoretical questions about humanitarianism. We describe the creation of a new diagnostic term, “Human Devastation Syndrome” (HDS) by the Syrian American Medical Society. Used describe the effects of war and displacement on Syrian youth, HDS provides a lens through which Karim and Khadija introduce their own theories of devastation.","PeriodicalId":30565,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Topics Arguments","volume":"11 1","pages":"30-42"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45236620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-11-13DOI: 10.17192/META.2018.11.7799
Anne Rohrbach
Playback Theatre opens up an artistic and interactive space for silenced voices and counter-narratives. It helps to address potentially traumatic experiences of (political) violence and oppression. The article discusses the resilient power of Playback Theatre in Palestine and gives insight into the strategies of an oppressed population to define their own sense of self through stories that acknowledge the variety and dignity of their lives.
{"title":"(Re-)Enacting Stories of Trauma: Playback Theatre as a Tool of Cultural Resistance in Palestine","authors":"Anne Rohrbach","doi":"10.17192/META.2018.11.7799","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17192/META.2018.11.7799","url":null,"abstract":"Playback Theatre opens up an artistic and interactive space for silenced voices and counter-narratives. It helps to address potentially traumatic experiences of (political) violence and oppression. The article discusses the resilient power of Playback Theatre in Palestine and gives insight into the strategies of an oppressed population to define their own sense of self through stories that acknowledge the variety and dignity of their lives.","PeriodicalId":30565,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Topics Arguments","volume":"11 1","pages":"79-88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41800170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-11-13DOI: 10.17192/META.2018.11.7812
Vivienne Matthies-Boon
In this response, I agree with Felix Lang about the need to problematize trauma studies’ prevalent underlying assumptions. However, I suggest that we should go a step further, namely towards a phenomenological account of trauma rooted in Frankfurt School critical theory. Such an approach enables us to pay attention to the political power dynamics within which trauma studies is enmeshed, and argue against the reification and objectification of trauma. It also allows for an intersubjective (re)interpretation of trauma that explicitly grounds the experiences of trauma in social and political contexts.
{"title":"Towards a Critical Trauma Studies: A Response to Felix Lang","authors":"Vivienne Matthies-Boon","doi":"10.17192/META.2018.11.7812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17192/META.2018.11.7812","url":null,"abstract":"In this response, I agree with Felix Lang about the need to problematize trauma studies’ prevalent underlying assumptions. However, I suggest that we should go a step further, namely towards a phenomenological account of trauma rooted in Frankfurt School critical theory. Such an approach enables us to pay attention to the political power dynamics within which trauma studies is enmeshed, and argue against the reification and objectification of trauma. It also allows for an intersubjective (re)interpretation of trauma that explicitly grounds the experiences of trauma in social and political contexts.","PeriodicalId":30565,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Topics Arguments","volume":"11 1","pages":"159-162"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43704906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-11-13DOI: 10.17192/META.2018.11.7791
Brahim El Guabli
Drawing on testimonial writings by the wives of Tazmamart prisoners and two documentary films (docu-testimonies) about this notorious disappearance camp, I argue that Tazmamart-induced traumas are intergenerational. Approached as a continuum, Tazmamart-induced traumas reveal the intergenerational transference of trauma from mothers to children in the pre-discursive period. In this article, I specifically focus my analysis on the pre-discursive period—a time when families did not articulate their traumas in spoken words in the presence of the children and during which Tazmamart was not a matter of public discourse in Morocco. This theorization of intergenerational transference of traumatic experiences will shift scholarly attention from individual experiences to the collective memory of the “Years of Lead” in its intergenerational dimensions.
