Abbas Jong
@abbas.jong@hu-berlin.de
Social Sciences
Humboldt University of Berlin
EDUCATION
Dr. Phil. in Sociology, Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS
Social Sciences, Philosophy, Sociology and Political Science, History
Scopus Publications
Scholar Citations
Scholar h-index
Scholar i10-index
Scopus Publications
Abbas Jong
MDPI AG
An emerging disparity within contemporary social science highlights a disconnection between the world in the process of metamorphosing and cosmopolitanization and the knowledge of the social world that is still trapped in the cognitive assumptions of modern episteme, which provided the conditions for the emergence of modern social sciences a century ago. This divide inhibits the efficacy of social analysis in comprehending and elucidating contemporary phenomena. This article advocates for a shift in the ontology of social theory and science towards the cosmopolitanization of the world, characterized by the prioritization of indeterminacy and fluidity in the construction of social phenomena. It investigates the epistemological implications and prerequisites of this ontological transformation, favoring a post-foundationalist approach as the most suitable epistemological framework. In response to the challenges posed by the uncertainty and indeterminacy of cosmopolitanization, after reviewing some of the existing theoretical efforts to address and provide alternatives to this challenge, the article proposes the examination of social configurations as the most fitting subjects for study. This approach necessitates the suspension of conventional, given, regulated categories, and trans-historical theories. It underscores the importance of recognizing configurations as incomplete, contingent units shaped within specific historical contexts and moments. The fluidity, relationality, and indeterminacy of configurations situated between the universal and the singular make them suitable for analysis at the level of particular. After elaborating on the most important features of social configurations, finally, by employing the proposed theoretical framework, this article aims to investigate its effectiveness in analyzing the process of identity construction among Iranian youth in Tehran in the context of the cosmopolitanization of reality, particularly in the face of the Islamist regime of Iran’s official politics of identity. Through a review and revision of selected empirical studies on youth identity construction in the consumer spaces of Tehran, based on the idea of social configurations within the framework of cosmopolitanization, it is argued that the genuine understanding of identity politics in contemporary Iran is not rooted in conventional analytical norms and categories but rather in a comprehensible conceptual apparatus characterized by fluidity and indeterminacy, capable of effectively making sense of the conflict between the politics of determinacy and indeterminacy in Iranian everyday life.
Abbas Jong and Saman Ebrahimzadeh
MDPI AG
This article explores the idea of political Islam as a discursive tradition within the context of Iranian Kurdistan. It challenges the prevailing essentialist and universalist approaches commonly used in the analysis of political Islam, advocating for a more adaptable and comprehensive interpretation. By conceptualizing political Islam as a discursive tradition, this study sheds light on the complex interconnections, configurations, and historical contingencies influencing Islamist discourses and movements. The paper argues that political Islam should be examined in relation to other phenomena and discourses, acknowledging its dynamic nature within specific temporal and spatial contexts. Focusing on an influential yet underexplored Islamist discursive tradition in Iranian Kurdistan during the 1970s and 1980s, the research acknowledges the hybrid nature of Islamist discourses, drawing from diverse traditions to fulfill particular objectives. In particular, it explores the perspectives of Ahmad Moftizadeh, a Sunni Kurdish Islamist and the founder of the Maktab Quran (MQ). This study investigates Moftizadeh’s views on the Islamic government, positioning it within the framework of discursive tradition. It analyzes his core categories and inquiries within Islamist thought, notably emphasizing Moftizadeh’s alignment of the Islamic government with the Islamic tradition of the Shura, highlighting its central role in the Islamist discursive tradition.
Abbas Jong and Rami Ali
MDPI AG
The exploration of the quiddity of political Islam and the diverse range of categories and terms associated with it has emerged as a prominent research agenda within the social and political sciences. The application of these terms to a wide array of heterogeneous phenomena and currents among Muslim populations worldwide, coupled with the utilization of multiple theoretical approaches to define and formulate them within the realm of social studies, has posed significant challenges to their usage. The inherent ambiguity and lack of determinacy surrounding the dominant categories and definitions prevalent in the study of political Islam have led to a decline in their explanatory capacity, giving rise to a host of theoretical, methodological, normative, and political dilemmas and predicaments. This problematic state, compounded by the extensive body of research in the field of political Islam, necessitates an epistemological interrogation into the prevailing categories and definitions within this scholarly domain. Through a critical examination of prevailing definitions within the field, particularly in relation to the idea of foundation, the present article draws on the post-foundationalist approach to propose a distinctive conceptual apparatus for understanding and interpreting the phenomena categorized under political Islam. By juxtaposing the notions of discursive tradition and social configuration, the article endeavors to construct a nuanced understanding of political Islam that not only incorporates and comprehends the singular characteristics of the objects of inquiry but also encompasses varying levels of universality in elucidating the social phenomena observed among Muslims and in the Islamic world.
