Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies

This collection of essays examines how modern public spheres reflect and mask - often both simultaneously - discourses of order, contests for hegemony, and techniques of power in the Muslim world. It builds on scholarship that re-imagines theories and practices of the public in modern and contemporary societies. While examining disparate time periods and locations, each contributor views modern and contemporary public spheres as crucial to the functioning, and understanding, of political and societal power in Muslim majority countries.

ARMANDO SALVATORE is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University, Germany. He is author of Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity (Ithaca Press, 1997) and editor of Between Europe and Islam: Shaping Modernity in a Transcultural Space (co-edited with Almut Höfert, Peter Lang, 2000).

MARK LE VINE is Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, Culture and Islamic Studies at the University of California, USA. He is the author of Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine (UC Press, NYP), Why They Don't Hate Us: From Culture Wars to Culture Jamming in the Global Era (Oneworld PressNYP), and co-editor with Viggo Mortensen and Pilar Perez of Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation (Perceval Press).