Morten Valbjørn
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 314719 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Morten Valbjørn |
| NOMBRES | Morten |
| APELLIDO | Valbjørn |
| FIRMA | VALBJØRN M |
| AFILIACIONES | Aarhus University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8739-5425 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 37 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 163 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 37 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2003 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Sectarianism and Civil War in Syria
As an epicentre of sectarian conflict before and after the Arab uprising, Syria provides an excellent laboratory for the study of sectarianization. This book compares variance in Syria’s sectarianism over time and across place to expose its causes and its varying impact on Syria’s society and polity. The book begins with an introductory chapter examining key approaches to and debates over sectarianism in Syria, from which a framework of analysis …
Grasping Arab Islamist responses to the war on Gaza
A year after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attacks and Israel’s war on Gaza, it is clear that Islamists across the region are significant actors in the conflict and that the Arab Islamist field has been affected by the war. This raises several questions. How have Islamists responded to the war on Gaza? To what extent has the conflict triggered new dynamics? How can we explain spatial and temporal variations, and what might this say about (the study of) …
Beyond the usual suspects – bringing in Kuwait’s Shiʿi Islamists
The More, the Merrier
One of the fundamental questions of social science concerns the subject of scope conditions. A field of study can grow around a set of empirical puzzles, making generalized assertions without reflecting on whether the field covers all possible instances. This becomes particularly acute when sociopolitical changes have led to a diversification of cases. This paper takes the case of Islamism studies, which has suffered from a major blind spot: a (m…
Forward to the Past? Regional Repercussions of the Gaza War
The Gaza war between Israel and Hamas marks the end of the long decade after the Arab uprisings. In this paper, we explore how the conflict has altered the regional political landscape in the Middle East, which bears similarities to the pre‐2011 dynamics but includes new elements. On the one hand, the war has taken the region “forward to the past” by revitalizing “Palestine” as a central issue, accentuating the so‐called Axis of Resistance, and i…
Changing Warscapes, Changing Islamists? Religion, Organization, Strategic Context and New Approaches to Armed Islamist Insurgencies
This framing essay to the Special Issue on Islamists in Warscapes argues for the value of engaging with the concept of warscapes, developed primarily by anthropologists of violence in Africa, for theorizing about armed Islamist groups in protracted conflict situations. The warscapes concept better captures the nature of many of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and beyond by focusing on its protracted but intermittent nature, temp…
When Transnationalism is not Global
Studies of armed Islamism have had a strong interest in “transnational jihadism”, “global jihad”, al-Qaeda and—more recently—Islamic State. In discussions, these three features—transnationalism, global jihad, and al-Qaeda/Islamic State—are highly entangled. This article challenges the (implicit) assumption that armed transnational Islamism is necessarily global, Sunni and mainly concerns al-Qaeda or Islamic State. First, it shows how scholarship …
Contextualizing the Contextualizers
As part of recent years’ efforts at reaching a more context- and diversity-sensitive study of international relations, the nexus between fields of IR and Area Studies (AS) has received a renewed attention. While AS is usually presented as the “contextualizer” of the disciplines, this forum reverses the perspective by suggesting that an awareness of both diversity and context is also relevant when it comes to understanding the evolution of the fie…
Observing (the debate on) sectarianism
To what extent has the study of sectarianism in the Middle East made any progress in the first decade after the Arab uprisings? Based on an analysis of three aspects of the study of sectarianism – on how to conceptualize, grasp and explain sectarianism – the article shows that the sectarianism debate hardly has provided much certainty, agreement or any firm conclusions. However, the study of sectarianism has progressed in terms of greater concept…
The Politics of Teaching International Relations in the Arab World
Can International Relations (IR) as it is taught in the Arab world be said to be an “American social science” or is it taught differently in different places? The forum addresses this question through an exploration of what and how scholars at Arab universities are teaching IR and how institutional, historical, and linguistic, as well as political and individual factors shape classroom dynamics in the Arab world. This forum attempts to bring the …
Bringing in the ‘Other Islamists’
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Mitchell L Stevens, Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Seteney Shami, Seeing the World
Beyond the beyond(s)