Abbas Jong
Frontiers Media SA
Modern social sciences arose during a period of classical modernity in which discovering universal rules between distinct phenomena was the most prominent criterion of scientific knowledge. Social phenomena were considered in the form of isolated, determined, standardized, and regulated objects whose knowledge, like that of the natural sciences, depended on the understanding of universal laws. The accidental and the contingent were eliminated in favor of universal laws. With the intensifying of modernity and the transition to late and liquid modernity, and by suspending many dominant cognitive categories, this kind of essentialist foundationalism was attacked by a variety of anti/non-foundationalist criticism that subscribed to either plural grounds or groundlessness, a bottomless ground in which scientific knowledge at a high level lost its significance. This predicament has given rise to several biases and antinomies in modern social theory. By addressing some of these predicaments and antinomies, including foundationalism/non(anti-)foundationalism, agency/structure, the individual/society, essentialism/relativism, and universalism/singularism, the present article strives to propose the idea of social configurations as a solution to overcome them, and through this endeavor, it is indicated that considering these configurations can effectively explain emerging and interrelated global phenomena. By prioritizing the conditions of possibility for social phenomena, and taking into account their contingency, as well as the incompleteness and partiality of their foundations, social configurations are considered as units at the level of the particular whose relationality, indeterminacy, interdependence, and fluidity constitute their central features.
Abbas Jong
Frontiers Media SA
Methodological nationalism can be understood in the broadest sense possible as any kind of correspondence between society and the unit of the nation-state. This equation can be traced and understood at two levels: firstly, within the socio-historical context of the rise of nationalism and the development of human and social sciences; and secondly, within the cognitive context of the emergence of nationalism and these sciences, or the modern episteme, in other words. By focusing on the latter, the present article aims to indicate that the problem of methodological nationalism can be effectively grasped by exploring the intricate interplay among modernity, the discourse of nationalism, and the emergence of social science, particularly concerning the modern episteme. It becomes apparent that the regime of foundationalist differentiation ingrained within the modern episteme has established the foundation for this correspondence or congruence—a regime that, while constructing determined, regulated, unified and completed categories, such as society and the social/nation-state and the national, simultaneously sets the ground for the exclusion of other non-social/non-national phenomena and events. In this paper, the objective is to demonstrate how, by disclosing the implementation of this regime as well as highlighting the contingent nature and, consequently, the conditions of the possibility of social phenomena in the path of their grounding, alongside prioritizing the indeterminate social configurations and arguing for a post-foundationalist approach and the politics of transnationalism, it becomes possible to overcome the problem of methodological nationalism. This, in turn, sets a basis for taking into account excluded and indeterminate phenomena and actors within a global context.
Abbas Jong
Frontiers Media SA
Current global crises and threats have revealed the growing implications of Ulrich Beck's theory of risk society. Rather than being a theory of risk, risk society theory is more a social theory of the new social world and modernity. Risk society theory encompasses a new social ontology of the social in the era of uncertainties and crises. Beck also proposes the cosmopolitan outlook and particularly methodological cosmopolitanism as the epistemology and methodology of the world risk society. Yet, a close examination of Beck's social theory reveals a contradiction between the two aspects. On the one hand, in the ontological dimension, we are faced with the primacy of the indeterminate and the empirical, but on the other hand, Beck's epistemological prescriptive eliminate the possibility of reaching them. The current article aims to address this incompatibility. In doing so, first, the main pillars of risk society theory, and then the cosmopolitan outlook and sociology are discussed. By criticizing Beck's epistemological apparatus as well as juxtaposing the theory of risk society and Pierre Bourdieu's theory of action and fields, in the final section, the article proposes a solution to complete the ontology of risk society and overcome some of its epistemological problems.
Abbas Jong
Common Ground Research Networks