A Companion to the Anthropology of the Middle East

Editor/Author Altorki, Soraya
Publication Year: 2015
Publisher: Wiley

Single-User Purchase Price: $195.00
Unlimited-User Purchase Price: $292.50
ISBN: 978-1-11-847561-4
Category: Social Sciences - Anthropology
Image Count: 6
Book Status: Available
Table of Contents

A Companion to the Anthropology of the Middle East presents a comprehensive overview of current trends and future directions in anthropological research and activism in the modern Middle East. Featuring contributions from a wide range of distinguished contemporary scholars of Middle East anthropology, chapters encompass the entire breadth of the regions cultural, social, political, and religious diversity.

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Table of Contents

  • Introduction: Theoretical and Conceptual Issues
  • Enduring Concerns, Resilient Tropes, and New Departures: Reading the Companion
  • Troubled Legacies: Knowledge Production in the Middle East
  • Post-Area Studies Scholarship: Sources of Inspiration
  • The Power of Paradigms and the Place of Ethnography
  • Mind the Gap: Integrating Political Economy
  • Cross-Overs and Cross-Fertilization
  • Theory and Thematics in the Anthropology of the Middle East
  • Part I Locating the Middle East in Anthropology
  • Part II Middle East Anthropology Theory and Thematics—Late 1970s to 2014
  • Part III Lacuna, Silences, Absences
  • Part IV Next Generation of Middle East Anthropologists
  • Structure/Agency and the Anthropology of the Middle East
  • The Shift to “Macro-Anthropology” and Post-Structuralism
  • Structure and Agency in Some Classic Works on the Anthropology of the Middle East
  • Contentious Collective Action
  • Reflections on the Politics of Middle East Studies
  • Culture and Everyday Life
  • The Politics of Aesthetics in the Muslim Middle East
  • Dreams and the Miraculous
  • Defining the Terms
  • Notes on Methodology
  • The Ordinariness of the Extraordinary
  • Power and Politics
  • Religious/Secular
  • Looking Ahead, or: The Emergent
  • Acknowledgments
  • Refiguring Islam
  • Islamic Tradition: Theoretical Intervention
  • Early Elaborations of Islamic Tradition: Historical–Ethnographic Investigations
  • Second Wave
  • Aspiration and Challenges to Coherence for Practitioners
  • Coherence as Aspiration of Tradition: Transformation, Orthodoxy, and Authority
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • In the Garden of the Sexes: Of Men, Women, Gaze, and Hair
  • A Cosmic Gender Encounter
  • The Breach: Patriarchy, Power, and Gender
  • The Crisis: Garden Contested
  • Redressive Action; Arranging a Marriage?
  • Reintegration: Garden Appropriated
  • Some Reflections
  • Trajectories of Gendered Labor
  • Stories, Work, and Questions
  • The Emplotment of Labor
  • Exhaustion
  • Conclusion
  • The Politics of Poetry
  • Ethics: Poetry and Values
  • Form: Politics of Non-Poetry
  • Subjectivity: Plurality and Interdependence
  • Recitation: Temporalities of Repetition
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Social Relations and Social Movements
  • Medical Anthropology in the Middle East and North Africa
  • Introduction
  • Competing Medical Systems
  • The Anthropology of Reproduction
  • The Biotechnological Turn: Infertility and Assisted Reproduction
  • Religion and Bioethics
  • Future Directions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Glossary of Acronyms
  • From Rural Development to Environmental Anthropology
  • Rural Development
  • Rural Development and Agricultural Development
  • Middle East Ecology
  • Mode of Production
  • Testour and Ghanima
  • Musha
  • Water and Development in Central Tunisia
  • Morocco's Eastern Province (Oriental)
  • Sustainability and Environmental Threats
  • Water-Borne Pollution (Blue Agenda)
  • Broad Issues
  • Displacement and Dispossession in the Middle East
  • Origins of the Field of Displacement and Forced Migration Studies
  • Critical Anthropological Concepts in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies
