Kamran Matin
Biographic Data
| ID | 963686 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kamran Matin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kamran |
| FAMILY NAME | Matin |
| SIGNATURE | MATIN K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7675-4242 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Writing Capitalism into Iran through the International
“Writing capitalism into Iran” arguably requires addressing a prior theoretical question regarding the origins and development of capitalism. This is because many of the existing analyses of Iran's experience of capitalist modernity tend to uncritically deploy classical Marxist theories of capitalist development. This literature's analytical problems, especially its recurrent recourse to exceptionalism, cannot be solved at the empirical or analyt…
The Kurdish Janus: The intersocietal construction of nations
Existing accounts of Kurdish nationalism can be mapped onto the main theories of nationalism, that is, primordialism, ethnosymbolism and modernism. These theories, however, suffer, respectively, from essentialism, circularity and aporia, manifest in their common inability to digest the Janus‐like character of nations, that is, their display of simultaneous modernity and antiquity. This paper develops an alternative account through a critical appl…
Debating Uneven and Combined Development/Debating International Relations: A Forum
This forum arises from an online event on the theory of uneven and combined development (UCD). Following an introduction which proposes a ‘special affinity’ between UCD and International Relations (IR), four presenters at that event discuss their ‘view from outside’ UCD, including perspectives from Global Historical Sociology, Realism, Decolonial theory and Gramscian Marxism. Meanwhile four members of the audience add their views on UCD and disci…
Beyond Anarchy and Capital? The Geopolitics of the Rojava Revolution in Syria
First paragraph: The drylands of the Middle East have been long seen not only as unfavourable to life, but also and relatedly, socio-politically fragile. Fraught with myths of eternal ‘ethnic’, ‘sectarian’, or ‘resource conflict’, the chronic political instability of the Middle East from Afghanistan and Yemen to Iraq and Syria has been often seen as intrinsic to a scarce ‘nature’, a scorched earth, tendentially collapsing into brute violence whic…
Democratic Confederalism and Societal Multiplicity: A Sympathetic Critique of Abdullah Öcalan's State Theory
The Kurdish-led project of democratic confederalism in Rojava (north and north-east Syria) has emerged as an unprecedented experience in eco-feminist and anti-capitalist direct democracy with global significance and regional ramifications. There is however virtually no critical engagement with the project’s intellectual foundations in the works of Abdullah Öcalan. This paper seeks to address this gap through a sympathetic critique of Öcalan’s his…
Deciphering the modern Janus: Societal multiplicity and nation-formation
How to theorize the nation’s Janus-like form, its simultaneous modernity and antiquity? This paper provides an original answer to this longstanding question. It argues that nations arise from the interaction of ‘societal multiplicity’ and the expansionist tendency of historical capitalism. The emergence of capitalism super-adds a modern inflection to the inherently relational process of collective identity formation by generating modern sovereign…
Introduction to War, revolt and rupture: The historical sociology of the current crisis in the Middle East
Lineages of the Islamic State: An International Historical Sociology of State (De-)Formation in Iraq
Existing accounts of the Islamic State (IS) tend to rely on orientalist and technicist assumptions and hence insufficiently sensitive to the historical, sociological, and international conditions of the possibility of IS. The present article provides an alternative account through a conjunctural analysis that is anchored in an international historical sociology of modern Iraq informed by Leon Trotsky's idea of 'uneven and combined development'. I…
Recasting Iranian Modernity: International Relations and Social Change
Critically deploying the idea of uneven and combined development this book provides a novel non-Eurocentric account of Iran’s experience of modernity and revolution. Recasting Iranian Modernity presents the argument that Eurocentrism can be decisively overcome through a social theory that has international relations at its ontological core. This will enable a conception of history in which there is an intrinsic international dimension to social c…
Redeeming the universal: Postcolonialism and the inner life of Eurocentrism
This article investigates the limits of postcolonial International Relations’ anti-Eurocentrism through an interrogation of its ambivalent relation with the category of ‘the universal.’ It argues that a decisive defeat of Eurocentrism, within and beyond International Relations, requires the formulation of a non-ethnocentric international social theory which postcolonial approaches, à la poststructuralism, reject on the grounds that it involves th…
Democracy without Capitalism: Retheorizing Iran's Constitutional Revolution
Just as we can introduce the telegraphy from Europe ... so too we can adopt their principles of [political] ordering. Mirza Malkam1 1 Cited in H. Algar (1973) Mirza Malkum Khan: A Study in the Histo
International relations in the making of political Islam: Interrogating Khomeini's ‘Islamic government’
Uneven and Combined Development in World History: The International Relations of State-formation in Premodern Iran
