“In Markets of Civilization, Muriam Haleh Davis maps the colonizing commitment of French occupiers to transform the Algerian landscape of political economy and subjectivity from homo islamicus to homo economicus, from a ‘traditional’ religiously and racially driven subject to a ‘modern’ economic subject. Weaving a critical understanding of this transforming drive, Davis provides a fascinatingly detailed analysis of the archive in ways highlighting both the colonizing efforts to ‘Euro-modernize’ and the creative resistances with all their complications. A marvelously nuanced, insightful, and revealing read.” - David Theo Goldberg, author of Dread: Facing Futureless Futures
“Markets of Civilization provides a masterly genealogy of the twin figures of homo economicus and homo islamicus within French colonial thought and post-independence Algeria. With characteristic analytical rigor and historical nuance, Muriam Haleh Davis explores technologies of human difference alongside the place of Algeria, and of Muslims more broadly, within racial capitalism. A tour-de-force analysis, the book is a must-read for all historians concerned with race, religion, and the history of economic development.” - Omnia El Shakry, author of The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt
“Markets of Civilization makes for a fascinating addition both to the literature on Algeria and also to the broader literature on racial formations and racialization. . . . Well worth the read.”
- Marc Lynch,
Marc Lynch
“Markets of Civilization is a much needed scholarly intervention into the connections between race, capital and economics, and enables us to think about racial capitalism outside of, but very much connected to, a Euro-American framework. An essential read for anyone interested in the story of capitalism as others experienced it.” - Usman Butt, Middle East Monitor
“Davis’s intervention brings our attention to an underappreciated historiographical domain of racial capitalism’s inception, evolution and contestation (i.e., the late French empire). . . . Davis subtly adds the dimension of religion to a conversation that has been dominated by ethnic- and colour-based understandings of racial capitalism’s historical origins and contemporary realities.” - Jacob Mundy, Ethnic and Racial Studies
"Markets of Civilization makes a significant contribution to the field of Algerian history through its explication of the entanglements of racial, economic, and colonial imperatives. . . . I recommend the book to scholars and students interested in the study’s widely-ranging themes, including racial capitalism in the Middle East, the connections between economic and intellectual histories, the enduring nature of colonial, racial thinking, and how post-independence Arab regimes negotiated and remade older colonial ideas and policies." - Sara Rahnama, International Journal of Middle East Studies
"A grounded and challenging effort to revive an older Third-Worldist scholarly tradition on Algeria. ... Davis’s Markets of Civilization is a must-read for those interested in Algerian history, colonialism, and contemporary debates on Islam and Islamophobia, as well as scholars examining the twin social theories of race and political economy."
- Mohammed Salih,
SAW Reviews
"Markets of Civilization combines skillful research with a creative revival of racial capitalism. It should be of great interest to scholars of French empire and the intersections of cultural and economic history." - Burleigh Hendrickson, L'Esprit Créateur
"Davis’s book fruitfully applies the framework of racial capitalism to illustrate how economic planning and development enduringly structured Arab and Muslim difference from white Christian Europeans." - Brooke Durham, H-Africa, H-Net Reviews
"Davis’s book . . . makes a detailed, original, and important contribution to rewriting the history of French economic thinking and policymaking." - James McDougall, American Historical Review
