Contributors: Ghislaine Alleaume, Isabelle Grangaud, Brigitte Marino, Michel Tuchscherer.

This theme is a continuation of research that has been conducted for a few years at the Iremam on urban history, inventories after death and ownership. It is based around three programs:

• “Local Belonging in the Mediterranean: Social relations, law, claims”: The activities of this program aim in particular to compile a dictionary of words related to belonging (Isabelle Grangaud).
• “Disposing of Property, Passing on an Inheritance”. It is through the parallel study of two legal instruments, the foundations (waqf) and the wills (wasiyya) that are articulated, for Damascus in the Ottoman era, the researches on the transmission of the patrimonies and their incomes (Brigitte Marino).

“Ottoman and Early Modern Alexandria”: Coordinated since 2001 by the Centre for Alexandrine Studies (CEALex) in collaboration with IREMAM, this program carries out research on the treatment, analysis and sharing of the enormous collection of legal acts, in particular the acts of waqf, compiled up to the present day on the city of Alexandria. More...

This research team brings together historians and specialists in Islamic studies. Their research covers a broad timescale, from the 7th to the 20th century, and a geographic area stretching from the Maghreb to Iran, including the Arabic Peninsula and Turkey.
Working with approaches from social history, cultural history and political history, the historians study a diverse array of themes and fields: religious figures, nationalisms and borders, archival practices and historiographic writings, circulations, teaching and education, law (studied through its sources, practices and applications), urban history and rural history studies, colonial and postcolonial studies. Special attention is given to the analysis of source production (Arabic, Ottoman, Persian and Western), in all their diversity: legal sources, accounts and memoirs, fiction, historiographic and scientific writings, chronicles, institutional and administrative documents, archival collections etc.
The research in Islamic studies looks at the doctrines and practices of Islam, from the classical to the contemporary era. In particular, this includes participation in ANR PROPHET, a French National Research Agency project (The Presence of the Prophet: Muhammad in the mirror of his community in early modern and modern Islam), critical thought and a comparative approach to anti-philosophical trends in the three monotheisms, and the corpus of the prophetic tradition (hadîth). This work is also tied to research on the sociology of the religious field, and specifically of Islamic practices in France and in Europe.
The members of the History and Islamic Studies team are particularly involved in the laboratory’s three cross-disciplinary axes (Educational Policies, Circulations, and Conditions of Knowledge Production), and also in research training for the masters students (Level 1 and Level 2) at the Department of Middle-Eastern Studies and at the Aix-Marseille University History Department. They meet once a month for a presentation of current research.

IREMAM Contributor: Saïd Belguidoum.

Since the early 2000s, the countries of the Maghreb and the Mashrek have seen a new stage in their urban transition. With 70% of the region’s population concentrated in its cities, which have expanded considerably, the urban structure has become increasingly dense, and the hierarchy of urban networks reinforced. Be they national or regional cities, medium or small towns, cities in the process of restructuration, young cities (with planned urbanism), or new cities (with local dynamics), the city of the Arab world comes in many different forms. Steeped in their own contradictions, bubbling with tension, they seek coherence and structure under the joint and contradictory actions of public policy and of different social actors. The societies of the Arab and Muslim worlds face many common challenges, and each have developed their own unique methods for building their urban societies, more or less dependent upon characteristics inherited from their contrasting histories. The ambition of this theme is to explore different fields that might allow us to better comprehend urban dynamics, by privileging themes such as urban restructuring and socio-spatial redistribution, the production and circulation of urban and architectural models, public policies and urban governance issues, practices in public spaces, social groups in the city, local identities and hierarchies of belonging, and forms of urban mobility. More...

IREMAM Contributors: Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, Bernard Botiveau, Vincent Geisser, Myriam Laakili, Françoise Lorcerie, Aude Signoles.