{"title":"Theorizing Intergenerational Trauma in Tazmamart Testimonial Literature and Docu-testimonies","authors":"Brahim El Guabli","doi":"10.17192/META.2018.11.7791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17192/META.2018.11.7791","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on testimonial writings by the wives of Tazmamart prisoners and two documentary films (docu-testimonies) about this notorious disappearance camp, I argue that Tazmamart-induced traumas are intergenerational. Approached as a continuum, Tazmamart-induced traumas reveal the intergenerational transference of trauma from mothers to children in the pre-discursive period. In this article, I specifically focus my analysis on the pre-discursive period—a time when families did not articulate their traumas in spoken words in the presence of the children and during which Tazmamart was not a matter of public discourse in Morocco. This theorization of intergenerational transference of traumatic experiences will shift scholarly attention from individual experiences to the collective memory of the “Years of Lead” in its intergenerational dimensions.","PeriodicalId":30565,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Topics Arguments","volume":"11 1","pages":"120-130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48168838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-11-13DOI: 10.17192/META.2018.11.7808
Idriss Jebari
This article examines the experience of transitional justice and its relation to collective memory of authoritarian repression in Morocco (1965-1992) and the Civil War in Algeria (1991-2002). It confronts and compares to the two states’ therapeutic historical discourse produced to heal the national community after these periods of violence and its impact on the countries’ historians, journalists, filmmakers, and novelists from 2004 to 2017. The article argues that Algeria and Morocco’s rigorous definition of the “victim” during these two episodes (the imprisoned and disappeared) excluded the way communities suffered during this period and, as a result, has delayed healing, forgiveness, and national reconciliation. This article highlights the limits of two overpoliticized processes of transitional justice in the Maghreb and their limited conception of what it meant to “come to terms with the past.” However, it finds optimism in the ongoing efforts by new historiography and cultural actors to confront the lasting traumatic aftermaths outside of official definitions and on their own terms.
{"title":"Therapeutic History and the Enduring Memories of Violence in Algeria and Morocco","authors":"Idriss Jebari","doi":"10.17192/META.2018.11.7808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17192/META.2018.11.7808","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the experience of transitional justice and its relation to collective memory of authoritarian repression in Morocco (1965-1992) and the Civil War in Algeria (1991-2002). It confronts and compares to the two states’ therapeutic historical discourse produced to heal the national community after these periods of violence and its impact on the countries’ historians, journalists, filmmakers, and novelists from 2004 to 2017. The article argues that Algeria and Morocco’s rigorous definition of the “victim” during these two episodes (the imprisoned and disappeared) excluded the way communities suffered during this period and, as a result, has delayed healing, forgiveness, and national reconciliation. This article highlights the limits of two overpoliticized processes of transitional justice in the Maghreb and their limited conception of what it meant to “come to terms with the past.” However, it finds optimism in the ongoing efforts by new historiography and cultural actors to confront the lasting traumatic aftermaths outside of official definitions and on their own terms.","PeriodicalId":30565,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Topics Arguments","volume":"11 1","pages":"108-119"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47684613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-11-13DOI: 10.17192/META.2018.11.7780
S. M. Schleimer
In this article, the concept of transnational migration serves as a foundation for analyzing the perspectives of children and adolescents on family movements of migration, their transnational practices, and their sense of belonging. The article discusses, on the basis of a case study, the critical situations children and young people encounter in the context of transnational migration and education. Drawing on Lorenzer’s methodology of hermeneutical cultural analysis, the researcher conducted a set of interviews with refugee children, adolescents, and young adults who have returned with their families from Germany to Iraqi Kurdistan. The article shows that, in light of the conflicts arising for the interviewees in the experience of transnational return, a special emphasis on education can aid their integration into the new society.
{"title":"Negotiating Life in Times of Crisis: The Transnational Return Migration of Refugee Adolescents and Young Adults from Germany to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq","authors":"S. M. Schleimer","doi":"10.17192/META.2018.11.7780","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17192/META.2018.11.7780","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, the concept of transnational migration serves as a foundation for analyzing the perspectives of children and adolescents on family movements of migration, their transnational practices, and their sense of belonging. The article discusses, on the basis of a case study, the critical situations children and young people encounter in the context of transnational migration and education. Drawing on Lorenzer’s methodology of hermeneutical cultural analysis, the researcher conducted a set of interviews with refugee children, adolescents, and young adults who have returned with their families from Germany to Iraqi Kurdistan. The article shows that, in light of the conflicts arising for the interviewees in the experience of transnational return, a special emphasis on education can aid their integration into the new society.","PeriodicalId":30565,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Topics Arguments","volume":"11 1","pages":"164-176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48053196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-11-13DOI: 10.17192/meta.2018.11.7786
Norman Saadi Nikro
Since at least the mid-1990s trauma has come to form a more staple theme of research in the humanities, across and between the fields of history, literature, anthropology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, memory studies, and of course psychoanalysis. More recently, there has been a concerted effort to “decolonize” trauma studies, outlining how the variegated field remains subservient to European and North American teleological and epistemological repertoires. And while accompanying critiques of trauma studies as a discourse—as an institutionally located reproductive mechanism of power and knowledge maintaining relational conduits of subject and object formations—have served to draw attention to the constitutive implications of research paradigms, this has taken place almost exclusively within the bounds of theory. In this essay, I take as my point of departure the idea that in the humanities there has been an excessive amount of trauma theory, all the while neglecting to develop discussions around methodology. In proposing a consideration of methodology, I want to shift the debate from its overdetermined theoretical concerns to the more worldly, fleshy, and physical contours of a materialist phenomenology focusing on modalities of encountering, inhabiting, and embodying specific livelihoods— livelihoods of people, of places, of things, of objects—including research subjects and research materials themselves. While discussing these themes I draw on some of my encounters with subjects of my research in Lebanon.