This meta‐study examines the nature of past and current theoretically informed debates on sectarian politics in the Middle East and identifies the biggest challenges and possible directions for the future study of sectarianism. Contrary to the conventional narrative about a “sectarian journey” torn between a flawed primordialist and instrumentalist approach in between which a new superior “third way” is needed, the article shows that both primord…
Countering Sectarianism
It is well known that the “sectarianization” of Middle Eastern politics during the last decade has had many negative effects. In that light, it should come as no surprise that most agree that sectarianism should be countered. However, it turns out that it is anything but clear what we are talking about, when we talk about anti/counter/post/trans/cross/non/multi-sectarianism. Moreover, a shared ambition of countering sectarianism can translate int…
What's so Sectarian about Sectarian Politics? Identity Politics and Authoritarianism in a New Middle East
Shia/Sunni sectarianism figures prominently in post‐Arab uprising claims that the Middle East is witnessing a darker kind of authoritarianism drawing on exclusionary and xenophobic forms of identity politics. This article explores whether sectarianism per se is associated with a distinct form of identity politics or if authoritarian techniques involving the use of the ‘sectarian card’ should be subsumed under a broader category of authoritarian i…
Exploring the Nexus between Sectarianism and Regime Formation in a New Middle East
The purpose of this Special Issue is to examine the nature, causes, and consequences of the Middle East's current sectarian surge. Specifically, how might sectarianism and regime formation/type be inter‐related? The evidence from this specific analysis will also address the broader concern of whether the Arab uprisings have given rise to a qualitatively new kind of Middle Eastern politics, such that it makes sense to speak about a ‘ new Middle Ea…
What is in a Name
Post-uprisings Middle East politics is frequently described as a ‘regional cold war’ involving proxy warfare that emphasises the role of shared identities linking external and local actors. But does the ‘content’ of identities impact proxy war dynamics? This article considers the present ‘battle for Syria’, a local conflict that became a theatre for multiple proxy wars involving actors emphasising identities on various levels, most notably nation…
Problematizing Global Challenges
The field of IR has been described as an “‘inter’-type discipline,” in the sense that it is devoted to studying the interactions of different kinds of international actors (Lapid 1996, 10). However, despite the fact that the discipline has never been blind vis-à-vis the “in-between” (or relational) dimension of the subject matter (Kaiser 1971, 791; Rosenau 1990, 40–42; Kratochwil 2007, 502–3), much of the focus in recent years’ discussions has, i…
Strategies for Reviving the International Relations/Middle East Nexus after the Arab Uprisings
The exchange often assumed the form of a hierarchical dialogue in which Middle East specialists are perceived as little more than junior partners providing local empirical data to a theoretical superior IR
North Africa and the Middle East
Reflections on self-reflections – On framing the analytical implications of the Arab uprisings for the study of Arab politics
The Arab uprisings have not only impacted large parts of the Arab world. They have also left their mark on scholarship about Arab politics. Following the unexpected events, scholars have been engaged in a self-reflective debate on whether their assumptions and theoretical approaches to Arab politics have proven inadequate and their reasoning flawed, and if some kind of rethink is necessary for how this is supposed to take place. The present artic…
On cleavages, port and dialogues
In this rejoinder we appreciate Ben Rosamond and Alex Warleigh-Lack’s addition to our typology of dialogues, yet restate our main reasons to remain sceptical about the outcome of a dialogue between European Studies and New Regionalism
Three Ways of Revisiting the (post-) Democratization Debate After the Arab Uprisings
This contribution to the roundtable considers the evolution of the debate about democratization and post-democratization before 2011 and examines three different ways of revisiting this debate after the Arab uprisings
The 2013 Parliamentary Elections in Jordan
On 23 January 2013 elections to the 17th Parliament were held in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It was the first time Jordanians would go to the polls since the beginning of the Arab revolts. Alt
Toward a 'Mesopotamian Turn'
Reflections on self-reflections – On framing the analytical implications of the Arab uprisings for the study of Arab politics
The Arab uprisings have not only impacted large parts of the Arab world. They have also left their mark on scholarship about Arab politics. Following the unexpected events, scholars have been engaged in a self-reflective debate on whether their assumptions and theoretical approaches to Arab politics have proven inadequate and their reasoning flawed, and if some kind of rethink is necessary for how this is supposed to take place. The present artic…
What is in a Name
Post-uprisings Middle East politics is frequently described as a ‘regional cold war’ involving proxy warfare that emphasises the role of shared identities linking external and local actors. But does the ‘content’ of identities impact proxy war dynamics? This article considers the present ‘battle for Syria’, a local conflict that became a theatre for multiple proxy wars involving actors emphasising identities on various levels, most notably nation…
