World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

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23-Muslim Worlds – World of Islam? - NOT_DEFINED activity_field_Poster
 

· NOT_DEFINED institution: Zentrum Moderner Orient

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Sonja Hegasy

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description: The Berlin Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) is the only German research institute devoted to an interdisciplinary and comparative study of the Middle East, Africa, South and Southeast Asia from a historical perspective. Current research focuses on the interaction between predominantly Muslim societies and their relations with non-Muslim neighbours. The Centre's research programme comprises three interdisciplinary projects, with 30 researchers working on different historical and cultural aspects of the "Modern Orient" since the 18th century.
The central research programme “Muslim Worlds – World of Islam?” aims at investigating a broad spectrum of historical and contemporary dynamics within and between the mostly Muslim societies since the eighteenth century, and their links with Europe. Starting from the assumption that ‘world’ is understood as a geographical, social and ideological space, the research explores perceptions and projections of the world originating from the South. It focuses on how projections of world and order are translated into normative tools and regulatory measures, such as institutions, group structures and personal agendas, in order to organize and control relations under global conditions. Contrary to a trend that focuses exclusively on political and intellectual elites, the individual projects place due emphasis on the world projections of ordinary individuals and groups. By focusing on diverse local actors, the research cluster provides insights into the dynamics that characterize perceptions of the global.

The interdisciplinary cooperation of historians, anthropologists, economists, psychologists and experts from other areas transcends the standard disciplinal and regional fields of knowledge and will be presented in this poster exhibition. ZMO focuses on interdisciplinary research based on a combination of intensive archival work and field research, thereby breaking with the disciplinary and regional limitations of traditional fields of knowledge. While basic research remains the centre of attention, recent events have highlighted the need to investigate and better understand non-Western modernity.

The posters regroup three main aspects:
I. Concepts of World and Order
II. Microcosms and Practices of the Local
III. Actors in Translocal Spaces

The exhibition covers a wide range of topics such as cosmopolitanism and the end of the Ottoman Empire, migration and post-colonial praxis, Gambian Tablighi religious beliefs and practices, the production of historical knowledge and politics of memory or the emergency of new translocal labour markets in Algeria.