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Ahmet Kuru, in his book, suggests that the explanation for the lack of social and political development in the modern world can be traced back to a historical ‘state-ulama alliance’ from the 11th-century Saljuq empire or earlier. From the perspective of an historian, however, this dating displays some empirical problems. It is certain that the state eventually did gain the upper hand over the Muslim intellectuals, at least in the centre of the Ottoman empire. But the process to that point was different. In this comment, a different explanation is proposed that points instead to two crucial factors: the loss of a homogeneous Muslim state with the fall of the caliphate, and the rise of a unified Muslim world, an umma, through the independence, not subservience, of the class of scholars in the mediaeval period of Islam. Thus, a model is proposed that focuses on two turning points: the replacement of the effective caliphate with a fractious system of sultanates in the mid-tenth century, coinciding with the solidification of Islamic thought in a more strictly regulated form both in theology, law and in Sufism. The second moment is ca. 1500, when the period of political fragmentation comes to an end with the Ottoman state unifying the Middle East, flanked by Morocco and Iran, while challenges to the religious orthodoxy begin to grow at the margins. Such a model thus sees the ulama as actors for change as well as for orthodoxy throughout Muslim history, responding to changing developments in social and political contexts.

In the years following the publication of A Theory of Consumption (1923), Hazel Kyrk’s book became the flagship of the field that would later be known as the economics of consumption. It stimulated theoretical and empirical work on consumption. Some of the existing literature on Kyrk (e.g., Kiss & Beller, 2000; Le Tollec, 2020; Tadajewski, 2013) depicted her theory as the starting point of the economics of consumption. Nevertheless, how and why it emerged the way it did remain largely unexplored. This chapter examines Kyrk’s intellectual background, which, we argue, can be traced back to two main movements in the United States: the home economics and the institutionalist. Both movements conveyed specific endeavors as responses to the US material and social transformations that occurred at the turn of the 20th century, notably the perceived changing role of consumption and that of women in US society. On the one hand, Kyrk pursued first-generation home economists’ efforts to make sense of and put into action the shifting of women’s role from domestic producer to consumer. On the other hand, she reinterpreted Veblen’s (1899) account of consumption in order to reveal its operational value for a normative agenda focused on “wise” and “rational” consumption. This chapter studies how Kyrk carried on first-generation home economists’ progressive agenda and how she adapted Veblen’s fin-de-siècle critical account of consumption to the context of the household goods developed in 1900–1920. Our account of Kyrk’s intellectual roots offers a novel narrative to better understand the role of gender and epistemological questions in her theory.

Ahmet Kuru replies to two important and critical reviews of his book, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press, 2019), in this volume. He explains why he disagrees with certain points in Knut Vikør's and Roel Meijer's reviews. He particularly reiterates the ulema's negative roles in contemporary Muslim societies. From Egypt's Al-Azhar to Turkey's Diyanet, from Iran's mullahs to Pakistan's sharia courts, the ulema hold the power to shape the public discourse in many ways, such as controlling Islamic education, issuing fatwas, and imposing blasphemy laws, in partnership with the state. The ulema have been the main ally of the rulers in marginalizing intellectuals and economic entrepreneurs, and thus, they share the responsibility with the rulers in problems of authoritarianism and underdevelopment.

The popular uprising in Sri Lanka on July 9th, 2022, led to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fleeing the country. It represented a stunning culmination of a wave of protests during the recent past. The proximate cause of the uprising was the worst economic crisis that Sri Lanka had experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The breakdown was long in the making since the island nation became the first country in South Asia to take the neoliberal turn in the late 1970s. The dramatic collapse was catalyzed by a sovereign debt crisis with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Nevertheless, like all great revolts, it has led to a counter revolution by the ruling class, including the reconfiguration of the old regime.

We examine the tremendous consequences of recent events, both in terms of Sri Lanka's long history of struggles involving working people and the global unravelling underway. We explore whether Sri Lanka is a harbinger of more global political economic changes to come. The process includes the possibility of systemic resistance to financialization in the scores of countries in the Global South experiencing tremendous debt distress. In this regard, we ask whether Sri Lanka's revolt could yet become a revolution. To frame the potential implications, we turn to a deeper interrogation of classic Marxist theories and concepts.

This chapter locates our book in social science debates and critiques challenging ontological and epistemological assumptions underpinning researching approaches emanating from the global north. This is an important contextualising move, given that these debates have surfaced crucial understandings about the dangers of unquestioned assumptions underpinning researching approaches in intercultural and cross-cultural contexts. The chapter outlines how practice architectures, the key theoretical lens employed in this book, have attempted to counter these exclusions. It focusses on the theory’s emergence from the relational (political and material) work of the pedagogy, education, and praxis (PEP) network. This historicising move is part of our shared authorial commitment to rendering visible the taken-for-granted assumptions underpinning researching approaches, including those, such as practice architectures theory, that have a shared commitment to critical educational praxis. The final section of the chapter considers the possibilities and limitations of practice architectures theory as a means of challenging taken-for-granted ontological and epistemological assumptions of research and researching practices.

The conflict between institutionalism and neoclassicism in the 20th century has been investigated by scholars over the years. Many of them believe that in the postwar period, neoclassicism triumphed while institutionalism largely disappeared. The present chapter takes a very different view. The late 20th century represents a broad synthesis of neoclassical and institutional themes in a methodology we call pragmatic empiricism. That approach combines the mathematical model building and theoretical formalism of neoclassical economics with the institutional economist’s data-driven statistical analysis and concern for developing institutional forms. We use as a case study the history of American locational economics from the 1930s to the present. The mixing of institutional and neoclassical themes is quite evident in the work of three young scholars at Harvard who effectively initiated American locational economics. In the postwar period, we find a series of outstanding, well-published papers that capture the spirit of the “founders.” These papers do use more modeling, but they also focus on major institutional developments. A broader review of locational works is consistent with the pragmatic empiricism label. The history of locational economics supports the claim that institutionalism, far from disappearing, continues to provide fundamental questions and techniques for modern pragmatic empiricism.