Beyond the beyond(s)
This meta‐study examines the nature of past and current theoretically informed debates on sectarian politics in the Middle East and identifies the biggest challenges and possible directions for the future study of sectarianism. Contrary to the conventional narrative about a “sectarian journey” torn between a flawed primordialist and instrumentalist approach in between which a new superior “third way” is needed, the article shows that both primord…
Upgrading Post-democratization Studies
What's so Sectarian about Sectarian Politics? Identity Politics and Authoritarianism in a New Middle East
Shia/Sunni sectarianism figures prominently in post‐Arab uprising claims that the Middle East is witnessing a darker kind of authoritarianism drawing on exclusionary and xenophobic forms of identity politics. This article explores whether sectarianism per se is associated with a distinct form of identity politics or if authoritarian techniques involving the use of the ‘sectarian card’ should be subsumed under a broader category of authoritarian i…
Examining the ‘Post’ in Post-Democratization
Udgivelsesdato: 2010
Exploring the Nexus between Sectarianism and Regime Formation in a New Middle East
The purpose of this Special Issue is to examine the nature, causes, and consequences of the Middle East's current sectarian surge. Specifically, how might sectarianism and regime formation/type be inter‐related? The evidence from this specific analysis will also address the broader concern of whether the Arab uprisings have given rise to a qualitatively new kind of Middle Eastern politics, such that it makes sense to speak about a ‘ new Middle Ea…
Problematizing Global Challenges
The field of IR has been described as an “‘inter’-type discipline,” in the sense that it is devoted to studying the interactions of different kinds of international actors (Lapid 1996, 10). However, despite the fact that the discipline has never been blind vis-à-vis the “in-between” (or relational) dimension of the subject matter (Kaiser 1971, 791; Rosenau 1990, 40–42; Kratochwil 2007, 502–3), much of the focus in recent years’ discussions has, i…
The New Arab Cold War
This article provides a conceptual lens for and a thick interpretation of the emergent regional constellation in the Middle East in the first decade of the 21st century. It starts out by challenging two prevalent claims about regional politics in the context of the 2006 Lebanon and 2008–09 Gaza Wars: Firstly, that regional politics is marked by a fundamental break from the ‘old Middle East’ and secondly, that it has become ‘post-Arab’ in the sens…
Four dialogues and the funeral of a beautiful relationship
This article engages in the debate on (the study of) regionalism in providing an overview of the nexus between European Studies (ES) and (New) Regionalism (NR). While the immediate purpose for doing so is to set the stage for the future debate on regional dynamics, this exploration can also be perceived as a case study into (the plurality of forms of) inter/intra-disciplinary dialogue demonstrating the necessity of engaging in ‘dialogues about di…
Observing (the debate on) sectarianism
To what extent has the study of sectarianism in the Middle East made any progress in the first decade after the Arab uprisings? Based on an analysis of three aspects of the study of sectarianism – on how to conceptualize, grasp and explain sectarianism – the article shows that the sectarianism debate hardly has provided much certainty, agreement or any firm conclusions. However, the study of sectarianism has progressed in terms of greater concept…
Forward to the Past? Regional Repercussions of the Gaza War
The Gaza war between Israel and Hamas marks the end of the long decade after the Arab uprisings. In this paper, we explore how the conflict has altered the regional political landscape in the Middle East, which bears similarities to the pre‐2011 dynamics but includes new elements. On the one hand, the war has taken the region “forward to the past” by revitalizing “Palestine” as a central issue, accentuating the so‐called Axis of Resistance, and i…
The 2013 Parliamentary Elections in Jordan
On 23 January 2013 elections to the 17th Parliament were held in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It was the first time Jordanians would go to the polls since the beginning of the Arab revolts. Alt
Bringing in the ‘Other Islamists’
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Strategies for Reviving the International Relations/Middle East Nexus after the Arab Uprisings
The exchange often assumed the form of a hierarchical dialogue in which Middle East specialists are perceived as little more than junior partners providing local empirical data to a theoretical superior IR
Three Ways of Revisiting the (post-) Democratization Debate After the Arab Uprisings
This contribution to the roundtable considers the evolution of the debate about democratization and post-democratization before 2011 and examines three different ways of revisiting this debate after the Arab uprisings
Revisiting Theories of Arab Politics in the Aftermath of the Arab Uprisings
