Charrad studies conceptions of modernity in legal discourses in the Middle East. Challenging explanations of politics based on a textual approach to religion, she offers instead a focus on social solidarities and where they are grounded (kinship, ethnicity, or other), as for example in her articles "Gender in the Middle East: Islam, State, Agency" and "Central and Local Patrimonialism: State Building in Kin-Based Societies".[7]