Shami 37everal chapters in this volume join a growing literature that seeks S
to incorporate the realm of religion into current research on the public
sphere. Here research on societies of the Middle East and North Africa
helps in the development of a transcultural notion of the public sphere
that can be applied to the transformation and conscious reform of reli-
gious traditions. The emergence of socio-religious movements are impor-
tant to examine, especially in the ways that they challenge and/or inter-
sect with nation-state projects on identity, justice, welfare^26 and secular
modernist notions of body, self and gender.^27 Other work on the region
explores the ways in which rationality and debate may be constructed and
oppositional discourses maintained in Muslim societies.^28 These works
show that narrow notions of the public sphere cannot capture the ways
in which “Public Islam” operates.^29 This is one arena in which the litera-
ture from the Middle East and North Africa region has a great deal to
contribute.
Conclusion: Beyond specificity
As discussed above, this volume joins a growing literature that explores
public spheres in non-western, non-European spaces. It offers interesting
signposts as to how histories of the public can be rewritten in the Middle
East and North Africa region. Comparative-historical work on the pub-
lic sphere is the ‘missing chapter’ in historical social science^30 and an
approach strongly endorsed by Traboulsi in this volume. Gambetti’s chap-
ter offers ways of bringing together politics and culture—power and cul-
ture—in the study of the public sphere as advocated by Eisenstadt.^31 And,
as LeVine and Salvatore point out, the centrality of liberal values in the
construction of public spheres can be questioned through looking at socio-
religious movements and the place of religion in defining the public good.
n many ways, the chapters of the volume celebrate the specificity I
of historical and contemporary processes of “public-making” in different
parts of the Middle East and North Africa region. However, this volume is
also an experiment in how particularities can be subjected to critical theo-
retical and comparative perspectives that reveal the temporal and spatial
dimensions of all theory-making. It begins to “talk back” to a “Western”