Culture and Dignity: Dialogues Between the Middle East and the West / Edition 1

by Laura Nader

Overview

In Culture and Dignity - Dialogues between the Middle East and the West, renowned cultural anthropologist Laura Nader examines the historical and ethnographic roots of the complex relationship between the East and the West, revealing how cultural differences can lead to violence or a more peaceful co-existence.

• Outlines an anthropology for the 21st century that focuses on the myriad connections between peoples—especially the critical intercultural dialogues between the cultures of the East and the West
• Takes an historical and ethnographic approach to studying the intermingling of Arab peoples and the West.
• Demonstrates how cultural exchange between the East and West is a two-way process
• Presents an anthropological perspective on issues such as religious fundamentalism, the lives of women and children, notions of violence and order

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781118319000
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	11/28/2012
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Laura Nader is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley. An influential voice in contemporary anthropology, 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).

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Table of Contents

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 in Culture 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 in Anthropology 51

Introduction 51

Unstated Consensus 54

Defining Ethnographic Worth: 1896–2000 55

Ethnographic Audiences 64

An Outsider Looking In on Anthropology’s Ethnography 69

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 Cultures 87

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 United States 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 American Example 137

When Corporate Profits and Education Meet: The Educational Testing Industry 140

Fundamentalisms: Economic, Religious, Political 141

Back to Corporate Fundamentalism: Future Directions 144

6 Culture and the Seeds of Nonviolence in the Middle East 151

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: The Hypocrisy 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 Autonomy 197

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

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“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