Nader

Culture and Dignity Middle East C

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Culture and Dignity explores the roots of the complex connections between the East and the West. Laura Nader uses ethnography to differentiate between the stereotype and reality of East-West relations and Arab documents, from the Crusades as well as contemporary Arab ethnography, to deconstruct the filters through which we see each other. By examining historical exchanges between East and West, Nader reveals how privileging difference has often led to violence and desensitization. In her vivid examples from history as well as analysis of ongoing events, she delineates the myriad indignities and false assumptions that surround Western dealings with Arabs and Muslims. This highly readable treatise from an influential voice in contemporary anthropology is based on the premise that a look in the mirror is essential for understanding what is going on today - the fundamentalisms we share - religious, economic, and political - dignity - theirs and ours. Culture and Dignity offers more than a half-century of personal and professional experience in presenting Middle Eastern and Western perspectives on one another, and insights into relationships between East and West into the twenty-first century.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
• Seitenzahl: 264
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. November 2012
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 157mm x 19mm
• Gewicht: 540g
• ISBN-13: 9781118319000
• ISBN-10: 1118319001
• Artikelnr.: 36196972

Autorenporträt

Laura Nader is Professor of Anthropology at the Universityof California at Berkeley. An influential voice in contemporaryanthropology, Laura Nader's books include Naked Science:Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power and Knowledge(1996), The Life of the Law (2002), and, with Ugo Mattei,Plunder-When the Rule of Law is Illegal (2008).

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments x

Preface xii

1 Introduction 1

Indignities 5

Naturalizing Difference and the Great Transformation 14

Comparison, Ethnography, and History 17

2 From Rifa' ah al-Tahtawi to Edward Said: Lessons inCulture and Dignity 24

Introduction 24

Rifa' ah al-Tahtawi and France 26

A Hundred Years Later: Edward Said 34

Concluding Comments 45

3 Ethnography as Theory: On the Roots of Controversy inAnthropology 51

Introduction 51

Unstated Consensus 54

Defining Ethnographic Worth: 1896-2000 55

Ethnographic Audiences 64

An Outsider Looking In on Anthropology's Ethnography69

Concluding Comments 74

4 Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Control of Women 80

Cultural Hierarchy and Processes of Control 83

The Specifi city of Eastern and Western Grids 85

Positional Superiority, Thought Systems, and Other Cultures87

Ways of Seeing and Comparing - East and West 88

The Controlling Role of Ideas 96

The Use of Revolution in Gender Control 98

Multiple Systems of Female Subordination 102

Colonialism, Development, Religion, and Gender Control 107

Conclusion: The Need to Separate Identities 110

5 Corporate Fundamentalism: Constructing Childhood in the UnitedStates and Elsewhere 120

Introduction 120

Manufacturing Culture Bit by Bit 122

Fundamentalisms: Corporate and Religious 126

Marketing and Children: The United States 131

Drugs, Commercialism, and the Biomedical Paradigm: An AmericanExample 137

When Corporate Profits and Education Meet: The EducationalTesting Industry 140

Fundamentalisms: Economic, Religious, Political 141

Back to Corporate Fundamentalism: Future Directions 144

6 Culture and the Seeds of Nonviolence in the Middle East151

Introduction 151

Disharmonic Westernization and Pilgrimage 154

Between the Stereotype and Reality 157

Little Worlds in the International Grip 161

Culture and Nonviolence: Who Stands to Gain From Peace? 165

Dignity Becomes Reality 168

7 Normative Blindness and Unresolved Human Rights Issues: TheHypocrisy of Our Age 175

Introduction 175

Early Constraints 176

Unresolved Issues 178

A Nonstate Human Rights Effort 183

Health and Human Rights 186

Human Rights and Commercialism 191

Concluding Remarks 193

8 Breaking the Silence: Politics and Professional Autonomy197

Introduction 197

Silence and Dominant Hegemonies 198

Desensitization 204

Mistakes Repeated in the Iraq Invasion 206

9 Lessons 212

Lessons Learned 212

Strategies of Subordination - In Reverse 216

Macro-histories 221

Appendix 226

Index 230

Rezensionen

"Drawing from an eclectic sample of literature dealing with the global connections between the Middle East and the West, the author achieves a much needed - and very timely - intellectual 'check-up' and warns us against cultural framings that serve to side-line serious explorations of the roots and nature of human suffering. It is crucial for all those of us who are genuinely concerned with peace to liberate our imaginations from the myths and stereotypes that work to divide us." (Studies in Ethnicity And Nationalism, 15 October 2013)

"The collection reflects the many lasting contributions Nader has made to understanding and improving the human condition. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries." (Choice, 1 July 2013)

"Laura Nader is an intellectual national treasure. Culture and Dignity is an important synthesis of anthropological theory and practice. Laura Nader shows how ethnography transforms would be observers and subjects into active participants in larger processes and power relations. From critiques of corporate fundamentalism to inverting Western notions of the control of women in the Middle East, Nader's brilliant analysis shows the promise of anthropology to break through dominant Western narratives. Culture and Dignity is a vital and timely work that should be read by all interested in cutting through the cultural fog enshrouding policy discussions of corporatism, building peace in the Middle East, and human rights issues."
- David H. Price, author of the books Weaponizing Anthropology and Anthropological Intelligence

"It is the best book I have read that deconstructs the myths of the East/West binary and brings much needed clarity into the blurred and complex borders that 'separate' the two."
- George Saliba, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science, Columbia University

"In Culture and Dignity, Laura Nader poses a challenge to her colleagues in the field of cultural anthropology, and the rest of us, to shed our hubris and bias and see the world and ourselves with new eyes. Nader's work is ambitious. And it succeeds. Not since Edward Said's Orientalism have I read a work with the same potential to transform an entire discipline. In one reading, I came to a new understanding of the role of family, of the 'women's rights' movement, of religious fundamentalism, and of my own political work."
- James J. Zogby, The Arab American Institute

"These essays by Laura Nader--on law, nonviolence, terrorism, women's status, the Middle Eastern culture--are passionate arguments against 'the hypocrisy of our age.' An anthropologist with decades of fieldwork experience, Nader challenges with great intellectual rigor and political courage the pieties of current Western hegemonic thought with consequences that are breathtaking."
- Joseba Zulaika, University of Nevada

"This book of challenging, intelligent, and provocative essays on a variety of topics can be read with great profit by students, colleagues, and a general public. It made me think in new ways about the role of anthropology and many social and cultural questions, including the position of women, on a comparative world scale, as I expected from such a deservedly distinguished writer."
- Nikki Keddie, University of California, Los Angeles