‘The following series of short analyses seeks to engage critically with the issue of how to think about Arab politics after the Arab uprisings in the light of past debates on this theme. What are we to make today of previous approaches to the region that emphasized historical sociology, Arabism, regionalism, Islamism, revolution and (post-)democratization? We reflect on (i) how ‘classic debates’ have been impacted, (ii) how important or useful th…
The Meeting of the Twain
Beyond the usual suspects – bringing in Kuwait’s Shiʿi Islamists
Changing Warscapes, Changing Islamists? Religion, Organization, Strategic Context and New Approaches to Armed Islamist Insurgencies
This framing essay to the Special Issue on Islamists in Warscapes argues for the value of engaging with the concept of warscapes, developed primarily by anthropologists of violence in Africa, for theorizing about armed Islamist groups in protracted conflict situations. The warscapes concept better captures the nature of many of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and beyond by focusing on its protracted but intermittent nature, temp…
Contextualizing the Contextualizers
As part of recent years’ efforts at reaching a more context- and diversity-sensitive study of international relations, the nexus between fields of IR and Area Studies (AS) has received a renewed attention. While AS is usually presented as the “contextualizer” of the disciplines, this forum reverses the perspective by suggesting that an awareness of both diversity and context is also relevant when it comes to understanding the evolution of the fie…
The Politics of Teaching International Relations in the Arab World
Can International Relations (IR) as it is taught in the Arab world be said to be an “American social science” or is it taught differently in different places? The forum addresses this question through an exploration of what and how scholars at Arab universities are teaching IR and how institutional, historical, and linguistic, as well as political and individual factors shape classroom dynamics in the Arab world. This forum attempts to bring the …
Countering Sectarianism
It is well known that the “sectarianization” of Middle Eastern politics during the last decade has had many negative effects. In that light, it should come as no surprise that most agree that sectarianism should be countered. However, it turns out that it is anything but clear what we are talking about, when we talk about anti/counter/post/trans/cross/non/multi-sectarianism. Moreover, a shared ambition of countering sectarianism can translate int…
On cleavages, port and dialogues
In this rejoinder we appreciate Ben Rosamond and Alex Warleigh-Lack’s addition to our typology of dialogues, yet restate our main reasons to remain sceptical about the outcome of a dialogue between European Studies and New Regionalism
Guest Editors' Note
The Meeting of the Twain
Before, during and after the cultural turn
This article, which is part of a broader attempt to construct a ‘Baedeker’ to IR's cultural journey, contributes to the contested debated on the (ir)relevance of cultural diversity to the study of international relations by providing a picture of where we come from, of where we are now situated and of some of the suggestions as to where we should be going in order not to get lost in this almost uncharted landscape. The first main section discusse…
Arab Nationalism(s) in Transformation
During the summer of 2006, the Palestine conflict once again turned ‘hot’ when intense fighting erupted across the Israeli/Lebanese border. Besides 34 days of violent clashes with Israeli forces, Hizbullah was also engaged in a more symbolic, or ‘cold’, collision with the Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi Arabian leaders denouncing in public the Shi’i-Arab movement for ‘dragging the region into adventures’. By publicly criticising an Arab actor’s dir…
Forestillinger om Edward Said og Orientalism’s (ikke helt så) store indflydelse på studiet af Mellemøsten
Mens Saids Orientalism selv er en kritisk meta-studie af ”vestlige forestillinger om Orienten”, har denne artikel til formål at problematisere og nuancere en fremherskende forestilling vedrørende dette værks indflydelse på studiet af Mellemøsten, nemlig at det skulle være svært at overdrive indflydelsen fra Orientalism på Mellemøststudierne (MØS), som nærmest skulle være blevet transformeret af den said’ianske Orientalism-kritik. Artiklens overor…
År med Orientalism
Bringing the Arab Regional Level Back in…—Jordan in the New Arab Cold War
Udgivelsesdato: 2010
Examining the ‘Post’ in Post-Democratization
Udgivelsesdato: 2010
Guest Editors' Note
Upgrading Post-democratization Studies
The New Arab Cold War
This article provides a conceptual lens for and a thick interpretation of the emergent regional constellation in the Middle East in the first decade of the 21st century. It starts out by challenging two prevalent claims about regional politics in the context of the 2006 Lebanon and 2008–09 Gaza Wars: Firstly, that regional politics is marked by a fundamental break from the ‘old Middle East’ and secondly, that it has become ‘post-Arab’ in the sens…
Four dialogues and the funeral of a beautiful relationship
This article engages in the debate on (the study of) regionalism in providing an overview of the nexus between European Studies (ES) and (New) Regionalism (NR). While the immediate purpose for doing so is to set the stage for the future debate on regional dynamics, this exploration can also be perceived as a case study into (the plurality of forms of) inter/intra-disciplinary dialogue demonstrating the necessity of engaging in ‘dialogues about di…
