Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society
Author: Clifford Geertz
Publisher:
Published: 1979
Total Pages: 510
ISBN-13:
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Islam Observed
Author: Clifford Geertz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1971-08-15
Total Pages: 148
ISBN-13: 9780226285115
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"In four brief chapters," writes Clifford Geertz in his preface, "I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan." Mr. Geertz begins his argument by outlining the problem conceptually and providing an overview of the two countries. He then traces the evolution of their classical religious styles which, with disparate settings and unique histories, produced strikingly different spiritual climates. So in Morocco, the Islamic conception of life came to mean activism, moralism, and intense individuality, while in Indonesia the same concept emphasized aestheticism, inwardness, and the radical dissolution of personality. In order to assess the significance of these interesting developments, Mr. Geertz sets forth a series of theoretical observations concerning the social role of religion.
Culture and Identity in a Muslim Society
Author: Gary S. Gregg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2007-02-15
Total Pages: 380
ISBN-13: 0198042353
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the last fifteen years, psychologists have rediscovered culture and its influence on emotion, thought, and self. Many researchers have come to the conclusion that the world's cultures can be ranked according to the degree to which they are individualist or collectivist, with Western cultures falling at the individualist end and non-Western cultures at the collectivist end. These scholars argue that while individualist cultures give rise to "independent" selves, leading Westerners to think and act autonomously, collectivist cultures foster "interdependent" selves, leading non-Westerners, embedded in social-relationships, to think and act relationally. Culture and Identity in a Muslim Society presents an alternative to the individualist- collectivist approach to identity. Unlike most psychological and anthropological studies of culture and self, Gary Gregg's work directly investigates individuals, using "study of lives"-style interviews with young adults living in villages and small towns in southern Morocco. Analyzing these young adults' life-narratives, Gregg builds a theory of culture and identity that differs from prevailing psychological and anthropological models in important respects. In contrast to modernist theories of identity as unified, the life-narratives show individuals to articulate a small set of shifting identities. In contrast to post-modern theories that claim people have a kaleidoscopic multiplicity of fluid identities, the narratives show that the identities are integrated by repeated use of culturally-specific self-symbols, metaphors, and story-plots. Most importantly, the life-narratives show these young Moroccans' self-representations to be pervasively shaped by the volatile cultural struggle between Western-style "modernity" and authentic Muslim "tradition." Offering a new approach to the study of identity, the volume will be of interest to cross-cultural psychologists, anthropologists, scholars of Middle-East societies, and researchers specializing in the study of lives.
The Urban Social History of the Middle East, 1750-1950
Author: Peter Sluglett
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 2008-12-08
Total Pages: 346
ISBN-13: 9780815631941
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe great cities of the Middle East and North Africa have long attracted the attention and interest of historians. With the discovery and wider use over the last few decades of Islamic court records and Ottoman administrative documents, our knowledge of Middle Eastern cities between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries has vastly expanded. Drawing upon a treasure trove of documents and using a variety of methodologies, the contributors succeed in providing a significant overview of the ways in which Middle Eastern cities can be studied, as well as an excellent introduction to current literature in the field.
Toward Islamic Anthropology: Definition, Dogma, and Directions (Islamization of Knowledge Series)
Author: Akbar S. Ahmed
Publisher: International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)
Published: 1986
Total Pages: 84
ISBN-13: 0912463058
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book, Toward Islamic Anthropology: Definition, Dogma and Direction, is a valuable prerequisite for the study and assessment of Western anthropology from a "universal" or Islamic perspective. Dr. Akbar Ahmed, author of this work, contends that Western Anthropology offers the Islamic scholar a body of knowledge worthy of merit, but which is, unfortunately, laden with conclusions based on cultural presumptions, misinformation and ethnocentrism. Approaching the subject from an Islamic perspective, Dr. Ahmed zeros in upon the "Methodological prejudices," which he suggests represents the greatest challenge to be overcome in the field. As the Late Dr. Isma'il R. al-Faruqi states in the introduction of the book, "regarding the cause of truth as its own, Islam prescribes that where there is valid evidence for the other point of view; the mind must bend itself to it with humility. But where the evidence is spurlous or lacking, the Islamic mind feels itself compelled to expose the incoherence." In Part I, Dr. Ahmed reviews the science of Anthropology and compares its development with that of other disciplines. He also shows how given historical and political periods, such as the "colonial era," forced erroneous methodological frameworks upon the discipline. In Part II, the author establishes the fact that Anthropology had its roots in the Islamic scientific heritage, dating back to the tenth Hijri century. He concludes that anthropologists "must transcend" themselves and their cultures, to a position where they can "speak to, and understand those around them in terms of their special humanity, irrespective of color, caste or creed."
