No Size Fits All. Diversity, State and Politics in the Contemporary Middle East

Especially since 2001, the multiple crises inflaming the wider Middle East have dramatically altered the geopolitical equilibriums of a region that has always played a crucial role in the international arena. Affected by heightening levels of violence and widespread destabilization, the area became increasingly associated with processes of radicalization and socio-political fragmentation allegedly destined to redefine the very foundations of a system whose roots can be traced back to the end of the Great War. The arch of crises that came to bisect the region largely contributed to projecting the image of a Middle Eastern region “endemically” marred by divisions and instability and destined for partition according to apparently undeniable ethno-sectarian fault lines. In this framework, Middle Eastern ethno-linguistic and religious diversity has become the focal point of two different and opposite arguments. On the one hand, diversity has been considered the victim of increasing polarization, manipulated and politicized in order to impose specific political agendas. On the other, it has been listed as one of the drivers or sources of present instability in a region experiencing its own Thirty Years War, as Europe did in the 16th century. The chapter aims to take a distance from both understandings, reconsidering the contemporary history of the Middle East and of state- and nation-building in the region based on the image of multiple geographies. Instead of again proposing the idea of the Middle East as a mosaic, the chapter aims to offer an engaged account of the role of diversity in the region, analyzing the multiple features that have characterized and composed it. Through the idea of multiple geographies, the chapter will explain why diversity in the Middle East has always played a crucial role. The Middle East stands out not only for its diversity per se, but because the features that compose and define its diversity and multivocality often strongly intertwine and