Abstract:

My case is that current conflicts in the Middle East are not only conflicts between states or a Clash of Civilizations, but that glocal relative deprivation has caused a vacuum of power and conflicts between stationary states. To support my argument, I will discuss three paradigms and their ability for explaining the crisis in the Middle East: First, Carl Schmitt’s turn from Westphalian Governance to global lines (of a Nomos of Earth) as spheres of foreign non-interference, which is either used to propose unrealistic international solutions to a transnational crisis or, paradoxically, to back hegemonic interests in the region. Second, I will deconstruct Samuel Huntington’s paradigm of a Clash of Civilizations, which is based on dubious data and references to call for a Western hegemony that already exists beyond the classical imperialist understanding of it as global standards empowered with help of global horizons of comparability. Third, I will extend Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s sketch of reasons for modernization crisis in nation-states that is based on relative deprivation, identity-, participation-, distribution-, penetration-, and (culminating in a) legitimation-crisis, for analyzing conflicts in the Middle East as caused by glocal comparison and competition in world society. In summing, I intend to analyze the unrest in the Middle East as caused by glocal relative deprivation. This perspective enables us to deal with glocal political and social processes rather as represented than caused by global cultural or political conflicts between “civilizations” or states.