ENIS Spring School ’26: ‘Islamicate Concepts: Between Particularism and Universalism’

Concepts have long lost their innocence, not least due to post-modern and post-colonial critique. In the heydays of modernity, researchers tended to presume the universalism of key analytical concepts: every society was thought to have some form of state, some version of religion, art, literature, or science. All of those supposedly universal concepts have been unmasked to be historically formed – this notably applies to the very concept of ‘society’ as well (Zemmin, 2016). Moreover, concepts are no mere descriptions but carry normative connotations, too. These are often reflective of the historical context in which a concept was coined. That context, of course, predominantly was (early) modern European societies. Today, it is almost commonplace among researchers in the social sciences and humanities working on non-European settings that the applicability of English-language concepts onto their empirical or historical context is not a straightforward matter, but rather requires testing in the first place.

The likely most prominent example from Islamicate contexts is the concept of ‘religion’. Instead of being a universal, analytical concept, critics have highlighted the Christian or even specifically Protestant coinages of the concept. For many, this made ‘religion’ utterly unusable for Islamicate contexts. This criticism has become so prominent, as to now have enticed a counter-criticism. In the most comprehensive overview of the debate, Abbasi 2021, defended the existence of ‘religion’ in pre-modern Islamic history. He even went so far as to suggest that the concept existed in Islam first.

Without sharing in any claims to origins, programmatic considerations on Conceptual History on the Near East and Islamicate contexts have stressed the need to attend to both semantic continuities and ruptures when it comes to conceptual formations in colonial modernity (Topal and Wigen 2019; Zemmin and Sievert 2021). It is only on a case by case-basis that scholars can assert the relative weight of semantic continuities and ruptures, and of the impact of colonial European influence. Oftentimes, the findings will include the relevance of entangled conceptual formations between local and international actors (e.g. Kateman 2019). This fruitfully speaks to the relation of particular and more general aspects, and undermines a false binary of universalism and particularism.

From another angle, anthropological research on meaning-making in specific locations relates local, emic concepts to analytical, etic concepts (e.g. Bachmann-Medick 2006). This dissolves a sharp distinction between emic and etic concepts (Mostowlansky and Rota 2023). It also complicates the contrast of particular and universal concepts and often shows otherwise ignored connections. Further expanding the range of approaches to concepts and the potential foci of conceptual research, both the material and the affective turn have been brought to concepts, too (Pernau and Rajamani 2016).

This ENIS Spring School welcomes RMA-students and PhD-candidates who engage with such questions in Islamicate contexts. What is the relative weight of local actors and semantics on the one hand and of external influence on the other? How – if we want to overcome the view of European history as the sole locale of theory and of other contexts as producing merely locally bounded thought (El Shakry 2019) – can local meanings be related to and made fruitful for broader theorizing? Contributors are invited to reflect on central concepts within their project from these angles.

More specific aspects that contributors could address from within their research and expertise include, but are not limited to, questions of continuity and rupture concerning conceptual formations; processes and actors of translation; the circulation of concepts and knowledge; linguistic and cultural entanglements; or relations of language and power. Possible concepts to engage with include grand concepts of modernity, such as religion, the state, law, freedom, and ‘modernity’ itself, emotionally powerful and politically equally relevant concepts such as home and belonging, and really all concepts that are meaningful in the sources and for the actors of your research, whichever language they might be in. We are very much open for surprises, and are looking forward to your contributions!

To register for this Spring School, click HERE.
Please apply by Monday 2 March, ’26.