Lost and found, then lost again? The social history of workers and peasants in the modern Middle East

Abstract Academic research on the history of the “modern Middle East” in European languages initially emerged in conjunction with efforts to dominate and colonize the region. Yet it was not until the post‐war wave of de‐colonization that what we recognize today as “social history” began to emerge in the field of Middle East studies. At the time, structural functionalism set the parameters for the field, with the elite‐centric “notables paradigm” providing a durable way for historians to think about the region. This scholarship was soon eclipsed by the “new social history,” which aimed to shed light on the previously neglected lives of provincials, women, workers, peasants, slaves, and others. But the “cultural turn” has served for the past twenty or so years to push back against the impulses that used to motivate social historians. This article provides an overview of these developments, along with suggestions for future research in the field of Middle East studies to re‐focus on the lives of workers and peasants. I argue that recent research, informed by theories of performance and a critical geographic approach to institutions and the state–society relationship, overcomes the epistemological critiques embodied in the cultural turn and provides promising new directions for the study of workers and peasants in the modern Middle East.