Open AccessThe Scandinavian Conference on Middle East Studies
Author(s) -
Anne Sofie Roald
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
american journal of islam and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2690-3741
pISSN - 2690-3733
DOI - 10.35632/ajis.v10i1.2533
Subject(s) - peasant , middle east , theme (computing) , islam , diversity (politics) , history , sociology , gender studies , ethnology , political science , anthropology , law , archaeology , computer science , operating system
The Nordic Association of Middle East Studies, which was establishedin 1989 in Uppsala, Sweden, recently held its second conference.Delegates from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland participated.John O. Voll (who has with Swedish ancestors), chairman of the MiddleEast Studies Association (MESA), came as guest lecturer.The conference's leitmotif was "Diversity and Unity of the MiddleEastern World," which was also the theme of Voll's lecture. By reconceptualizingthe understanding of Middle East as a holistic region, one inwhich sociopolitical, economic, and cultural patterns have been regardedwithin a narrow "Muslim" or "Islamic," framework, he objected to standardizedconcepts and generalizations. He used the case of the Egyptianpeasant-how new developments and changed structures have transformedthe peasant of the 1970s into the different peasant of the 1990s.He also argued that concepts themselves can be actors in history whenthey have been conceptualized. Thus they do not always describe reality ...