Dar Al Islam: The Mediterranean, the World System And the Wider Europe: The "Cultural Enlargement" of the EU and Europe's Identity

by Peter Herrmann (Editor), Arno Tausch (Editor)

With the process of a 'wider Europe' (EU-Commission President Romano Prodi's 'ring of friends') that extends from Marrakech in Morocco to St Petersburg in Russia gathering speed, the growing rift between Europe and America also is about how to deal politically with the countries of the Mediterranean-Muslim world. The house of Islam (Dar al Islam) was pivotal to the European path to the Renaissance and to the re-discovery of classic Greek philosophy. The Mediterranean policy of the European Union aims at a positive and co-operative relationship with the region. A successful integration of the Mediterranean South would have tremendous and positive repercussions for regional and world peace. World-wide leading experts from the field of world systems analysis, economics, integration theory, political science, theology and area studies, agnostics, Christians, Jews and Muslims alike discuss the issue with European decision makers. The outcome is an interdisciplinary evaluation of this projected export of peace, co-operation, dialogue and stability in the framework of world centre-periphery relationships.

314 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of essays was organized as a tribute to the memory of the late, great dependency theorist Andre Gunder Frank. It should not therefore be surprising to find it polemical, a volume of deep insider baseball written to the five other members of the fan club who had not read this, filled with unexplained jargon and abbreviations that the reader is counted on to understand (and printed cheaply and with pages cut off, I might add- at least keep the tributes looking classy).

I appreciate this book for providing me with quotes for my thesis that frames the problem of the Mediterranean in a world-systems way. However, answering "Why is Europe's South Poor?" (one of the essays in this collection). with "because Christians conquered them in the Middle Ages and expelled Muslims and the core has continued to exploit them since the 15th century" might speak to the current political climate and be enormously entertaining for me to make fun of but it doesn't provide any different answers. The overview of views on the 'new world order' provided in "Fukuyama's Dream, Huntington's Nightmare and a Grassroots Reverie" is fine (though you can obviously find it elsewhere), and the last three essays have some interesting ideas in terms of frame if not in substance.

But in general, I found this tome deliberately obscure and rather shallow. But giving me a page for a thesis prep essay is no small potatoes so it gets two stars instead of one.