1st Edition

Altered States The Remaking of the Political in the Arab World

Edited By Sune Haugbolle, Mark LeVine Copyright 2023
300 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

300 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

300 Pages 13 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Building on Timothy Mitchell's seminal 1991 exploration of the "Limits of the State," this book brings together contributions on the state in the Arab world from the past and present in an edited volume. Altered States views the state less as a matter of people and institutions and more as sets of practices, regimes of truth, and capabilities of power, and the effects they have on those... Read more

Introduction: The Remaking of the Political in the Arab World since 2010

Sune Haugbolle and Mark Levine

Chapter 1. State-crafting and Modes of Governance in the United Arab Emirates

Estella Carpi and Andrea Glioti

Chapter 2. Community Organizing and the Limits of Participatory Democracy in Lebanon

Sophie Chamas

Chapter 3. Archiving in an Age of (Counter)Revolutions

Leyla Dakhli

Chapter 4. Class Power, the State and Contentious Politics in the age of Globalization: The case of Egypt

Angela Joya

Chapter 5. Same Different? A Comparative Study of Kurdish-Led Rojava and Opposition-Held Syria

Andrea Glioti

Chapter 6. Postcolonial State-ness and the Case of Rawabi

Somdeep Sen

Chapter 7. Lebanon’s Wadi Khaled and Challenge of Sovereignty

Jamil Mouawad

Chapter 8. Egyptian State and Culture

Ted Swedenburg

Chapter 9. How Diplomatic Practices Make the Fuzzy State of Palestine Visible

Michelle Pace

Chapter 10. Daesh and the "Effect of the State"

Michael Degerald

Chapter 11. Conclusion: The Westphalian State Effect

Jillian Schwedler

Biography

Sune Haugbolle is Professor of Global Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark.

Mark LeVine is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of California, Irvine, USA.

"Haugbolle and LeVine have brought together various contributors in a pioneering edited volume that goes against the grain of debates on the state in the Middle East and North Africa. Its questioning of the apparent solidity of the state is a nuanced and refreshing intervention on the subject."

Mohammed Moussa, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University.

"This fascinating collection of essays provides excitingly fresh analyses of the state effect in the Middle East. By conceiving of the state as relational, dynamic, and constantly remade, and through a series of sensitive ethnographic and historical studies, this volume updates our understanding of how the Middle Eastern state still functions after the shattering uprisings of the last decade."

Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary UL.

"Altered States makes an invaluable contribution to scholarship on "state-ness," that is, the means and policies that constitute governance, including various forms of reprisal and repression against those who challenge their states and/or are deemed dangers and threats. The contributors offer deeply theorized analyses grounded in empirical detail about state practices across the Middle East and the dynamical effects on societies and communities. This book's theoretical implications extend beyond one region and should appeal to scholars who work on states anywhere."

Lisa Hajjar, author of The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture.