Drawing on various perspectives and analysis the Handbook problematizes Middle East politics through an interdisciplinary prism seeking a melioristic account of the field. Thematically organized the chapters address political social and historical questions by showcasing both theoretical and empirical insights all of which are represented in a style that ease readers into sophisticated induction in the Middle East. It positions the didactic at the centre of inquiry. Contributions by forty-four scholars both veterans and newcomers rethink knowledge frames conceptual categories and fieldwork praxis. Substantive themes include secularity and religion gender democracy authoritarianism and new borderline politics of the Middle East. Like any field of knowledge the Middle East is constituted by texts authors and readers but also by the cultural spatial and temporal contexts within which diverse intellectual inflections help construct (write–speak) academic meaning knowing and practice. By denaturalizing notions of singularity of authorship or scholarship the Handbook plants a dialogic interplay animated by multi-vocality multi-modality and multi-disciplinarity. Targeting graduate students and young scholars of political and social sciences the Handbook is significant for understanding how the Middle East is written and re-written read and re-read (epistemology methodology) and for how it comes to exist (ontology). |Routledge Handbook of Middle East Politics | Middle Eastern Studies