A New Home for Transregional Studies

Last year, I published a Cambridge Element titled What is the Middle East? The Theory and Practice of Regions. It surveyed the origins and the implications of the adoption of the concept of the Middle East as a region, and argued that regional scholars should think in more transregional terms, expanding the borders of the region by acknowledging historical and contemporary interconnections between, say, North Africa and the Sahel or the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. That short and readable book, I'm happy to say, has found its way onto quite a few syllabi – and I'm still eager to send a PDF for classroom use to anyone else who wants to give it a try.

That interest in transregional approaches to the Middle East made me extraordinarily excited when Samer Abboud of Villanova University told me that he had taken over as the editor of the Journal of South Asian and Middle East Studies and planned to take it in a critical, transregional direction. Abboud is the author of multiple books on Syria, including the new Betrayal of the Homeland in my Columbia University Press series (listen to our podcast here; I'll be blogging about it soon). We have been talking for years about warscapes and critical security studies, and I thought he was an ideal person to take on this new initiative. There are a few other journals that take an explicitly transregional and comparative regional approach, most notably the outstanding Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. But there is clearly space to carve out something new.

So when Abboud asked me to contribute a short essay to a roundtable launching and discussing the new journal, I was delighted to do so. That essay, and the full journal issue, have now been published (available on JSTOR) and I urge you all to check it out. Here's how Abboud describes the mission:

"Many scholars of the Middle East and South Asia today deploy complex, multi-scalar analyses that are rooted in interdisciplinary methodologies and varying epistemologies. We foresee a direction for the journal that elevates these varied approaches to studying the diverse geographic zone stretching across the Middle East and South Asia alongside approaches that are focused at the national or sub-national level. At the fore-front of our concerns are the dynamics of region-making and therefore world-making, from within this macro-regional space that includes areas of interest such as pilgrimage routes, logistics infrastructures, smuggling networks, piracy circuits, informal security providers, and religious networks. We believe that the revamped JSAMES can serve as a home for scholarship that explores the unique political, social, and economic formations, along with their historical antecedents, that contribute to region-making."

The roundtable features an exceptional group of scholars, including Esmat Elhalaby, Ameem Lutfi, Marya Hannun, Neha Vora, Ada Petiwala, Lisa Anderson, Hafsa Kanjawal, Golnar Nikpour, Adeem Suhail, Andrea Wright, Ahmed Morsy, Andrew Stinson, Zaynab El Barnoussi, and Beth Derderian. Many of the essays reflect on the historical evolution of different disciplines and the place occupied by "the Middle East" and "South Asia" within them. There are many rich reflections on the potential for critical methodologies, new comparisons, and fresh insights through breaking down the walls between regions.

My own short contribution asks the editors and contributors to think through the adoption of "macro regions" with an eye towards avoiding replicating the problems with existing regions (I continue to be skeptical that the increasingly popular term SWANA Southwest Asia and North Africa is an improvement over the Middle East, since it just reverses the geographical origin against which the area is situated without addressing the underlying issues of definition, theory and practice).

I argue that "the advantages of the macro-regional approach are, to my eyes at least, obvious enough to not require great elaboration. The boundaries between these regions are indeed quite artificial, rooted in colonial legacies, organizational convenience, and often racism. Those borders serve to divide intellectual communities, foreclosing consideration of some of the most important and interesting comparative questions." At the same time, I warn against discounting the deep importance of local and area knowledge:

"The virtue of area studies research has traditionally been the deep knowledge close analysis of a single or closely related cases can offer. Deep immersion in local context, familiarity with dialect and cultural norms, and long field research are foundational to qualitative area studies expertise.... I tend to believe that such solid area studies knowledge is foundational to building political and social theory, not the atheoretical alternative sometimes dismissed by disciplinary leaders."

I encourage you to check out this newly relaunched journal and consider submitting appropriate work. Abboud and his team are committed to carving out a new space for transregional work, and I'm excited to see what emerges.