The Development of Sociology in the Middle East: Studying the Obstacles since the 20th Century

Sociology maintains that human thought and knowledge are influenced by social conditions at any given time. The present paper discusses obstacles to the development of sociology in the Middle East with respect to political structure, government, and socio-cultural conditions in the contemporary Middle-Eastern countries.As far as government and political structure are concerned, the emergence of totalitarian states, the ideological nature of political power since the 1960s, and the revival of political Islam in the 1970s, are among the most important barriers to the development of sociology. In the realm of economy, exogenous orientation of economic development, its related issues, and the tendency of policy-makers to promote modernization without social modernism, constitute important barriers. Finally, in the socio-cultural realm, fragility of the civil society, lack of a powerful public sphere, and lingering conflicts between tradition and modernity in both thought and society are among the most important barriers to the development of sociology in the region.