Remembering Janet Abu-Lughod

Abstract

When I was president of the International Sociological Association (1994-1998), I engaged the ISA in sponsoring a series of small regional conferences. In this introduction she spelled out not only a very pertinent analysis of the historical origins of North American sociology and the reasons for its special characteristics, but also an agenda for the future with which we still need to come to terms.

Janet Abu-Lughod was a remarkable scholar and bequeathed a significant legacy to the historical social sciences. The first thing to remember is that her initial and continuing interest and identity was as a student of urban life, a subject to which her early reading of Lewis Mumford turned her. However, before she moved to Cairo with her husband Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, her life experience had been almost entirely within the United States. Going to Cairo changed and deepened her perspective about the world.

Janet was someone who wanted to learn from the world in which she lived. And living in Cairo was very different. She became engrossed in the urban life of Cairo. And she came to see urban life with different spectacles. Her first major work, published in 1971, was Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious. From there, it was only a short step to viewing Egyptian culture as it related to all the other cultures of the world. Egypt was not however just any non-U.S. (or non-"western" country to observe. Egypt had arguably one of the two longest-continuous historical legacies in the world, competing in this sense only with China. Studying Egypt empathetically had to mean immersing ourselves in a long-term historical perspective, something she had already recognized in writing her book about Cairo.

This turn to studying Egypt in relation to the rest of the world was the prelude to her intellectual journey that was to produce the book that made her famous, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. One should note two things about this title. It starts with the word "before." Janet intended her book to be one combatting Eurocentrism and any notion that the key to European triumph in the modern world-system had its roots in some special cultural characteristics of western Europe.

The second thing to note about the title is the time limitation. The book was not intended to be an exposition of world history over 5000 or 10,000 years. It focused on what she thought was a key period of prelude to the "rise of the west." Her method essentially was to demonstrate that there was a world system composed of a number of overlapping circles, somewhat equivalent in their political economies. Precisely because these circles overlapped, she could demonstrate the practical links between them, both of economic and political interconnections and of cultural diffusions.

I remember discussing this project with her at its beginning and through its later stages. She was in constant search of persons to whom to talk and books to read. She sought to learn, to elucidate, to integrate, and to conclude. The reason the book had so much impact is not because everyone agreed with it - in whole or in part - but because it forced just about everyone to face up to issues over which they had previously glided too facilely.

As many have observed, she continued to pursue her concern with urban realities - in many different locales. But her second major contribution in my view was one that many of her memorialists do not even mention. It happens to be one in which I was involved. When I was president of the International Sociological Association (1994-1998), I engaged the ISA in sponsoring a series of small regional conferences. The objective was to get scholars of a region to reflect on their social realities and their social sciences. These regional meetings of up to 30 persons always included two to three persons from outside the region, in order to keep the reflection from being excessively introverted. ISA published their results.

It turned out to be relatively easy to find appropriate convenors for such meetings in most of the world. The trickiest region in which to do this properly was North America (the United States and Canada). As I thought about the innumerable prominent sociologists of the region, it seemed to me that Janet was the ideal convenor. She knew the United States and its sociology well. But she also had genuine interest in and concern with the rest of the world and had demonstrated that in her own scholarship.

I offered this role to Janet. Initially, she said sorry, but she had no time. But a week or so later, she wrote me and said that she hadn't considered what a gift I was offering her. She agreed to do it, enthusiastically. And she did it remarkably well. The final result appeared in a reduced version published by the ISA, reduced because it had to meet ISA's size limitation for these books. The title was Millennial Milestone: The Heritage and Future of Sociology in the North American Region.

For those who haven't read it, I recommend very strongly looking at her introduction to the book, "The Heritage and Future of Sociology." In this introduction she spelled out not only a very pertinent analysis of the historical origins of North American sociology and the reasons for its special characteristics, but also an agenda for the future with which we still need to come to terms. We do not always necessarily recognize that the turn that at least some sociologists have taken was in important ways inspired by Janet. But being forgotten in this way is a sure sign of success. Janet's proposals have become common wisdom. And, as she herself would surely have said, let us go forward from here.

References

References

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_____. 1987-88. "The Shape of the World System in the Thirteenth Century," Studies in Comparative International Development 22 (Winter): 3-53.

_____. 1989. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, new York and Oxford, Oxford University Press.

_____. 1999. "The Heritage and Future of Sociology." Pp. 9-22 in Millennial Milestone: The Heritage and Future of Sociology in the North American Region, Vol. 7 Social Knowledge: Heritage, Challenges, Perspectives. International Sociological Association.

_____. 1990. "Restructuring the Premodern World System", Review 8 (Spring): 273-85.

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