Re-inventing Malta's neolithic temples: Contemporary interpretations and agendas

This article suggests that in spite of numerous excellent contributions and promising new developments, the work of European and American students of politics on the southern and eastern areas of the Mediterranean (in particular, the Arab World) continues to exhibit various worrying weaknesses. The shortcomings in question do not necessarily represent a distinctive characteristic of existing scholarship on this part of the world. The aim of this contribution is not to claim or demonstrate that research and writings on the Middle East and North Africa are more inadequate than work done on other parts of the world, but simply to illustrate where and in what respect such work is inadequate. I will attempt to highlight the shortcomings by emphasizing possible improvements, referring to positive rather than to negative examples. Several dimensions of the literature concerned appear particularly relevant to this exercise: perpetual essentialist temptations; the subdivision of the world into “regions” or “areas”, frequently defined in cultural terms, and their reification; the lack of balance between empirical and theoretical ambitions; the degree of methodological and conceptual rigour; and theoretical, empirical and methodological selectivity.     

The complex case of 'Tuscan Urban Identities'

This article provides a critical evaluation of the project 'Tuscan Urban Identities' organized and coordinated by Stuart Woolf and Lucia Carle and financed in cooperation by the European University Institute in Florence and the Tuscan regional government. The multi-volume series contributes a detailed study of six small towns in the Tuscan regional state between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Using a methodology that relies on data derived primarily from parish records, censuses and local statutes, the six authors write the histories of Fiesole, Poppi, Montalcino, Buggiano, Pontremoli and Suvereto, showing the long-term demographic trends, office-holding patterns and the economic organizations of these towns.