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  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Ordinary Ottomans: post-World War I settlements and experiences of the end of empire
    (2024)
    Aline Schlaepfer
    ;
    In the introduction to this special issue, we address the concepts of ordinariness and Ottomanness, and how they intersect within the general context of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.1 Given the already existing scholarship on ordinary groups or individuals in the history of the Middle East, we first position ordinariness as context-specific; that is, we understand it as subjected to various forms of exclusion from the elite. Second, within the framework of the major political changes that characterise the end of Empire we explore ordinariness and how it is embedded in everyday life and practices. We interrogate the capacities of individuals to maintain regularity through ordinary practices, after or despite a disruptive episode. We argue that persisting with everyday life practices despite crisis can serve as a strategy to reclaim spaces of autonomy from power structures. However, we also demonstrate that ordinary individuals, being vulnerable subjects or citizens, are also subject to change. These questions eventually lead us to rethink the debate on ‘continuities and ruptures’ within the post-Ottoman context. We suggest that framing Ottomanness as a time-marker, rather than as an identity-marker (Ottoman-era), allows us to focus on how groups and individuals coped with these changes, rather than attempting to define them.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    The Special Issue ‘Forced Migration and Refugeedom in the Modern Middle East’ Towards Connected Histories of Refugeedom in the Middle East
    This special issue approaches the study of refugees and forcibly displaced persons in the Middle East beyond the analytic bounds dictated by states, nations and regions. Each author is interested in showing connections, influences, and far-reaching consequences that cut across analytic boundaries. By challenging state-centred accounts and instead placing refugees, institutions, and states in a mutually interactive framework, each contributor frames refugees as the driving force behind various historical processes. By providing a range of case studies drawn from the Middle East, the volume also marks a step away from the Euro-centrism that so often defines the study of refugees and shows the centrality of the developments in Europe for the Middle East and the developments in the Middle East for Europe. We therefore propose the connected histories of refugeedom as the historiographical way forward in the study of refugees.