Clifford Geertz in Morocco
Author: Susan Slyomovics
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-09-13
Total Pages: 490
ISBN-13: 1317988167
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBetween 1963 and 1986, eminent American anthropologists Clifford and Hildred Geertz - together and alone - conducted ethnographic fieldwork for varying periods in Sefrou, a town situated in north-central Morocco, south of Fez. This book considers Geertz’s contributions to sociocultural theory and symbolic anthropology. Clifford Geertz made an immense impact on the American academy: his interpretative and symbolic approaches reoriented anthropology analytically away from classic social science presuppositions, while his publications profoundly influenced both North American and Maghribi researchers alike. After his death at the age of 80 on October 30, 2006, scholars from local, national, and international universities gathered at the University of California, Los Angeles, to analyze his contributions to sociocultural theory and symbolic anthropology in relation to Islam; ideas of the sacred; Morocco’s cityscapes (notably Sefrou’s bazaar or suq); colonialism and post-independence economic development; gender, and political structures at the household and village levels. This book looks back to a specific era of American anthropology beginning in the 1960s as it unfolded in Morocco; and at the same time, the contributions examine new lines of enquiry that opened up after key texts by Geertz were translated into French and introduced to generations of francophone Maghribi researchers who sustain lively and inventive meditations on his Morocco writings. This book was published as a special issue of Journal of North African Studies.
Jewish Communities in Exotic Places
Author: Ken Blady
Publisher: Jason Aronson, Incorporated
Published: 2000-03-01
Total Pages: 455
ISBN-13: 146162908X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJewish Communities in Exotic Places examines seventeen Jewish groups that are referred to in Hebrew as edot ha-mizrach, Eastern or Oriental Jewish communities. These groups, situated in remote places on the Asian and African Jewish geographical periphery, became isolated from the major centers of Jewish civilization over the centuries and embraced some interesting practices and aspects of the dominant cultures in which they were situated.
Context and Pretext in Conflict Resolution
Author: Kevin Avruch
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-11-17
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 1317262050
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWritten by a distinguished scholar, this book explores themes of culture, identity, and power as they relate to conceptions of practice in conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Among the topics covered are ethnic and identity conflicts; culture, relativism and human rights; post-conflict trauma and reconciliation; and modeling varieties of conflict resolution practice. Context and Pretext in Conflict Resolution is the winner of the 2014 Conflict Research Society Book of the Year Prize.
After the Fact
Author: Clifford Geertz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2009-06-30
Total Pages: 159
ISBN-13: 0674254031
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“An unabashedly honest ethnography . . . [from] a founder of ‘symbolic’ anthropology . . . reflections on his fieldwork over a period of . . . forty years. Brilliant.” (Kirkus Reviews) In looking back on four decades of anthropology in the field, Geertz has created a work that is a personal history as well as a retrospective reflection on developments in the human sciences amid political, social, and cultural changes in the world. An elegant summation of one of the most remarkable careers in anthropology, it is at the same time an eloquent statement of the purposes and possibilities of anthropology's interpretive powers. Through the prism of his fieldwork over forty years in two towns, Pare in Indonesia and Sefrou in Morocco, Geertz adopts various perspectives on anthropological research and analysis during the post-colonial period, the Cold War, and the emergence of the new states of Asia and Africa. Throughout, he clarifies his own position on a broad series of issues at once empirical, methodological, theoretical, and personal. The result is a truly original book, one that displays a particular way of practicing the human sciences and thus a particular—and particularly efficacious—view of what these sciences are, have been, and should become. “Geertz charts the transformation of cultural anthropology from a study of "primitive" people to a multidisciplinary investigation of a particular culture's symbolic systems, its interactions with the larger forces of history and modernization.” —Publishers Weekly “An elegant, almost meditative volume of reflections.” —The New Yorker “[An] engrossing story of a few key moments in American social science during the second half of the twentieth century as [Geetz] participated in them.” —New York Times Book Review
Palestinian Lawyers and Israeli Rule
Author: George Emile Bisharat
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2012-02-01
Total Pages: 264
ISBN-13: 0292739842
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAs frequent intermediaries between Israeli military authorities and Palestinian citizens, Palestinian lawyers stand close to the fault line dividing Israeli and Palestinian societies. The conflicts and tensions they experience in their profession mirror the larger conflicts between the two societies. Thus, as George Bisharat reveals in Palestinian Lawyers and Israeli Rule, a careful study of the work and lives of Palestinian lawyers ultimately helps to illuminate the causes of the intifada, or uprising, that began in December 1987. The study revolves around the central question of why the Palestinian legal profession declined during twenty years of Israeli occupation when, in other Third World countries, the legal profession has often reached its peak during a period of Western colonization. Bisharat answers this question with a wide-ranging inquiry into the historical origins of the legal profession and court system in Palestine, the tenuous grounding of these institutions in Palestinian society and culture, and the structure, style, and policies of the late-twentieth-century Israeli military government in the West Bank. For general readers interested in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as well as specialists in such fields as legal anthropology, sociology of the professions, Third World law and development, and Middle Eastern studies, Palestinian Lawyers and Israeli Rule will be required reading.
