Islamic studies’ guild tradition insulated scholars from methodological self-questioning

Evidence

In part, I think, the guild tradition of Islamic studies, which has been handed down genealogically for about two centuries, has both protected and confirmed individual scholars in what they did, regardless of the methodological perils and innovations challenging scholars in most other humanistic fields. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 305

Categorization

• XREF: Complements Kuhn-Thompson-style accounts of how disciplinary guild structures reproduce orthodoxies; also foreshadows Said’s claims about area studies as a knowledge regime.

Related

• Islamic studies remains exempt from scholarly norms applied to other fields (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Islamic craft guilds never existed as scholars once claimed. (similarity 0.78)