CSOC 23A12 - Sociology of the Middle East: Local Concerns, Global Debates

This course provides a survey of social life in the Middle East, tackling the intertwinement of politics, religion, and everyday life in the region’s societies. In doing so, it also assesses the strengths and weaknesses of mainstream sociological theories and methods for the study of the Middle East. We start by a quick review of the development of mainstream sociology in Europe, its application to the rest of the world, and recent attempts at decolonizing sociology. We will then focus our attention on the Middle East and work our way through macro- and micro-level studies of politics, everyday life, and their entanglement. The course covers a variety of topics including states, political economy, social movements, religion, gender, art and culture, demography, and urban life. The discussion ends with an assessment of sociology of the Middle East at large, asking what aspects of life in the Middle Eastern are considered viable topics in mainstream sociology, how much we know about this life beyond states, repression, wars, and revolutions, and who produces sociological knowledge about the Middle East.

Each class consists of a 1-hour lecture, followed by 1 hour of class discussions and presentations. In each discussion session one or two of the students will make a short presentation based on one of the assigned articles, and lead a class debate around a pre-assigned question (e.g., whether the article under discussion is fair in its assessment of the role of politics on a certain religious practice.) All students are expected to submit a 1-paragraph response to the same question before class and come prepared for the debate.

Weekly topics :

Class 1: The Global South in Classical Sociology

Class 2: Decolonial Sociology

Class 3: State and political economy

Class 4: Religion—macro and micro Lenses

Class 5: Revolutions, wars, and social movements

Class 6: Urban life in the shadow of politics

Class 7: Gender and sexuality—a political take

Class 8: Gender and sexuality—a societal take

Class 9: Art and culture

Class 10: Family

Class 11: Demography and class structure

Class 12: Imagining a sociology of everyday life in the Middle East