The Cultural Politics and Political Culture of Merip and Beyond
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21221618 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul A Silverstein (Reed College, corresponding author), Ted Swedenburg (University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 259-275 |
| Publication date | 2021-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Review of Middle East Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2151-3481 • E-ISSN: 2329-3225 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/rms.2022.4 |
| OpenAlex | W4298038791 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
In this essay, we examine how MERIP has navigated the frictions between the political economic critique of extraction and domination in the region, and more semiotic models which center “culture,” variously understood, in their analyses of power and inequality. Broadly speaking, MERIP authors have addressed four dimensions of culture writ large: aesthetic expressions and artistic performances; everyday practices and ordinary life in their various multisensorial, affective experiences; identity performance along intersectional terrains of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race; and discursive formations in which the very categories of the “political” and the “economic” are produced and reproduced within shifting fields of power. In all its dimensions, culture is embedded and entangled in material conflicts over production, distribution, and consumption, and thus necessarily political, but not merely so. How to approach cultural politics and political culture without reducing them to a play of hegemony and resistance has been a persistent challenge in cultural analysis. By exploring how MERIP authors have negotiated this fraught terrain—by outlining MERIP's effective culture concept with a focus on its aesthetic dimensions—we offer a window into a central tension within the broader field of Middle East studies
Aesthetics · Art · Hegemony · Political culture · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Writ · Anthropology · Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Turkey's Politics and Society
| Highly cited | No |
|---|