Introduction to Special Section: The Un‐Exceptional Middle Eastern City

El-Kazaz, Sarah; Mazur, Kevin

doi:10.1111/ciso.12116

Cited by 14 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Urban design and the remaking of urban space have emerged as tools to mobilize larger state projects of differential governance of citizens, supported by legal and extralegal means alike (Bogaert 2018; El‐Kazaz 2014; Elsheshtawy 2006; Falzon 2004). Middle Eastern cities in particular have been broadly deemed as exceptional cases, due to the assumed seamless alignment of authoritarian governance with urban transformation projects (El‐Kazaz 2017).…”

Section: (Re)temporalizing Urban Transformation and Taksim 360mentioning

confidence: 99%

Behind the Scaffolding: Manipulations of Time, Delays, and Power in Tarlabaşı, Istanbul

Arıcan

2020

City & Society

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Taksim 360, located in the Tarlabaşı neighborhood of Istanbul, is one of the first state-led urban transformation projects in Turkey. Originally scheduled to be finished in 2014, the project is still under construction. Concordant with broader discussions, Tarlabaşı's urban transformation has been largely studied through spatial lenses centered on accumulation by dispossession and displacement. These works assume that urban transformation projects necessarily follow a linear trajectory from inception to completion. Building on and diverging from this body of research, I examine the relationships between construction companies, subcontractors, and politicians involved in Taksim 360 through ethnographic fieldwork and media analysis with a critical emphasis on temporality. I argue that urban transformation in fact works through manipulations of time, which necessitates a temporal analytical lens that does not take teleologies of buildings projects for granted. It is specifically through delays that economic and political power is exerted, navigated, and negotiated within Taksim 360 using legal contracts, work stoppages, and stand-offs; conjuring of continued investment; and improvisations with labor and political capital. And so, delays emerge as modus operandi of urban transformation rather than measures of its failures or successes [Urban Transformation; Temporality; Accumulation; Istanbul; Turkey]

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Section: (Re)temporalizing Urban Transformation and Taksim 360mentioning

confidence: 99%

Behind the Scaffolding: Manipulations of Time, Delays, and Power in Tarlabaşı, Istanbul

Arıcan

2020

City & Society

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“…First, I map out a historiography of the “regional” city to show that cities—like sites of heritage—have come to be conceptualized not in terms of ostensibly essential meanings but through the uneven encounters and relationships that produce those meanings. In the process, we move beyond the “three exceptions” of Islam, oil, and authoritarianism that have defined much of the scholarship on cities in the region (El‐Kazaz & Mazur, ). Second, I show that understanding the forms and functions of heritage in this region requires considering the region's specific and complex legacies of empire, war, and dispossession.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Hammond

2019

Geography Compass

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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.

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“…Existing Literature: National Identity, Islam, and Mosque Building Scholars have identified various nation-building strategies employed by political elites, such as centralizing transportation and communication networks (Weber 1976), nationalist military training (Posen 1993), and including nationalist content in textbooks (Darden and Gryzmala-Busse 2006). Scholars have also demonstrated how Islam has been used to serve the project of nation-building in officially-Islamic states (Aktürk 2015, Asad 2009, Ayoob 2007, Cesari 2014, Eickelman and Piscatori 1996, Nasr 2001, and recent scholarship has examined the interplay between Muslim identity, state power, and urban planning (Atia 2013, El-Kazaz and Mazur 2017, Koch 2016. However, many of these insights pertain specifically to the MENA region, while more theoretical work on the relationship between religion and nationalism (Brubaker 2012, Friedland 2002) often fails to consider Islamic cases, as well as the strategic use of physical space.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing an Islamic Nation: National Mosque Building as a Form of Nation-Building

Sheline

2019

Nationalities Papers

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A majority of national mosques were built in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Why did national mosque construction become important to Islamic states during this period, when it had not been a priority in earlier decades when many of these states achieved independence? This article suggests that national mosque construction was the result of political elites’ anxieties regarding the threat to regime stability posed by Islamist activists. Drawing on a mediumNdataset of all 25 states that recognized Islam as their official religion, the article shows that mosque construction increased after 1979 when political elites adopted a strategy of Islamic nation-building, with one expression of this strategy taking the form of national mosque-building in order to visually manifest the regime’s religious authority. In addition to mediumNanalysis, the article uses process tracing to examine national mosque building in three case studies, as well as interview data, to evaluate whether mosque construction achieved the desired effect of bolstering regimes’ religious legitimacy in these contexts. The findings have implications for understanding the use of symbolic religious structures as tools for nation-building that have often been overlooked due to the tendency to associate nationalism with secular visions of modernity.

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Introduction to Special Section: The Un‐Exceptional Middle Eastern City

Cited by 14 publications

References 38 publications

Behind the Scaffolding: Manipulations of Time, Delays, and Power in Tarlabaşı, Istanbul

Behind the Scaffolding: Manipulations of Time, Delays, and Power in Tarlabaşı, Istanbul

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

Constructing an Islamic Nation: National Mosque Building as a Form of Nation-Building

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