IR's turn towards historical sociology is yet to overcome its ahistoricism. This lack of world-historical perspective, particularly conspicuous in relation to the non-European world, and arguably IR's emergence as a discipline, can be traced back to the theoretically fateful negligence of `the international' by the classical (historical) sociology on which the contemporary critiques of the mainstream IR theory tend to draw. This article develops …
Redeeming the universal: Postcolonialism and the inner life of Eurocentrism
This article investigates the limits of postcolonial International Relations’ anti-Eurocentrism through an interrogation of its ambivalent relation with the category of ‘the universal.’ It argues that a decisive defeat of Eurocentrism, within and beyond International Relations, requires the formulation of a non-ethnocentric international social theory which postcolonial approaches, à la poststructuralism, reject on the grounds that it involves th…
Uneven and Combined Development in World History: The International Relations of State-formation in Premodern Iran
IR's turn towards historical sociology is yet to overcome its ahistoricism. This lack of world-historical perspective, particularly conspicuous in relation to the non-European world, and arguably IR's emergence as a discipline, can be traced back to the theoretically fateful negligence of `the international' by the classical (historical) sociology on which the contemporary critiques of the mainstream IR theory tend to draw. This article develops …
Democratic Confederalism and Societal Multiplicity: A Sympathetic Critique of Abdullah Öcalan's State Theory
The Kurdish-led project of democratic confederalism in Rojava (north and north-east Syria) has emerged as an unprecedented experience in eco-feminist and anti-capitalist direct democracy with global significance and regional ramifications. There is however virtually no critical engagement with the project’s intellectual foundations in the works of Abdullah Öcalan. This paper seeks to address this gap through a sympathetic critique of Öcalan’s his…
Deciphering the modern Janus: Societal multiplicity and nation-formation
How to theorize the nation’s Janus-like form, its simultaneous modernity and antiquity? This paper provides an original answer to this longstanding question. It argues that nations arise from the interaction of ‘societal multiplicity’ and the expansionist tendency of historical capitalism. The emergence of capitalism super-adds a modern inflection to the inherently relational process of collective identity formation by generating modern sovereign…
Lineages of the Islamic State: An International Historical Sociology of State (De-)Formation in Iraq
Existing accounts of the Islamic State (IS) tend to rely on orientalist and technicist assumptions and hence insufficiently sensitive to the historical, sociological, and international conditions of the possibility of IS. The present article provides an alternative account through a conjunctural analysis that is anchored in an international historical sociology of modern Iraq informed by Leon Trotsky's idea of 'uneven and combined development'. I…
Debating Uneven and Combined Development/Debating International Relations: A Forum
This forum arises from an online event on the theory of uneven and combined development (UCD). Following an introduction which proposes a ‘special affinity’ between UCD and International Relations (IR), four presenters at that event discuss their ‘view from outside’ UCD, including perspectives from Global Historical Sociology, Realism, Decolonial theory and Gramscian Marxism. Meanwhile four members of the audience add their views on UCD and disci…
The Kurdish Janus: The intersocietal construction of nations
Existing accounts of Kurdish nationalism can be mapped onto the main theories of nationalism, that is, primordialism, ethnosymbolism and modernism. These theories, however, suffer, respectively, from essentialism, circularity and aporia, manifest in their common inability to digest the Janus‐like character of nations, that is, their display of simultaneous modernity and antiquity. This paper develops an alternative account through a critical appl…
Democracy without Capitalism: Retheorizing Iran's Constitutional Revolution
Just as we can introduce the telegraphy from Europe ... so too we can adopt their principles of [political] ordering. Mirza Malkam1 1 Cited in H. Algar (1973) Mirza Malkum Khan: A Study in the Histo
International relations in the making of political Islam: Interrogating Khomeini's ‘Islamic government’
Beyond Anarchy and Capital? The Geopolitics of the Rojava Revolution in Syria
First paragraph: The drylands of the Middle East have been long seen not only as unfavourable to life, but also and relatedly, socio-politically fragile. Fraught with myths of eternal ‘ethnic’, ‘sectarian’, or ‘resource conflict’, the chronic political instability of the Middle East from Afghanistan and Yemen to Iraq and Syria has been often seen as intrinsic to a scarce ‘nature’, a scorched earth, tendentially collapsing into brute violence whic…
Introduction to War, revolt and rupture: The historical sociology of the current crisis in the Middle East
Uneven and Combined Development in World History: The International Relations of State-formation in Premodern Iran
IR's turn towards historical sociology is yet to overcome its ahistoricism. This lack of world-historical perspective, particularly conspicuous in relation to the non-European world, and arguably IR's emergence as a discipline, can be traced back to the theoretically fateful negligence of `the international' by the classical (historical) sociology on which the contemporary critiques of the mainstream IR theory tend to draw. This article develops …
