Reformation as a General Ideal Type: A Comparative Outline

Nafissi, Mohammad

doi:10.15543/mws/2006/1/4

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Contrary to an enduring prejudice among comparative political sociologists of strict Weberian observance (cf. Nafissi, 2006), the Ottoman state was not a reincarnation of older patrimonial regimes. It managed to institute a distinctive balance between the otherwise rival ranks of the ulama (ilmiyye) and the scribal class feeding into the state bureaucracy (kalemiyye).…”

Section: Modern Governance and The Public Spherementioning

confidence: 99%

Eccentric modernity? An Islamic perspective on the civilizing process and the public sphere

Salvatore

2011

European Journal of Social Theory

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This article engages with Johann Arnason’s approach to the entanglements of culture and power in comparative civilizational analysis by simultaneously reframing the themes of the civilizing process and the public sphere. It comments and expands upon some key insights of Arnason concerning the work of Norbert Elias and Jürgen Habermas by adopting an ‘Islamic perspective’ on the processes of singularization of power from its cultural bases and of reconstruction of a modern collective identity merging the steering capacities and the participative ambitions of an emerging urban intelligentsia. The Islamic perspective provides insights into the interplay between civilizing processes and the modes through which cultural traditions innervate a modern public sphere. By revisiting key remarks of Arnason on Elias and Habermas, the Islamic perspective gains original contours, reflecting the search for a type of modernity that is eccentric to the mono-civilizational axis of the Western-led, global civilizing process. While this eccentric positioning entails a severe imbalance of power, it also relativizes the centrality of the modern state in the civilizing process and evidences some original traits of the public sphere in a non-Western context.

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Section: Modern Governance and The Public Spherementioning

confidence: 99%