This volume combines ethnographic accounts of fieldwork with overviews of recent anthropological literature about the region on topics such as Islam, gender, youth, and new media. It addresses contemporary debates about modernity, nation building, and the link between the ideology of power and the production of knowledge. Contributors include established and emerging scholars known for the depth and quality of their ethnographic writing and for their interventions in current theory.

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. Named as one of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles of 2016 Offers critical perspectives on the theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical goals of anthropology in the Middle East Analyzes the conditions of cultural and social transformation in the Middle Eastern region and its relations with other areas of the world Features contributions by top experts in various Middle East anthropological specialties Features in-depth coverage of issues drawn from religion, the arts, language, politics, political economy, the law, human rights, multiculturalism, and globalization

During the last two decades, the number of anthropologists conducting research in the Middle East has increased considerably. Together they have produced an abundance of valuable studies, often based on prolonged periods of ethnographic fieldwork. "Cultural Anthropology of the Middle East. A Bibliography" offers a comprehensive survey of their results. The first volume, published in 1992, covered publications which appeared between 1965 and 1987. The second volume brings the bibliography further up to date, listing publications between 1988 and 1992, and adds some 260 titles which were published up through 1987. As in the first volume, the majority of the titles are annotated.

“An exciting and intellectually fluent work that avoids most of the clichés of contemporary anthropological thought.” —Gregory Starrett, coeditor of Teaching Islam: Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East Despite a rich history of ethnographic research in Middle Eastern societies, the region is frequently portrayed as marginal to anthropology. The contributors to this volume reject this view and show how the Middle East is in fact vital to the discipline and how Middle Eastern anthropologists have developed theoretical and methodological tools that address and challenge the region’s political, ethical, and intellectual concerns. The contributors are students of Paul Dresch, an anthropologist known for his incisive work on Yemeni tribalism and customary law. As they expand upon his ideas and insights, these essays ask questions that have long preoccupied anthropologists, such as how do place, point of view, and style combine to create viable bodies of knowledge; how is scholarship shaped by the historical context in which it is located; and why have duration and form become so problematic in the study of Middle Eastern societies? Special attention is given to understanding local terms, contested knowledge claims, what remains unseen and unsaid in social life, and to cultural patterns and practices that persist over long stretches of time, seeming to predate and outlast events. Ranging from Morocco to India, these essays offer critical but sensitive approaches to cultural difference and the distinctiveness of the anthropological project in the Middle East.

Book on impact of global and social changes in the Middle East

During the last two decades, the number of anthropologists conducting research in the Middle East has increased considerably. Together they have produced an abundance of valuable studies, often based on prolonged periods of ethnographic fieldwork. This bibliography offers a comprehensive survey of their results published between 1965 and 1987. It refers to studies published in English, French and German. Geographically, the bibliography covers the area from Mauritania in the West to Afghanistan in the East, and from Turkey in the North to the Arab Peninsula and Northern Sudan in the South. The majority of studies inserted has been written by anthropologists. Besides, a considerable number of studies related to anthropology, but published by non-anthropologists, has been integrated as well. The majority of the monographs and volumes has been annotated.

A collection of essays examining the role and power of images from a wide variety of media in today’s Middle Eastern societies. This timely book examines the power and role of the image in modern Middle Eastern societies. The essays explore the role and function of image making to highlight the ways in which the images “speak” and what visual languages mean for the construction of Islamic subjectivities, the distribution of power, and the formation of identity and belonging. Visual Culture in the Modern Middle East addresses aspects of the visual in the Islamic world, including the presentation of Islam on television; on the internet and other digital media; in banners, posters, murals, and graffiti; and in the satirical press, cartoons, and children’s books. “This volume takes a new approach to the subject . . . and will be an important contribution to our knowledge in this area. . . . It is comprehensive and well-structured with fascinating material and analysis.” —Peter Chelkowski, New York University “An innovative volume analyzing and instantiating the visual culture of a variety of Muslim societies [which] constitutes a substantially new object of study in the regional literature and one that creates productive links with history, anthropology, political science, art history, media studies, and urban studies, as well as area studies and Islamic studies.” —Walter Armbrust, University of Oxford

Based on his own field research and the ethnographic reports of other scholars, anthropologist Salzman presents an analysis of Middle Eastern culture that goes a long way toward explaining the gulf between Western and Middle Eastern cultural perspectives

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive account of cultural and heritage tourism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and the many complexities that heritage sites and tourist attractions face. The MENA region has long been regarded as the cradle of Western and Arab civilisation and is the home of many of the world’s major religions. Because of this, the region is rich in heritage sites that serve as major tourist attractions and as icons of national, cultural and religious identity. However, as this book examines, heritage in the region is simultaneously highly contested and has even become a target for terrorism creating a situation that brought major challenges for heritage management and sustainable tourism development. Many of the region’s innumerable cultural sites are threatened, in some cases by overuse, in others by neglect and, in many, simply by the pressures of economic development. This book is therefore of interest not only to heritage managers and policy makers but those academics who seek to address the delicate balance between tourism development, communities and the tourists who visit such sites in a turbulent but highly significant region of the world.

U.S. involvement in the Middle East has brought the region into the media spotlight and made it a hot topic in American college classrooms. At the same time, anthropology—a discipline committed to on-the-ground research about everyday lives and social worlds—has increasingly been criticized as "useless" or "biased" by right-wing forces. What happens when the two concerns meet, when such accusations target the researchers and research of a region so central to U.S. military interests? This book is the first academic study to shed critical light on the political and economic pressures that shape how U.S. scholars research and teach about the Middle East. Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar show how Middle East politics and U.S. gender and race hierarchies affect scholars across their careers—from the first decisions to conduct research in the tumultuous region, to ongoing politicized pressures from colleagues, students, and outside groups, to hurdles in sharing expertise with the public. They detail how academia, even within anthropology, an assumed "liberal" discipline, is infused with sexism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionist obstruction of any criticism of the Israeli state. Anthropology's Politics offers a complex portrait of how academic politics ultimately hinders the education of U.S. students and potentially limits the public's access to critical knowledge about the Middle East.