ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the conditions under which social science can transcend immediate political pressures or at least recognize the price that is paid for succumbing to them. The study of the region requires both intellectual passion and academic discipline to sustain a social science autonomous from both political advocacy and the temptations of research for hire. All social science research is subject to such pressures, but research dealing with the Middle East sustains especially strong passions. For the Middle East, contemporary French political science combines anthropological techniques with more conventional styles of analysis. The notion of 'siege' has overlapping connotations. A classic one is the action of investing a locale to cut off communications with the outside world to compel surrender. There is also a change in conception of the nature of the 'object' studied in the social sciences in the Middle East that tends to draw such work more into public policy debates.