Democracy without Capitalism: Retheorizing Iran's Constitutional Revolution
Just as we can introduce the telegraphy from Europe ... so too we can adopt their principles of [political] ordering. Mirza Malkam1 1 Cited in H. Algar (1973) Mirza Malkum Khan: A Study in the Histo
International relations in the making of political Islam: Interrogating Khomeini's ‘Islamic government’
Recasting Iranian Modernity: International Relations and Social Change
Critically deploying the idea of uneven and combined development this book provides a novel non-Eurocentric account of Iran’s experience of modernity and revolution. Recasting Iranian Modernity presents the argument that Eurocentrism can be decisively overcome through a social theory that has international relations at its ontological core. This will enable a conception of history in which there is an intrinsic international dimension to social c…
Redeeming the universal: Postcolonialism and the inner life of Eurocentrism
This article investigates the limits of postcolonial International Relations’ anti-Eurocentrism through an interrogation of its ambivalent relation with the category of ‘the universal.’ It argues that a decisive defeat of Eurocentrism, within and beyond International Relations, requires the formulation of a non-ethnocentric international social theory which postcolonial approaches, à la poststructuralism, reject on the grounds that it involves th…
Introduction to War, revolt and rupture: The historical sociology of the current crisis in the Middle East
Lineages of the Islamic State: An International Historical Sociology of State (De-)Formation in Iraq
Existing accounts of the Islamic State (IS) tend to rely on orientalist and technicist assumptions and hence insufficiently sensitive to the historical, sociological, and international conditions of the possibility of IS. The present article provides an alternative account through a conjunctural analysis that is anchored in an international historical sociology of modern Iraq informed by Leon Trotsky's idea of 'uneven and combined development'. I…
Deciphering the modern Janus: Societal multiplicity and nation-formation
How to theorize the nation’s Janus-like form, its simultaneous modernity and antiquity? This paper provides an original answer to this longstanding question. It argues that nations arise from the interaction of ‘societal multiplicity’ and the expansionist tendency of historical capitalism. The emergence of capitalism super-adds a modern inflection to the inherently relational process of collective identity formation by generating modern sovereign…
Beyond Anarchy and Capital? The Geopolitics of the Rojava Revolution in Syria
First paragraph: The drylands of the Middle East have been long seen not only as unfavourable to life, but also and relatedly, socio-politically fragile. Fraught with myths of eternal ‘ethnic’, ‘sectarian’, or ‘resource conflict’, the chronic political instability of the Middle East from Afghanistan and Yemen to Iraq and Syria has been often seen as intrinsic to a scarce ‘nature’, a scorched earth, tendentially collapsing into brute violence whic…
Democratic Confederalism and Societal Multiplicity: A Sympathetic Critique of Abdullah Öcalan's State Theory
The Kurdish-led project of democratic confederalism in Rojava (north and north-east Syria) has emerged as an unprecedented experience in eco-feminist and anti-capitalist direct democracy with global significance and regional ramifications. There is however virtually no critical engagement with the project’s intellectual foundations in the works of Abdullah Öcalan. This paper seeks to address this gap through a sympathetic critique of Öcalan’s his…
Debating Uneven and Combined Development/Debating International Relations: A Forum
This forum arises from an online event on the theory of uneven and combined development (UCD). Following an introduction which proposes a ‘special affinity’ between UCD and International Relations (IR), four presenters at that event discuss their ‘view from outside’ UCD, including perspectives from Global Historical Sociology, Realism, Decolonial theory and Gramscian Marxism. Meanwhile four members of the audience add their views on UCD and disci…
Writing Capitalism into Iran through the International
“Writing capitalism into Iran” arguably requires addressing a prior theoretical question regarding the origins and development of capitalism. This is because many of the existing analyses of Iran's experience of capitalist modernity tend to uncritically deploy classical Marxist theories of capitalist development. This literature's analytical problems, especially its recurrent recourse to exceptionalism, cannot be solved at the empirical or analyt…
The Kurdish Janus: The intersocietal construction of nations
Existing accounts of Kurdish nationalism can be mapped onto the main theories of nationalism, that is, primordialism, ethnosymbolism and modernism. These theories, however, suffer, respectively, from essentialism, circularity and aporia, manifest in their common inability to digest the Janus‐like character of nations, that is, their display of simultaneous modernity and antiquity. This paper develops an alternative account through a critical appl…
Sociology (13 works) · Political science (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (7 works) · Islamic Studies and History (6 works) · Modernity (6 works)