Introduction

Joel Beinin
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Author Bio
Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus at Stanford University. He has written and co-edited twelve books, most recently, Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2016). In 2001-02 he served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

Chapter Abstract
This volume seeks to stimulate a broad discussion on studying the Middle East and North Africa using the methods of political economy. Political economy addresses the mutual and historical constitution of states, markets, and classes. It’s ambit also includes the legal, political, and cultural forms of the regulation of regimes of capital accumulation; relations among local, national, and global forms of capital, class, and culture; the social structure of reproduction, the construction of forms of knowledge and hegemony; techno-politics; the environment as both a resource and field of contestation; the role of war in the constitution of states and classes; and practices and cultures of domination and resistance. The historical development of social formations dominated by capital is inextricably intertwined with genocides, slavery and other forms of unfree labor, racialization, patriarchy, national oppression, and empire.
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