Three Ways of Revisiting the (post-) Democratization Debate After the Arab Uprisings
This contribution to the roundtable considers the evolution of the debate about democratization and post-democratization before 2011 and examines three different ways of revisiting this debate after the Arab uprisings
The 2013 Parliamentary Elections in Jordan
On 23 January 2013 elections to the 17th Parliament were held in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It was the first time Jordanians would go to the polls since the beginning of the Arab revolts. Alt
Revisiting Theories of Arab Politics in the Aftermath of the Arab Uprisings
‘The following series of short analyses seeks to engage critically with the issue of how to think about Arab politics after the Arab uprisings in the light of past debates on this theme. What are we to make today of previous approaches to the region that emphasized historical sociology, Arabism, regionalism, Islamism, revolution and (post-)democratization? We reflect on (i) how ‘classic debates’ have been impacted, (ii) how important or useful th…
On cleavages, port and dialogues
In this rejoinder we appreciate Ben Rosamond and Alex Warleigh-Lack’s addition to our typology of dialogues, yet restate our main reasons to remain sceptical about the outcome of a dialogue between European Studies and New Regionalism
Reflections on self-reflections – On framing the analytical implications of the Arab uprisings for the study of Arab politics
The Arab uprisings have not only impacted large parts of the Arab world. They have also left their mark on scholarship about Arab politics. Following the unexpected events, scholars have been engaged in a self-reflective debate on whether their assumptions and theoretical approaches to Arab politics have proven inadequate and their reasoning flawed, and if some kind of rethink is necessary for how this is supposed to take place. The present artic…
North Africa and the Middle East
Problematizing Global Challenges
The field of IR has been described as an “‘inter’-type discipline,” in the sense that it is devoted to studying the interactions of different kinds of international actors (Lapid 1996, 10). However, despite the fact that the discipline has never been blind vis-à-vis the “in-between” (or relational) dimension of the subject matter (Kaiser 1971, 791; Rosenau 1990, 40–42; Kratochwil 2007, 502–3), much of the focus in recent years’ discussions has, i…
Strategies for Reviving the International Relations/Middle East Nexus after the Arab Uprisings
The exchange often assumed the form of a hierarchical dialogue in which Middle East specialists are perceived as little more than junior partners providing local empirical data to a theoretical superior IR
What is in a Name
Post-uprisings Middle East politics is frequently described as a ‘regional cold war’ involving proxy warfare that emphasises the role of shared identities linking external and local actors. But does the ‘content’ of identities impact proxy war dynamics? This article considers the present ‘battle for Syria’, a local conflict that became a theatre for multiple proxy wars involving actors emphasising identities on various levels, most notably nation…
What's so Sectarian about Sectarian Politics? Identity Politics and Authoritarianism in a New Middle East
Shia/Sunni sectarianism figures prominently in post‐Arab uprising claims that the Middle East is witnessing a darker kind of authoritarianism drawing on exclusionary and xenophobic forms of identity politics. This article explores whether sectarianism per se is associated with a distinct form of identity politics or if authoritarian techniques involving the use of the ‘sectarian card’ should be subsumed under a broader category of authoritarian i…
Exploring the Nexus between Sectarianism and Regime Formation in a New Middle East
The purpose of this Special Issue is to examine the nature, causes, and consequences of the Middle East's current sectarian surge. Specifically, how might sectarianism and regime formation/type be inter‐related? The evidence from this specific analysis will also address the broader concern of whether the Arab uprisings have given rise to a qualitatively new kind of Middle Eastern politics, such that it makes sense to speak about a ‘ new Middle Ea…
The Politics of Teaching International Relations in the Arab World
Can International Relations (IR) as it is taught in the Arab world be said to be an “American social science” or is it taught differently in different places? The forum addresses this question through an exploration of what and how scholars at Arab universities are teaching IR and how institutional, historical, and linguistic, as well as political and individual factors shape classroom dynamics in the Arab world. This forum attempts to bring the …
Bringing in the ‘Other Islamists’
TEST 02 - Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Search and access research from the science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts and humanities fields
Mitchell L Stevens, Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Seteney Shami, Seeing the World
Political science (32 obras) · Sociology (26 obras) · Law (25 obras) · Politics (21 obras) · Law (18 obras) · Political economy (16 obras) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (13 obras) · Political Conflict and Governance (13 obras) · History (11 obras) · Middle East (10 obras)