Revisiting the (Middle East) Area Studies Controversy Through the Lens of the Global IR Debate

The aim of this paper is to revisit the classic Area Studies Controversy (ASC) as it has unfolded in relation to the study of the Middle East through the lens of the so-called Global/Post-Western IR debate on geo-cultural epistemologies, which has received little attention among Middle East scholars so far. The paper does so in four steps. First, it provides an overview of how the Area Studies Controversy is presented in debates on the study of the Middle East. Then, the paper introduces the Global/Post-Western IR debate, including the ‘inward-looking’ debates on whether and how IR has been an ‘American Social Science’ and the more ‘outward-looking’ discussion about how to make IR truly global. Against this background, the paper suggests that the point about how ‘IR might be quite different in different places’ may also apply to the study of the Middle East. The third part of the paper returns to the Middle East ASC in order to examine whether this controversy has unfolded in similar or different ways outside of the American context, from where most of the contributions to the classic ASC emerged. The paper finds that the classic ASC has to a large extent been a very American debate, with only limited resonance in other contexts. Against this background, the concluding section reflects on the findings implications for the future study of the Middle East and academic relations between disciplines and (different) area studies.