Peter Mandaville

Transnational Muslim Politics : Reimagining the Umma

Introduction 1. Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries: International Relations and Translocal Politics 2. Before, During and After the West: Islam, Muslims and the Umma 3. Modes of Translocality: Travelling Theory, Hybridity, Diaspora 4. Living Islam: Politics and Community in the Muslim Diaspora 5. Transnational Public Spheres: Information and Communication Technologies in the Muslim World 6. Reimagining the Umma?

Territory and Translocality: Discrepant Idioms of Political Identity

This article argues that international political theory requires better ways of thinking about the formation of transnational (or, as it is suggested, translocal) political identities in the wake of changing configurations of territory/political space. More specifically it identifies discrepant forms of political practice-typified by transnational communities, borderzone identities, and spiritualist movements-whose political practices problematise the dominant statist assumption of equivalence between territorial situatedness and political identity.

Globalization and the Politics of Religious Knowledge: Pluralizing Authority in the Muslim World

Globalizing processes have rendered as analytically insufficient accounts of authority in the Muslim world that rely exclusively on the interaction between text, discursive method and personified knowledge. The construction and negotiation of globalized authority in Islam, it is argued, can only be understood by reference to a set of pluralizing processes that intensify and in some instances radicalize a tendency towards authoritative pluralism that has long been present in Islam. This can be understood in terms of (1) functionalization, or changes in terms of how individual Muslims understand the social purpose and ends of knowledge seeking; (2) respatialization; and (3) mediatization or interrelated changes in terms of how far away and in what kinds of spaces and media one seeks authority or authorization. Collectively, such pluralizing processes combine to construct global Islamic authority in diverse forms that transcend or challenge conventional understandings of religious knowledge, its location and mode of articulation. Reference is made throughout to illustrative ethnographic examples, social movements and practices.

Toward a Different Cosmopolitanism--Or, the ""I'' Dislocated

IR’s ‘‘I’’, as we have seen, assumes many guises. If this special issue has not succeeded in locating it, we can at the very least say that the ‘‘I’’ is now thoroughly dislocated. A number of our contributors have dwelled upon the poverty of IR’s conception of political space, and more specifically on the problems entailed in treating state sovereignty as the fetish of an inherently conservative ideology (Welsh), as the producer of particular political identities (Pasha), or as the name of an ethical relation ( Jones). These authors have demonstrated a clear need to rethink both the ‘‘inter’’ and the ‘‘national’’. Following on from these highly useful disruptions, let me begin this concluding piece with an image of the state in flux. Thus, actually, has it always been— never quite so static as its name implies. Rather, the state has only ever named a desire, a fantasy, a particularly totalising configuration of political spacetime—one that seeks, above all, a homogeneous politics. Much recent interest in imagining political community beyond—or as will become clear later, sometimes below or within—the nation-state, has been driven by two central concerns. First, the fact that as processes of globalisation intensify, a diminution of state capacity has occurred. Although never absolutely complete in its jurisdiction over inflows and outflows across borders, it seems that the state in recent years has experienced a significant decline in regulatory capacity in this regard—not to mention an erosion in its ability to lay exclusive claim to the role of world political actor par excellence. Second, but more important, I think, is the question of whether the sovereign nation-state represents an appropriate institution for the conduct of global politics; indeed, for any kind of politics. Is the state, as it may sometimes seem, merely an empty container, a tabula rasa, upon which (or within which) all manner of politics are performed? Or is it, in itself, constitutive of a certain kind of politics? Does it not also prescribe the parameters and boundaries, literally, of the political? Does it not name an institutional locale wherein politics is supposed to—or, more particularly, required to—occur? To

Reading the state from elsewhere: towards an anthropology of the postnational

My aim in this review article is to advance the argument that some of the best accounts of how we relate internationally are to be found outside the conventional boundaries of international relations (IR). In a recent review article in this journal, Kate Manzo also suggests that international relations might profit from a closer engagement with examples of disciplinary boundary crossing located in—or, perhaps more accurately, between —other fields of study. She advocates a widening of the ‘international imagination’ so as to incorporate categories of analysis and approaches to the study of power usually seen as falling outside the remit of IR as it is traditionally understood. It is, of course, the very nature of this ‘traditional’ IR that finds itself under question today. Manzo convincingly demonstrates how the work of writers such as Roxanne Lynn Doty and Arturo Escobar refigures debates about colonialism, race and development such that their intrinsic import to the international is laid bare. Although I find myself in almost complete agreement with Manzo—particularly as regards her point about mainstream IRs neglect of other sites and forms of power—I want in this article to highlight a different, although equally subversive, dimension of doing multidisciplinary work in international relations.