{"title":"Researching Trauma: Some Methodological Considerations for the Humanities","authors":"Norman Saadi Nikro","doi":"10.17192/meta.2018.11.7786","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17192/meta.2018.11.7786","url":null,"abstract":"Since at least the mid-1990s trauma has come to form a more staple theme of research in the humanities, across and between the fields of history, literature, anthropology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, memory studies, and of course psychoanalysis. More recently, there has been a concerted effort to “decolonize” trauma studies, outlining how the variegated field remains subservient to European and North American teleological and epistemological repertoires. And while accompanying critiques of trauma studies as a discourse—as an institutionally located reproductive mechanism of power and knowledge maintaining relational conduits of subject and object formations—have served to draw attention to the constitutive implications of research paradigms, this has taken place almost exclusively within the bounds of theory. \u0000In this essay, I take as my point of departure the idea that in the humanities there has been an excessive amount of trauma theory, all the while neglecting to develop discussions around methodology. In proposing a consideration of methodology, I want to shift the debate from its overdetermined theoretical concerns to the more worldly, fleshy, and physical contours of a materialist phenomenology focusing on modalities of encountering, inhabiting, and embodying specific livelihoods— livelihoods of people, of places, of things, of objects—including research subjects and research materials themselves. While discussing these themes I draw on some of my encounters with subjects of my research in Lebanon.","PeriodicalId":30565,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Topics Arguments","volume":"11 1","pages":"17-29"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43203595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-06-14DOI: 10.17192/META.2018.10.7588
Nazlı Özkan
In Turkey, electricity and water expenses for houses of prayer, such as mosques and churches, are covered by the state. Cemevis, places of worship for Turkey’s marginalized religious minority of Alevis, however, cannot benefit from from this regulation. By analyzing the political negotiations between the Turkish state and Alevis about cemevis’ utility bills, this paper argues that unequal distribution of infrastructural funds becomes a means for governing religion in urban contexts. In so doing, I focus on a less studied dimension of infrastructures by examining how infrastructural governance is an arena both to reproduce and to contest hegemonic state religiosity.
{"title":"Infrastructures of Urban Religious Management: Who Should Pay for the Utilities of Cemevis in Turkey?","authors":"Nazlı Özkan","doi":"10.17192/META.2018.10.7588","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17192/META.2018.10.7588","url":null,"abstract":"In Turkey, electricity and water expenses for houses of prayer, such as mosques and churches, are covered by the state. Cemevis, places of worship for Turkey’s marginalized religious minority of Alevis, however, cannot benefit from from this regulation. By analyzing the political negotiations between the Turkish state and Alevis about cemevis’ utility bills, this paper argues that unequal distribution of infrastructural funds becomes a means for governing religion in urban contexts. In so doing, I focus on a less studied dimension of infrastructures by examining how infrastructural governance is an arena both to reproduce and to contest hegemonic state religiosity.","PeriodicalId":30565,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Topics Arguments","volume":"10 1","pages":"86-94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43806362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-06-14DOI: 10.17192/META.2018.10.7716
Burçin Çakir
#10–2018 Book Reviewed Stanford UP, 2016. ISBN-13: 9780804796125 Among many texts that have been published recently which explore the long history of the Ottoman Empire, Stanford professor Ali Yaycıoğlu’s Partners of Empire stands out as an extraordinary work reevaluating upheavals in the Ottoman Empire in the Age of Revolution. This particular moment in Ottoman history drew the attention of the author due to the gap in the field; since the Age of Revolution is generally associated with the West, and particularly with the French and American Revolutions. In the interim, the 18th and 19th centuries are vital for full comprehension of the emergence of modernism and western values of democracy in the region that stretches from the Balkans, through Turkey, to the Arab world. In this regard, Yaycıoğlu draws the outline of his book as “to explain the transformation of Ottoman institutions, regional formations, and the global context as an integrated phenomenon” (x). Most significantly, Partners