Beyond Orientalist, Colonial and Nationalist Models: a critical mapping of Maghribi studies (1951–2000)

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Notes

This is an updated and revised essay of a paper prepared for delivery to the seminar ‘Mapping North Africa’, at the Department of Middle East and African Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 25 September 2003. I am grateful for critical comments by three anonymous referees on a draft of this review essay.

1 Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

2 Bryan S Turner, Marx and the End of Orientalism, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978, pp 6–7.

3 For a classical critique of this type of orientalism, see Edward W Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books, 1979. For a critique of HAR Gibb & Harold Bowen's Islamic Society and the West, see Roger Owen, ‘The Middle East in the eighteenth century: an Islamic society in decline’, Review of Middle East Studies, 1, 1975, pp 101–112. For critiques of Eurocentrism and the colonial model, see Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989; JM Blaut, The Colonizer Model of the World, New York: Guilford Press, 1993; and Nandy, The Intimate Enemy. For a review and a critique of French images of North Africa, see Abdelmajid Hannoum, Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001; and Roger Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa, 1880–1930, Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2003.

4 See Edward W Said, Covering Islam, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981; Michael Gilsenan, Recognizing Islam, New York: Pantheon Books, 1982; and Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People and the State, London: Routledge, 1989. See also an excellent review by the late Egyptian anthropologist Abdul Hamid el-Zien, ‘Beyond ideology and theology: the search for the anthropology of Islam’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 6, 1977, pp 227–254; Marnia Lazreg's critique of some Western idealist and ethnocentric feminist studies of gender in the Middle East and North Africa, ‘Feminism and difference: the perils of writing as a woman on women in Algeria’, Feminist Studies, 14, 1988, pp 81–107; Fadwa El Guindi. Veil: Modesty, Privacy ,and Resistance, Oxford: Berg, 1999; and Ferzaneh Milani, ‘On women's captivity in the Islamic world’, Middle East Report, 246, 2008, pp 40–46.

5 For the classical formulation of the segmentary model, see EE Evans-Prichard, The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949, pp 59–60. The most prominent advocate of this model was the late Ernest Gellner in his Saints of the Atlas, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp 35–70. For the application of this model in political science, see John Waterbury, The Commander of the Faithful, New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. For a summary of the major critiques of the segmentary model, see David Seddon, ‘Economic anthropology or political economy: approaches to the analysis of pre-capitalist formation in the Maghrib’, in John Calmer (ed), The New Economic Anthropology, London: Macmillan, 1978. For a critique of the field of anthropology's use of kinship, see David Schneider, A Critique of the Concept of Kinship, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1984. See also Mohamed El Mansour, Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulayman: Society, State, and Religion 1792–1822, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire: Menas Press, 1990. One also has to recognise some original new scholarship in Arabic on the pre-colonial history of the Maghrib, such as the works of Moroccan historian Rahma Burqiyya on Morocco, the Algerian historian Sa'id El Din Sa'iduni on Ottoman Algerian history, the late Tunisian historian Rashad El Imam on Hamuda Basha in Tunisia, and the fine edited book by Libyan historian Muhammad Tahir al-Jerary on Libyan scholarship, Libyan Society: 1835–2000, Tripoli: Center of Libyan History of Jihad Studies, 2000.

6 Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East, New York: Free Press, 1958, pp 76–101. See also Manfred Halpern, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963, pp 51–78; and Monroe Berger, ‘The middle class in the Arab world’, in Walter Laqueur (ed), The Middle East in Transition, New York: Praeger, 1958. For an alternative scholarship of North African civil society, see the edited book in Arabic by Abdellah Hammoudi, Society Becoming Aware of Itself, Dar al-Bayda (Casablanca): Dar Tubqal Lilnashir, 1998.

7 For a critique of Lerner's book, see Irene L Gendzier, ‘Notes towards a reading of the passing of traditional society’, Review of Middle East Studies, 5, 1978, pp 32–47. On the influence of government policy on some Middle Eastern specialists, see Peter Johnson & Judith Tucker, ‘Middle East studies network in the United States’, merip Reports, 5, 1975; and Lisa Hajjar & Steve Niva, ‘(Re)made in the USA: Middle East studies in the global era’, Middle East Report, October–December, 1997, pp. 3–20. See also Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, ‘Colonialism, state formation and civil society in North Africa: theoretical and analytical problems’, International Journal of Islamic and Arabic Studies, XI (I), 1994, as well as A Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995; and Harry Harootunian, The Empire's New Clothes, Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004.

