Rethinking the Sociological Approaches to Intellectual Spaces through the Insight from the Muslim Intellectual Space

• In Event: 1580 - Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 06. Theoretical Developments and Applications

Abstract

The paper builds upon an array of literatures to interpolate conceptual domains into the studies of intellectual spaces, and demonstrates relevant empirical work, which can serve as basis for social theory building in this direction. In the first section, by critically reviewing the sociology of intellectuals, knowledge, and ideas; I underline how historical context works through domains such as religion, cultural geography and politics, and shapes the properties of a particular intellectual space; domains which have been largely overlooked by the late scholars of intellectual spaces. The second section seeks to substantiate these conceptual efforts by delineating a literature that is largely un-incorporated by the sociologists studying intellectuals and intellectual knowledge, namely the “Muslim intellectual space.” The paper makes an original contribution by overviewing the multi-disciplinary area studies on the Middle Eastern-Muslim intellectual space, and critically presents its drawbacks, while also building on the insight. In this regard, studies on the Muslim intellectual space - and particularly modern Turkey - provide opportunities to rethink the conceptualization of intellectual types; the influence of Westernist-secularist modernization on non-Western contexts; the infrastructure and constituents of “authoritative knowledge;” and the stratification of intellectual spaces. I argue that as general theories of intellectual spaces are still in the making, it is necessary to incorporate the contextual and relational insight from a non-Western area literature into future conceptual approaches and empirical designs, which will reinforce the scope and veracity of social theoretical assertions. KEY WORDS: Intellectual, Knowledge, Muslim/Islam, Middle East, Religion.

Author

• Deniz Ilhan, State University of New York-Stony Brook