University of Naples "L'Orientale"

Faculty Member, Humanities and Social Sciences

Other Affiliations: Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Humboldt Center for Social and Political Research

Chair of Sociology of Islam/Sociology of Culture and Communication

About

Armando Salvatore teaches Sociology of Islam and Sociology of Culture and Communication at the Dept. of Humanities and Social Sciences, Oriental Studies University, Naples – ‘L’Orientale’, where he was called in 2007 from Humboldt University, Berlin, after he acquired the habilitation to exercise a full professorship.
Salvatore obtained his Ph.D. from the Dept. of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Florence, in 1994. In the same year he won the Malcolm Kerr Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences of MESA (Middle East Studies Association of North America). His PhD thesis was published in 1997 (pb 2000) with the title Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity. During the last two decades he has investigated the sociological, political and anthropological dimensions of religious traditions and secular formations in historical and comparative perspective, by laying a particular emphasis on phenomena related to Islam within global civil society, new media, and the public sphere. The exploration of wider horizons of Islam’s cultural contact and global interaction, particularly with Western Europe and East Asia, is now central to his work, coherently with the scholarly tradition of ‘L’Orientale’.
In 2007, shortly before the call to Naples, Armando Salvatore was awarded a Heisenberg fellowship, which rewards outstanding research with support for an original research project, which in his case explores—comparatively and theoretically—the symbolic dimensions of solidarity, sovereignty and secularity in a variety of Eurasian societies and states. As a Heisenberg fellow, he has been based at the Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University, Berlin and since 2011 he has been a project director at the related Humboldt Center of Social and Political Research. At the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI), Essen, he has directed the German research team of the Collaborative Project on IME—Identities and Modernities in Europe (‘European and national identity construction programmes and politics, culture, history and religion’), funded by the European Commission, Seventh Framework Program. During 2012 Salvatore is on sabbatical leave for research purposes, in order to complete these two projects and the related book The Sociology of Islam in Comparative Perspective: Power, Civility, and the Public Sphere.
Salvatore’s most recent books (authored, edited, and co-edited) are Islam and Modernity: Key Issues and Debates (2009), The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism, Islam (2007, pb 2010), Islam in Process: Historical and Civilizational Perspectives (2006), Religion, Social Practice, and Contested Hegemonies (2005) and Public Islam and the Common Good (2004, pb 2007). He has contributed the entries on ‘Islamism: Nature of Islamist Movements’ to the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, and on ‘Modernity,’ ‘Civil Society,’ ‘Public Sphere’ and ‘Globalization’ to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought, and is authoring and editing various studies on the ‘Arab Spring,’ democratization, and the public sphere. He is presently editing the Wiley-Blackwell History of Islam (with Roberto Tottoli). His works are mostly framed within cultural and political sociology, social theory, sociology of communication, and comparative historical sociology, and are published in journals like Theory, Culture and Society, European Journal of Social Theory, the European Journal of Sociology and Sociologica. He has also contributed articles to Islamic Studies journals such as Arabica, The Muslim World, and Oriente Moderno and to journals of international studies and global politics like Third World Quarterly.
In pursuit of a synthesis of such fields of scholarship, Salvatore has been an editor at the Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam (1998-2008). More than the sociology of a specific religion or civilization, this field of studies provides an entry point into the historical and contemporary interconnectedness of Muslim actors and groups both across Eurasia and within Western locations. It is as much focused on media and communication as on socio-political movements, collective action, and life conduct, and has proven to be as fruitful for research as seminal for teaching.

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