This rapidly-expanding research theme at IREMAM covers several projects and research programs:

• The ethnicization of social relations (ethnicity, secularism and discrimination): This research looks at inclusion policies and processes for populations of immigrant origin from Muslim countries settled in Europe. It questions the prevailing political ideology and public action, as well as the mobilizations and the social and cultural practices of these populations. In particular, studies look at how school education deals with religious and cultural diversity. Conflicts around secularism, struggles against discrimination, and the normalisation of Islam are some of the key subjects under study. In the field of education, ties have been established with SFERE, a federative institutional structure set up by Aix-Marseille University, as well as with the ESPEand the Local Education Authority of Aix-Marseille. The RIED network (International Education and Diversity Network) has offices in France through IREMAM.

• Economic anthropology and religious norms: This theme deals with the study of the tripartite relationship between religious officials, politics and the economy. It brings together research that analyses the normative religious dynamics of “market economies”, where the economy is partly “disincorporated” of its social relations. Taking into account both the economic dimension of religious practices, and the religious dimension of economic practices, provides an opportunity to reappraise the binary model of secularisation that puts the political in opposition with the religious (according to various models of “leaving” or “returning” to religion, post-secularisation, etc.). This theme coordinates and encourages research on the circulation and commercialisation of “faith goods”, both material and immaterial, which are resistant to classical economic analysis, are legally challenging, and do not fit well into an overly restrictive sociological conception of “religious practices”. To this aim, the MHALEC program (funded by the Central Bureau of Worship, French Ministry of the Interior, 2016-2018) works to keep abreast with the economic, legal and socioreligious reality of the halal market in France (and its legal aspects in the European Union).

Islamic humanitarian aid in France, from “NGO” label to the search for an original Muslim approach?: This program, financed by the French Ministry of the Interior’s Central Bureau of Worship, aims to study the emergence of associations and humanitarian NGOs labelled as “Muslim” in the French public space. Between mimetism of a universalist-style humanitarian aid and the search for an alternative Islamic approach, between the need for professionalisation and activist engagement drawing on a co-religious ethos, between forces of change and continuity, what is specific to French Islamic humanitarian aid, and what makes it unique. More...

IREMAM Contributors: François Burgat, Myriam Catusse, Vincent Geisser, Gérard Groc, Jean-François Legrain, Aude Signoles.

The recent protest movements, and the resilience of authoritarian regimes, has brought the political question back to the fore when considering the future of the Maghreb and the Mashrek. If public action in the region has long been perceived as apathetic, recent upheavals have encouraged researchers in the social sciences to reappraise their methods, approaches and paradigms. These events, however, have also made clear the need to apprehend these socio-political transformations over the long term. Contrary to what is commonly held, these changes were not born in the “Arab Uprisings”, but are symptomatic of long-term transformations and deeper trends. The work around this research theme aims to comprehend socio-political transformations in the Arab and Muslim worlds from three key perspectives:

• The field of civil mobilization: Social movements, the revival of union action, the politicisation of sexual, cultural and religious minorities, the formation of opposition coalitions, the emergence of new social, territorial and generational divides, etc.

• The field of public action: The impact of civil mobilization on public policies and State and regional government reform (decentralisation, regionalisation, etc.), favouring sector-led approaches (justice, security forces, health, education, environment, emigration-immigration policies, etc.).

The field of transnational policies: Initiatives for regional cooperation, multilateral relations, interstate conflicts, the assertion of religious solidarity in the Arab world, the rise of ethnic nationalisms, policies of allegiance between the state and diasporas, etc. More...

The Contemporary Social Sciences Research Team (SSC) brings together researchers and lecturers whose work deals with the historical, political, sociological, economic or cultural processes that impact the Arab and Muslim worlds, from the early 20th century to the modern day. In a comparative perspective, this team aims to decompartmentalise research on the Maghreb and the Mashrek, questioning the effects of historical processes (colonisation, independence, development, economic liberalisation, democratic transition, authoritarian resilience, etc.) that they share with other regions of the world (Europe, North America, Latin America, etc.). This research takes current “projections” of this region in a globalised world into account, as well as a diverse range of unique regional approaches (the Maghreb’s strong connections to Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, Near- and Middle-Eastern migrations in the world, but also more recent immigrations toward the Arab world). Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, this research brings together different approaches from the social sciences: political sciences, history of the present day, sociology, geography and anthropology.

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