Conceptual Battle of the Middle East between the Political and Geography

Document Type : Original Article

Author

• mohadese jazaei

political sceince, political and law facaulty,, ferdowsi university of mashhad.

https://doi.org/10.22067/irlip.2021.69714.1058

Abstract

The Middle East” is a controversial concept in terms of politics and geography. From a geographical point of view, there is no broad consensus on the borders of the Middle East. Also, there have been challenges in the use and application of the Middle East concept given the new theories to pay attention to the non-Western world. There have been challenges in applying this concept. To counter the monotony of European and American research and studies in the Middle East, instead of the concept of "Middle East", equations such as "Near East and North Africa", "North Middle East", "New Middle East", "Islamic Middle East", "Arab Middle East" "West Asia", and "Southwest Asia" are suggested instead. The main question of this article is "What is the reason for the inevitability of using this concept in all languages of the region, including Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and even Hebrew?" "Why can't the conceptual equivalents and proposed alternatives succeed in conveying the same meaning that the Middle East concept conveys?"  This research aims to answer why the concept of “the Middle East” cannot be left by focusing on the political issue and from the history of concepts method and theory view. The nature of “the political” emphasizes binary confrontations which confirms the fact of existing a stream of the battle between the political forces and group dominant on conversations in concepts forms. Although in this region criticize the hegemony of concepts such as the Middle East, and advocate for alternatives, the political irresistibility against geography is an important obstacle that complicates the use of alternative concepts of the Middle East.

Keywords

• the Middle East
• the political
• geography
• history of concepts
• Reinhart Koselleck

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