Grieving Cosmopolitanism in Middle East Studies

Political philosophers and cultural theorists studying twenty-first-century globalization have found cosmopolitanism to be a productive concept. In Middle East scholarship, however, cosmopolitan has been less than effective. This review illustrates three characteristics of cosmopolitanism in Middle...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hanley, Will 1974- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2008
In: History compass
Year: 2008, Volume: 6, Issue: 5, Pages: 1346-1367
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:Political philosophers and cultural theorists studying twenty-first-century globalization have found cosmopolitanism to be a productive concept. In Middle East scholarship, however, cosmopolitan has been less than effective. This review illustrates three characteristics of cosmopolitanism in Middle East historiography - elitism in formulation and content, grieving nostalgia, and the privileging of formal labels over content - with examples from nineteenth-century cities and globalized metropolises. Scholars must confront the anti-nationalist teleology and secularizing, bourgeois fantasy at the heart of cosmopolitanism as it is currently used if they are to produced more accurate accounts of diversity in Middle East societies past and present.
ISSN:1478-0542
Contains:Enthalten in: History compass
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00545.x