Defining the State in the Middle East: A Report on the Second of Three Workshops Organized by The Social Science Research Council’s Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East

1991 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Mitchell ◽  
Roger Owen
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Background Material

The SSRC’S Joint Near and Middle East Committee has organized a series of workshops on the state in its Middle Eastern context. The format consists of discussions of papers written by members of the committee, as well as of articles and chapters of books presented as background material by a small number of invited guests. A report on the first workshop, held at Buyukada, Istanbul, in September 1989 appeared in the MESA Bulletin 24 (1990), pages 179 to 183. A third workshop was held at St. Antony’s College, Oxford in December 1990.

Project on Law and Social Structure

1981 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-10
Author(s):  
Charles E. Butterworth
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Social ◽  
Learned Societies ◽  
Science Research Council

The Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council was appointed in 1959 to advance humanistic and social science research in and on the Near and Middle East. Over the years, in addition to offering fellowships and grants, it has held workshops and conferences to investigate topics which would allow humanists and social scientists to understand this vital area better. When appropriate, the papers from the conferences have been published as scholarly volumes.

Middle East Studies for the New Millennium: Infrastructures of Knowledge

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Mechanical Field ◽  
The Social ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Global World ◽  
Middle East Studies

This chapter deplores the state of Middle East social sciences, which is described as demoralized, lacking academic freedom and reliable research data, and functioning in a general climate of repression, neglect, and isolation. Such conditions call into question the extent to which future social scientists will be able to build supportive scholarly communities or develop critical perspectives so key to social science research and the investigation of questions of public import. Echoing discussions in this volume on methodological shifts in the social science disciplines, it argues that the quantitative turn has produced a narrow, mechanical field unable to move forward in ways that attend to the diversity of the social and political world. As the field has emphasized technical skills over moral imperatives, and as the institutional contexts of US universities has changed, the result has been a simultaneous narrowing of the field and a projection of greater universalization for a global world.

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