Islam and Exceptionalism in American Political Discourse

The phenomenal success achieved by Islamic political parties in the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2011 is one of the most significant and frequently noted developments to follow from those momentous events. Within a few months of the demise of long-standing authoritarian regimes, Islamist groups that had been banned and oppressed for decades found themselves flourishing. Soon El-Nahda in Tunisia and then Egypts Muslim Brotherhood tasted victory in constituent assembly, legislative, and eventually presidential elections. A new area of political Islam in power had seemingly arrived.

The Heterarchic Umma: Reading Islamic Civilization from Within

International Relations (IR) has been struggling with civilizations for well over a decade now. Samuel Huntington’s infamous contribution aside, IR theory has been replete with debates about the role of culture and identity in world politics (Lapid and Kratochwil, 1996; Mazrui, 1990). The advent of critical, poststructural, and constructivist theories of IR sought to emphasize the importance of ideational factors and the processes through which diverse actors build intersubjective meaning (Der Derian, 1989; Onuf, 1989; Wendt, 1992). Others have mined the vein of historical sociology by way of exploring the contemporary relevance of civilizational analysis (Cox, 2002; Puchala, 1997). No account, however, has captured the popular imagination in quite the same way as Huntington’s (1998) pithy story of civilizations in clash. Averitable cottage industry has emerged around efforts to refute Huntington (1996). Some point out that his cultural blocs are artificially bounded, insufficiently dynamic, and bear little resemblance to actually existing formations in the world. Others point out that he has simply reproduced the structural logic of state-based realism at a higher order of affiliation: gargantuan billiards balls pursuing power—defined, perhaps, in terms of something like “civilizational interest”—in an anarchical system.

Introduction: Within International Relations Itself, a New Culture Rises Up

What the West did not realise, according to the Sinologist, Rudolf Wagner, was that both students and political authorities, at the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, used the same Chinese rhetoric of absolute and exclusive truth. As long as they maintained that rhetoric, meaningful dialogue and compromise were impossible: each side was excluded from the truthfulness of what was said by the other.1 In short, notwithstanding their construction of a Franco-American Statue of Liberty, and their identification with the democratic revolutions of France and the United States – not to mention theWestern sympathy to their cause and their symbolism – the students were not speaking democratically. What the West did understand was that the students had attempted a political protest, and thus analysed it with the instruments of a Western political science. In the years afterwards, seeking the icons and typologies of that political science – ideologies, parties, manifestos; the organisation of grievances and aspirations – the West took a long time to recognise the Falun Gong as a political challenge to Beijing. It did not take Beijing so long. Using legislation that forbids the misuse of religion and Qigong, the authorities have cracked down upon the Falun Gong; which, all the same, refuses to go away.

Bringing the United States Back into the Middle East

It has been all too common to criticize the Obama administration for a lack of strategic vision in responding to the Arab uprisings. While such criticism may be valid, it is time to move beyond critique and articulate not just a bold vision, but one that policymakers can realistically implement within very real economic and political constraints. During the remainder of its second term, the Obama administration has an opportunity to rethink some of the flawed assumptions that guided its Middle East policy before the Arab Spring—and still guide it today. Chief among these is the idea that the United States can afford to continue turning a blind eye to the internal politics of Arab countries so long as local regimes look out for a narrow set of regional security interests. With so much policy bandwidth focused on putting out fires, the United States has neglected the important task of thinking about its longer-term engagement in the region. Crisis management is the most immediate concern for policymakers, but it’s not necessarily the most important. Instead of providing an overarching framework for a new democracy push in the Arab world, President Obama’s response to the Arab uprisings in places like Egypt, Libya, and Syria has been purposely careful and modest—episodic rather than strategic. This is partially due to exogenous events; it is an unfortunate accident of history that the Arab uprisings happened just as the United States and Europe were in the throes of crisis and self-doubt, after the Iraq war and economic recession. These events have given the United States reason to pause before launching into transformational strategies, especially in a region like the Middle East. The phrase “leading from behind” has become the pejorative description of choice for critics of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. But this term—itself reportedly coined by an administration official—does capture an important shift in U.S. policy. Nina Hachigian and David Shorr have come closest to defining what ties together the

Bringing Religion into International Relations

Bringing Religion into International Relations. By Jonathan Fox and Shmuel Sandler. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 224p.