Thinking in Four Dimensions: New Directions in Spatial Analysis of the Middle East

Abstract

The study of the Middle East is experiencing an explosion in the dimensions through which scholars study space. The five new books reviewed in this essay stand out for pushing the boundaries of how we conceptualize the production of space and mobilize it as a methodological intervention. Through remarkably sensitive ethnography, creative use of sources, and an array of vibrant theoretical and methodological tools, they expand upon an earlier pioneering literature that centered spatial analysis in the study of the Middle East. In this essay, I focus on three dimensions they have opened up: analyzing space in time; drawing connectivities across spaces; and reframing the agency of spatial tactics and the nonhuman.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Publication Date

8-1-2017

Publication Title

International Journal of Middle East Studies

Department

Politics

Additional Department

Middle East and North Africa Studies

Document Type

Review

DOI

10.1017/S0020743817000423

Notes

Review of five books: On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt, by On Barak; The Make-Believe Space: Affective Geography in a Postwar Polity, by Yael Navaro-Yashin; Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey and the Modern House, by Esra Akcan; Joyriding in Riyadh: Oil, Urbanism and Road Revolt, by Pascal Menoret; Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life, by Farah Al-Nakib.

Language

English

Format

text

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