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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2021
The issue “Pluralisms in Emergenc(i)es” is a result of a two-conference series that took place in Amman and Tunis, in December 2017 and October 2018, respectively. Taking these two locations as historical epicenters of human, commodity, and capital mobility, in two connected regions, these conferences set out to interrogate the historical, social, and religious underpinnings of the migrant and refugee crisis in order to position this moment as a state of emergence, rather than a state of emergency. The focus of the essays included here explores pluralism as it has emerged in response to contemporary global crises, and asks a number of questions: What are the variations in how “pluralism” is understood, and how does it function in a time of crisis? What are the material and immaterial modes through which pluralism takes shape? Moreover, how does it change through the circulation of people - as migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers – and capital – whether under the auspices of international development funds, religious aid, or new labor markets? By crossing disciplinary boundaries, this special issue enters into a fundamental discussion about how “pluralism” is conceived across sites and offers new vistas for its conceptualization in North Africa and the Middle East.
Kristin Soraya Batmanghelichi is Associate Professor for the Study of Modern Iran at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS) at the University of Oslo, Norway, and an Associate at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research in New York City. A. George Bajalia is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. Sami Al-Daghistani is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society in Oslo, an Associate at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research in New York City, and a Research Scholar in the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.
2 Brown, Wendy, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 2000, first published 1966), 36Google Scholar.
4 Elizabeth A. Povinelli, “The Virus: Figure and Infrastructure.” e-flux architecture: Sick Architecture, November 27, 2020, https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/sick-architecture/352870/the-virus-figure-and-infrastructure/.
5 Marty, Martin E., “Pluralisms,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 612.1 (2016): 13–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For some examples, see: Rowe, William L., “Religious Pluralism,” Religious Studies 35.2 (1999): 139–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chaves, Mark and Gorski, Philip S., “Religious Pluralism and Religious Participation,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 261–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salameh, Franck, “Adonis, the Syrian Crisis, and the Question of Pluralism in the Levant,” Bustan: The Middle East Book Review 3.1 (2012): 36–61Google Scholar.
6 Marty, “Pluralisms,” 18.
7 Ibid.
8 Maqdisi, Ussama, The Age of Coexistence (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019)Google Scholar.
9 Pelham, Nicolas, Holy Lands: Reviving Religious Pluralism in the Middle East (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016): 17Google Scholar.
10 Ibid., 17.
11 Vatikiotis, P. J., “Non-Muslims in Muslim Society: A Preliminary Consideration of the Problem on the Basis of Recent Published Works by Muslim Authors,” in Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the Middle East, eds. Esman, Milton J. and Rabinovich, Itamar (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1988), 54–70Google Scholar.
12 Karl Sharro, “The Retreat from Universalism in the Middle East and the World: Intellectual Shifts and the Demise of Inclusive Identities,” The Century Foundation online, April 19, 2019, https://tcf.org/content/report/retreat-universalism-middle-east-world/?agreed=1.
13 Ibid.
14 Though the word pluralism only features in the article's title, Hamid points to multiple competing interest groups vying for domination over definitions of the state and what it should be. Hamid closes his article by discouraging the diminished role of U.S. diplomacy and intervention in the region, chiefly pointing to ongoing devastation in Syria and Iraq, and urging American policymakers and politicians to seek guidance about taking careful actions (using force by NATO and the international community) to end foreign civil conflicts – underscoring military intervention to encouraging returning to politics in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Rwanda as recent historical examples. Shadi Hamid, “The End of Pluralism,” The Atlantic, July 23, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/the-end-of-pluralism/374875/.
15 Sarah Repucci, “A Leaderless Struggle for Democracy,” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2020/leaderless-struggle-democracy.
16 As a recent example of the latter, Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, in collaboration with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, organized panel discussions in January 2017 to “identify effective and sustainable policy options the new U.S. administration may consider to foster more inclusive and pluralistic systems in the region.” See the program video, “Building Inclusive and Pluralistic Systems post-Arab Spring,” January 26, 2018, BakerInstitute.org, https://www.bakerinstitute.org/videos/building-inclusive-and-pluralistic-systems-post-arab-spring/. See also Marwan Muasher, “A Movement for Pluralism in the Arab World,” CarnegieEndowment.org, January 23, 2014, https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/01/23/movement-for-pluralism-in-arab-world-pub-54359.