  • Classic Studies of People Who Have Been Forced to Move in the Middle East
  • Anthropology of Forced Migration in the Contemporary Middle East: Recalling the Past
  • Conclusion
  • Anthropology and Humanitarianism in the Middle East
  • Themes in the Anthropology of Humanitarianism
  • Ethics and Politics of Humanitarian Action
  • Humanitarian Worlds
  • Humanitarianism in the Middle East
  • The Case of Palestine
  • New Directions in Humanitarian Practice and Research: Islamic Humanitarianism
  • Conclusion
  • Anthropologies of Middle Eastern Diasporas
  • Diasporic Affiliation
  • The Ethnographer's Task
  • The Worlds (Not) Left Behind
  • Diasporic Ecumene
  • Abject Subjects and Flourishing Citizens
  • Conclusion
  • The Invention of the Mizrahim
  • Islam, Mizrahim, and Zionist Historiography
  • The Aporias of Nationalism
  • The Making of Mizrahi Identity
  • Reconceptualizing Identity: Toward Mizrahi Studies
  • The Mizrahi Cinema of Displacement
  • The Mizrahi Cinema of Displacement
  • Social Movements and Revolution
  • What are Social Movements? Theoretical Trends
  • Debates in Social Movement Theorizing
  • Anthropology and Social Movements
  • Social Movements and the MENA: Debates and Questions
  • Protest Movements, Public Mobilizations, and Revolutions
  • Post-2010 Uprisings in MENA—the so-called Arab Spring
  • New Social Movements—Collective Identity
  • Conclusion
  • Acronyms
  • Law, Politics, and the State
  • Justice between Islamic Sharia and Liberal Law: Remarks on the Egyptian Context
  • Introduction: A Framing of the Question
  • Justice from the Standpoint of Action
  • Presuppositions and Styles of Judging
  • The Problem of Violence for Justice in Liberal Law
  • Some Preliminary Observations on ‘Adl
  • Notes on Nineteenth-Century Transformations of ‘Adl
  • Comparison
  • Concluding Thoughts
  • The Notion of Arab Culture and the “Colonial Present”
  • Introduction
  • Colonialism, Culture, and Development: Literature Review
  • Development in Aqaba
  • Culture as Impediment
  • Culture as Asset
  • Culture as Business
  • Culture as Political Ideology
  • Culturalization of the Economy
  • Resistance from Below
  • Conclusion
  • Rethinking Anthropology of Neoliberalism in the Middle East
  • Anthropologies of Neoliberalism in the Middle East
  • Neoliberalism and the Origins of Market Society
  • Anthropology of Value, Markets, and Violence in Africa and the Middle East
  • A World without Price: Value, Visibility, and the Calculation Debate
  • Rationality and the Market: Rethinking the Gift and the Market
  • Finance, Banks, and Creation of the Public Sector
  • Invisible and Tacit Knowledge just before Neoliberalism
  • The Calculation Debate Comes to Egypt
  • Economic Anthropology of the Middle East
  • Making Market Society after Iraq
  • Acknowledgments
  • “States of Aspiration”: Anthropology and New Questions for the Middle East
  • Where Is the State? (Ayna al-dawla?)
  • Between Welfare and Domination: State–Society Relations
  • States of Aspiration: Hope and Desire for the State
  • New Anthropologies of the State in the Middle East
  • Acknowledgments
  • Rethinking the “Post-Ottoman”: Anatolian Armenians as an Ethnographic Perspective
  • The Scope
  • Intertwined Histories: The Balkans
  • Overlapping Territories: The Kurds
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Reframing the Middle Eastern City: Thoughts on New Research
  • The Spatial Turn
  • Smaller Towns
  • The Gendered City
  • The Politics of the Poor
  • Land and Infrastructure
  • Conclusion
  • Pop Culture and New Media
  • Middle Eastern Music and Popular Culture
  • Family Resemblances
  • Anthropology in Middle Eastern Popular Culture and Music
  • The People Demand Sustainable and Authentic Cultural Futures
  • New Media and Electronic Networks
  • Media Practices and the Arab Uprisings
  • What Makes Media “New”?
  • Media Ecologies
  • Changing Media Practices
  • Nations, Nationalism, and New Media
  • Global Networks and Diasporas
  • Conclusion