This article argues that the polemics accompanying the valuation of Islamist social movements occur because studies of political Islam are often oriented towards the debate over the relative worth of Western and Islamist routes to modernity and the civilizing process. The method pursued by Weber to delineate the Christian activism of The Protestant Ethic - minus its debilitating Eurocentrism - is suggested as a helpful model for analyzing the complexity of Islamist interventions. These theoretical remarks are grounded in a study (...) of the transformation of public space effected by the Turkish Islamist party Refah upon its winning the Greater Istanbul Municipality in the 1994 local elections. The construction of Islamist tea gardens/restaurants reveals the conflicting civilizing practices of Islamists themselves as well as the plurality of interests and ethical commitments seeking shelter under the universal ethic of the Islamic ümmet. (shrink)

The Protestant ethic — a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God — was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over (...) salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms. (shrink)

The buzzword is globalization and the key problem is uneven development. Perceptions and representations of globalization are profoundly different in North and South. Existing analytics - such as dependency, imperialism, exclusion and conspiracy theories - are not adequate for dealing with uneven globalization. There are profound differences between globalization and imperialism. Although a sense of powerlessness and frustration is common to both, the dynamics of deprivation are different. It is one thing to diagnose different conditions North and South. But what (...) matters is not merely difference, but the relationship that exists between these differences, the articulations across different conditions. Contemporary accelerated globalization refers to a new distribution of power that comes in a package together with informalization, informatization and flexibilization. The ramifications of North-South articulation range from security, migration and media representation to regional conflict, labour unrest and social movements. (shrink)

Global Modernities is a sustained commentary on the international character of the most microcosmic practices. It demonstrates how the global increasingly informs the regional, so deconstructing ideas like the `nation-state' and `national sovereignty'. The spatialization of social theory, hybridization and bio-politics are among the critical issues discussed.