The Ethnographic State

In this long-awaited study, Edmund Burke argues that the Mission scientifique du Maroc and the sociology of Islam it engendered was a complexly colonial project--shaped as much by Algeria as by British India and blind to indigenous sentiment. Never has the genealogy of imperial ethnography been so carefully excavated, nor have the limits of colonial social science been so painstakingly exposed. If the invention of 'Moroccan Islam' was a pathway to the modern state, it is also extraordinary evidence of the impact of Western ethnography on the business of colonial hegemony. -Antoinette Burton, author of Empire in Question: Reading, Writing and Teaching British Imperialism Edmund Burke's much-anticipated study of the politics of knowledge production offers a wide-ranging history of the French colonial scholarship that, in imagining into being a 'Morocco that never was,' set in train powerful ways not only of representing but also of legislating and enacting social life, religious practice, and political authority that continue to have their effects in the present. Accessibly written and grounded in a lifetime's detailed research, this is a major contribution from one of the most respected scholars of North African and world history. -James McDougall, Trinity College, University of Oxford Edmund Burke's lucid, critical writing and his interests in world history and modern North Africa come together in this important book. It should be compulsory reading for everyone interested in colonial history and the complexity of the relation of 'scientific ethnography' to the practices of imperial powers. It speaks to contemporary issues. -Michael Gilsenan, professor of anthropology and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University and author of Recognizing Islam and Lords of the Lebanese Marches Burke's magisterial study of how the notion of Moroccan Islam came to be challenges current theories of empire by offering a counter-model with wide applicability. By reinterpreting the colonial imaginary and its archive across multiple scales, ranging from the individual to the global, Ethnographic State not only unmasks 'scientific imperialism,' revealing its detours, incoherence, and failures but also explains how these were recast as a seamless, untroubled colonial (and post-colonial) narrative of something that never was. -Julia Clancy-Smith, Department of History, University of Arizona