of Empire analyzes what the long-term effects of this long period of upheavals can tell us about contemporary Turkey and the Middle East’s turbulent political landscape and puts this transitional era of the Ottoman case into a global context. In the introduction, the author points out that there was a distinction between European and Ottoman experiences of revolution and rejects the older historiography of previous scholars that the narrative of failed Westernization attempts helps us to understand the evolution of the Ottoman Empire during the Age of Revolution (1760-1820). Instead, the author argues that there was not a major revolution such as the French Revolution in the empire, yet rather a number of reforms and transitions related to the globalized context of revolutions and modernization across the world which showed itself as “series of shakeups, political crises, popular insurrections and different attempts at settlements” (1). For the Ottoman case, the author prefers to use revolution in a contextual terminology which can be interpreted as “a diverse repertoire of reform agendas, institutional restructuring, political discourse, and shifting coalitions” throughout the book (1). The multiplicity of actors-individuals, house-holds, and collective actors with their own agendas, calculations and capacities with the agenda of changing the status quo, participated in the Ottoman transformation. The battle was not between the old and new, state and people, elites and the crowd, centre and periphery, or Muslim and non-Muslims as monolithic blocks. Rather, in many battles coalitions were formed between various groups and interests in a messy political landscape (x). The following chapters review 109
{"title":"Ali Yacıoğlu: \"Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions\"","authors":"Burçin Çakir","doi":"10.17192/META.2018.10.7716","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17192/META.2018.10.7716","url":null,"abstract":"#10–2018 Book Reviewed Stanford UP, 2016. ISBN-13: 9780804796125 Among many texts that have been published recently which explore the long history of the Ottoman Empire, Stanford professor Ali Yaycıoğlu’s Partners of Empire stands out as an extraordinary work reevaluating upheavals in the Ottoman Empire in the Age of Revolution. This particular moment in Ottoman history drew the attention of the author due to the gap in the field; since the Age of Revolution is generally associated with the West, and particularly with the French and American Revolutions. In the interim, the 18th and 19th centuries are vital for full comprehension of the emergence of modernism and western values of democracy in the region that stretches from the Balkans, through Turkey, to the Arab world. In this regard, Yaycıoğlu draws the outline of his book as “to explain the transformation of Ottoman institutions, regional formations, and the global context as an integrated phenomenon” (x). Most significantly, Partners of Empire analyzes what the long-term effects of this long period of upheavals can tell us about contemporary Turkey and the Middle East’s turbulent political landscape and puts this transitional era of the Ottoman case into a global context. In the introduction, the author points out that there was a distinction between European and Ottoman experiences of revolution and rejects the older historiography of previous scholars that the narrative of failed Westernization attempts helps us to understand the evolution of the Ottoman Empire during the Age of Revolution (1760-1820). Instead, the author argues that there was not a major revolution such as the French Revolution in the empire, yet rather a number of reforms and transitions related to the globalized context of revolutions and modernization across the world which showed itself as “series of shakeups, political crises, popular insurrections and different attempts at settlements” (1). For the Ottoman case, the author prefers to use revolution in a contextual terminology which can be interpreted as “a diverse repertoire of reform agendas, institutional restructuring, political discourse, and shifting coalitions” throughout the book (1). The multiplicity of actors-individuals, house-holds, and collective actors with their own agendas, calculations and capacities with the agenda of changing the status quo, participated in the Ottoman transformation. The battle was not between the old and new, state and people, elites and the crowd, centre and periphery, or Muslim and non-Muslims as monolithic blocks. Rather, in many battles coalitions were formed between various groups and interests in a messy political landscape (x). The following chapters review 109","PeriodicalId":30565,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Topics Arguments","volume":"10 1","pages":"109-112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45097579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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