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Thoughts from the Provinces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2017

Ali Hamdan
Ali Hamdan*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Calif.; e-mail: ahamdan@ucla.edu
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Extract

“Place matters,” geographers are fond of saying. And it seems this sentiment is more and more embraced by scholars in other disciplines. The current outpour of writing in Middle East studies that draws on geographic themes goes a long way toward showing how “spatial form can alter the future course of the very histories which have produced it.” At the same time, geography in Middle East studies is at risk of being provincialized over the long term, instead of taken seriously as a source for new approaches to studying the region. For the so-called spatial turn to endure, it must be transformed from a vague thematic concern to a more self-conscious analytical perspective, one that reveals the many competing visions and practices that constitute space. More reflection on the purposes, limits, and politics of thinking geographically in research on the Middle East is required.

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 331 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

NOTES

1 Massey, Doreen, “Politics and Space/Time,” in Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 269 Google Scholar.

2 “Roundtable: View from the Seas: The Middle East and North Africa Unbounded,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 48 (2016): 743–66.

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4 Reinoud Leenders, “Master Frames of the Syrian Conflict,” From Mobilization to Counter-Revolution, POMEPS Studies 20, 26 July 2016, accessed 4 January 2017, https://pomeps.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/POMEPS_Studies_20_Mobilization_Web-REV.pdf, 63–69. See also Kalyvas, Stathis, “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars,” Perspectives on Politics 1 (2003): 475–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 Importantly, Amman has long been a regional headquarters for humanitarian organizations in the Middle East. The Syrian crisis has intensified this role.

8 Razzan Shalab al-Sham, cofounder of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, Skype interview with the author, 28 April 2016.

9 “Syria: From Central Power to Local Authorities,” conference organized by Malik al-Abdeh, Noah Bonsey, Maria Fantappie, Peter Harling, Sam Heller, Ammar Kahf, Kheder Khaddour, and Maya Yahya, Carnegie Middle East Center, Beirut, Lebanon, 2 December 2016.

10 McConnell, Fiona, “The Fallacy and the Promise of the Territorial Trap: Sovereign Articulations of Geopolitical Anomalies,” Geopolitics 15 (2010): 762–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.