8 See the essays by Binder and Zartman in Leonard Binder (ed), The Study of the Middle East, New York: Wiley, 1976; and Mark Tessler (ed), Area Studies and Social Science: Strategies for Understanding the Middle East, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999.

9 L Carl Brown, ‘US–Maghribi relations: model or muddle?’, in Halim Barakat (ed), Contemporary North Africa: Issues of Development and Integration, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, 1985, pp 38–39.

10 Yves Lacoste, ‘General characteristics and fundamental structures of medieval North Africa’, Economy and Society, 3 (1), 1974, pp 10–11; and Ahmad Sadiq Sa'ad, Tarikh Misr al-Ijtimai wa al-Iqtisadi, fi dawu al Namat al-Asyawi lil Intaj (Egypt's Social and Economic History in light of the Asiatic Mode of Production), Beirut: Dar Ibn Khaldun, 1979.

11 See Karal Marx, ‘The future of the British rule in India’; and Friedrich Engels, ‘Algeria’, in Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, On Colonialism, New York: International Publishers, 1972, pp 81–87, 156–161. See also Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘Eurocentrism and its avatars: the dilemma of social science’, New Left Review, 226, 1997, pp 2–9; and William A Green, ‘Periodization in European and world history’, Journal of World History, 3 (1), Spring, 1992, pp 13–53.

12 Michael C Hudson, Arab Politics, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1927; and Dale Eickelman, The Middle East: An Anthropological Approach, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981. See also the fine collection of essays in Hisham Sharabi (ed), Theory, Politics, and the Arab World, New York: Routledge, 1990. On French colonialism in the Maghrib, see Jean-Claude Vatin et al (eds), Connaissances du Maghreb: Sciences Sociales et Colonisation, Paris: Editions du Centre National, 1984; Philippe Lucas & Jean-Claude Vatin, L'Algerie des anthropologues, Paris: Francois Maspero, 1975; Benjamin Stora, Histoire de L'Algerie, Paris: La Decouverte, 1994; Jonathan K Gosnell, The Politics of Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 1930–1954, Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002; Abdelmajid Hannoum, ‘The historiographic state: how Algeria became French’, History and Anthropology, 19 (2), 2008, pp 91–114; Patricia Lorcin, Imperial Identities, London: IB Tauris, 1995; CR Pennell, A Country with a Government and a Flag: The Rif War in Morocco, 1921–1926, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire: Middle East and North Africa Press, 1986; and Moshe Gershovich, French Military Rule in Morocco, London: Frank Cass, 2000. On Italian colonialism, see Ruth-Ben Ghiat & Mia Fuller (eds), Italian Colonialism, New York: Palgrave Press, 2005; and Nicola Labanca, ‘Italian studies of Italian colonialism in Libya’, Journal of Libyan Studies, 2 (1), 2001, pp 69–79.

13 Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, ‘Orientalism and orientalism in reverse’, Race and Class, Autumn, 1985; Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, New York: Verso, 1992, pp 183–185; Yahya Sadowsky, ‘The new orientalism and the democracy debate’, Middle East Report, July–August 1993, pp 14–21, 40; Rifaat Ali Abou El-Haj, ‘Preface’ to the Arabic translation of Ali Abullatif Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colonialization and Resistance, 1830–1932, Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1995, pp 11–16; and an expanded chapter by Abou El-Haj ‘Historiography in West Asian and North African studies since Sa'id's orientalism’, in Arif Dirlik et al (eds), History After the Three Worlds, Boston, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000, pp 67–84.

