Islamist fundamentalism at a time when global neo-liberalism has declared «the end of history». Arab Modernities is a sophisticated attempt to «name» contemporary Islamism and Arab nationalism and liberalism ¿ to delineate the social, cultural, economic, and political conditions under which they first emerged, evolved, and ultimately failed, and thereby to shed light on Arab-Islamic societies at the current historical conjuncture. Arab Modernities argues against facile analyses that attribute the rise and subsequent decline of liberalism and nationalism, as well as the current rise of Islamism, to purely cultural, religious, or ideological factors and provides a rigorous, complex materialist critique, where Arab ideologies of modernity are placed in the context of the particular historical formation within which they have developed and to which they have responded.