Society Law and Culture in the Middle East:Modernities in the Making is an edited volume that
seeks to deepen and broaden our understanding of various forms of change in Middle Eastern and
North African societies during the Ottoman period. It offers an in-depth analysis of reforms
and gradual change in the longue durée challenging the current discourse on the relationship
between society culture and law. The focus of the discussion shifts from an external to an
internal perspective as agency transitions from the West to local actors in the region.
Highlighting the ongoing interaction between internal processes and external stimuli and using
primary sources in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish the authors and editors bring out the variety of
modernities that shaped south-eastern Mediterranean history. The first part of the volume
interrogates the urban elite household the main social political and economic unit of
networking in Ottoman societies. The second part addresses the complex relationship between law
and culture looking at how the legal system conceptually and practically undergirded the
socio-cultural aspects of life in the Middle East. Society Law and Culture in the Middle East
consists of eleven chapters written by well-established and younger scholars working in the
field of Middle East and Islamic Studies. The editors Dror Ze'evi and Ehud R. Toledano are
both leading historians who have published extensively on Middle Eastern societies in the
Ottoman and post-Ottoman periods.