14 Aside from a common critical focus on socioeconomic issues, there are many methodological differences among the following scholars: Rifaat Ali Abou El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991; Ali Abou ‘The social uses of the past’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 14 (2), 1982, pp 185–201; Abdallah Laroui, The History of the Maghrib, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977; Hannoum, Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories; Edmond Burke III, Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: The Pre-Colonial Protest and Resistance 1860–1912, Kent, UK: Dawson, 1981; David Seddon, Moroccan Peasants: A Century of Change in the Eastern Rif 1879–1970, Kent: Dawson, 1981; Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993; Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism, Austin, TX: Texas University Press, 1977; Abdellah Hammoudi, Master and Disciple, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1997; Julia Clancy-Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounter, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996; Marnia Lazreg, The Emergence of Classes in Algeria, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1976; Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008; Mahfoud Bennoune, ‘Socioeconomic–economic changes in rural Algeria, 1983–1945: a diachronic analysis of peasantry under colonialism’, Peasant News Letter, 5, 1975, pp 11–117; Bennoune, ‘The origins of the Algerian proletariat’, Dialectical Anthropology, 1, 1976, pp 201–224; Angelo Del Bocca, Italiani, Brava Gente?, Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2005; Del Bocca, Gli Italiani in Libia, 2 vols, Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1988; Ali Abudallatif Ahmida, ‘When the subaltern speaks: memory of genocide in colonial Libya, 1929 to1933’, Italian Studies, 61 (2), 2006, pp 175–190, a review of Western scholarship on Italian fascism and colonialism; Lucete Valensi, Tunisian Peasants in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985; Abdalmolla S El-Horier, ‘Social and economic transformation in the Libyan hinterlands during the second half of the 19th century: the role of Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif al-Sanusi’, PhD dissertation, UCLA, 1981; Roger Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy 1800–1914, London: Methuen, 1981; and Eric Davis, Challenging Colonialism: Bank Misr and Egyptian Industrialization, 1921–1941 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953.

15 Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

16 Abedlkader Zghal, ‘Marxist and Weberian intellectual traditions and the social structures of the Middle East’, International Review of Modern Sociology, 12, 1982, pp 15–38; and Abdelkebir Khatibi, ‘Double criticism: the decolonization of Arab sociology’, in Barakat, Contemporary North Africa, pp 9–19. For a critique of colonial Francophone ideology, see the book in Arabic by Tunisian sociologist Mahmoud Dhaouadi, The Otherside of Tunisian Society, Tunis: Dar Tibr al-Zaman, 2006.

17 Maghali Morsy, ‘Maghribi unity in the context of the nation state: a historian's point of view’, Maghrib Review, 8, 1983, pp 3–4, 70–76; John Dunn (ed), Contemporary Crisis of the Nation State?, London: Blackwell, 1995; Clement M Henry, ‘North Africa's desperate regimes’, Middle East Journal, 59 (3), 2005, pp 475–484; and Ali Abudullatif Ahmida (ed), Beyond Colonialism and Nationalism in the Maghrib: History, Culture and Politics, New York: Palgrave Press, 2000. See also the recent studies in James McDougall (ed), Nation, Society, and Culture in North Africa, London: Frank Cass, 2003.

18 Maghali Morsy, North Africa: From the Atlantic to the Nile Valley, London: Longman, 1987. Arabic scholarship on North Africa is often overlooked in Western scholarship because of the latter's Eurocenentric view and lack of knowledge of Arabic. The Egyptian historian Abdalrahim Abdulrahman Abdalrahim has published three books of documents on the role of al Magharibah or Maghribi in Egyptian society between the 16th and 20th centuries, all published by Dar Al-Tamimi, of Tunis, 1982. In addition, see Muhammad El Memnouni, Arabic Sources of the History of the Maghrib, Rabat: Muhammad V University Press, 1983; Hadi Timumi (ed), The Forgotten ones in Tunisian Social History, Tunis: Bait al-Hikma, 1999; Abderrhman Mu'athan et al (eds), North African Historical Writings on the History of the Maghrib, Rabat: Muhammad V University Press, 2007; Muhammad Elbaki Hermassi, State and Society in the Arab Maghrib, Beirut: Center of Arab Unity Studies, 1987; and the original book by Mehmmad El-Malki, Nationalist Movements and Colonialism in the Arab Maghrib, Beirut: Center of Arab Unity Studies, 1993.

19 EP Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, New York: Vintage Books, 1966.

20 See Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism, London: Verso, 1983; Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; and Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982.

21 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London: Verso, 1983; Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, London: Zed Press, 1986; and Ian Lustick, ‘Hegemony and the riddle of nationalism’, July 1997, at wwwc.cc.Columbia.edu. On the crisis of the North African regimes, see the book in Arabic, The Algerian Crisis, Beirut: Center of Arab Unity Studies, 1996; and Henry, ‘North Africa's desperate regimes’.

22 Edward W Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Vintage Books, 1993; and Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘Open the social sciences’, Items: Social Science Research Council, 50 (1), 1996, pp 1–7.