Heritage and the Middle East: Cities, power, and memory

Abstract

In a moment of global urban change, migration, and political transformation, the politics and practices of cultural heritage might seem to have little import. However, this paper argues that focusing on cultural heritage in the Middle East provides two key insights with much broader relevance. First, examining how heritage is made (and unmade) shows one way that regions are constructed through the articulation of material and symbolic connections. Second, these regions might be better understood not as containers but as complexes in and in relation to which people articulate and communicate shared meanings. These insights build upon and extend recent theorizations of cultural geopolitics. In surveying an interdisciplinary body of scholarship on Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the Gulf, this article seeks to expand the linkages between geography and Middle East area studies scholarship. It begins by connecting current debates about planetary urbanization in relation to a historiography of the "Middle Eastern city" and suggests that thinking in terms of heritage provides a novel approach for understanding both new and old regional imaginaries. It then highlights three dynamics that make the politics of heritage distinct in this region. It closes with a discussion of the dual role that heritage can play in both contesting and facilitating topdown projects of dispossession and urban transformation.

Beyond the decolonial: Critical Muslim geographies

“…3 Such recognition invites more discerning thematizing of Islam as concerning identity/difference towards a deeper scholarly engagement with its structures and epistemologies. This echoes, but exceeds, the parameters of a call by Hammond (2020: 8), who, in advocating conversations among geography, urban and Middle East studies, thinks that geographers would ‘benefit from greater engagement with traditions of scholarship that diverge from geography's disciplinary traditions’. The next subsections broach such engagements, traversing economic, political and urban geographies, simultaneously mindful of the words of Rabat-born, Chicago-based scholar Lyamlahy (2009), referencing the work of the Moroccan writer Abdélkebir Khatibi (1938–2018): ‘Writing about Islam, according to Khatibi, demands a translating of its principles, working on both a linguistic and a metaphysical level’.…”

Avangard Bir Mabed Olarak Çamlıca Camisi’nin Aktör Ağ Teorisi Bağlamında Çerçevelemesi

“…Diken'in (1997:87) serbest birleşme olarak çevirdiği ve hem insan hem de insan olmayan unsurları yani aracıları harekete geçiren mobilize eden girişimciler olarak aktardığı bu durum, Çamlıca Camisi'nin de her yönüyle "dev(asa)" bir ağ olduğunun besleyici kabulü olarak düşünülmüştür. Diğer önemli olan nokta da Türkiye'nin geçirdiği iddia edilen muhafazakâr dönüşümünde Çamlıca camisine yapılan atıflardır (Parlak ve Aycan, 2016;Bora, 2017;Oral, 2017;Batuman, 2018;Akyıldız, 2019;Korkmaz, 2019;Hammond, 2019;Parlak, 2020;Çınar, 2020;Oral, 2020;Adaman ve Akbulut, 2020).…”

The politics of heritage and place-making in Tanmen, China

“…The links between heritage, power, identity and other social issues have been widely discussed (e.g. Lowenthal, 1998; Graham and Howard, 2008; Hammond, 2020; Smith, 2017). However, as Harvey asserts, ‘we need to tie our processual and present-centred conception of heritage to a more progressive (and relational) sense of place, that is place as a temporary constellation of connectivity’ (2015: 589).…”