The late Edward Said remains one of the most influential critics and public intellectuals of our time, with lasting contributions to many disciplines. Much of his reputation derives from the phenomenal multidisciplinary influence of his 1978 book Orientalism. Said's seminal polemic analyzes novels, travelogues, and academic texts to argue that a dominant discourse of West over East has warped virtually all past European and American representation of the Near East. But despite the book's wide acclaim, no systematic critical survey of the rhetoric in Said's representation of Orientalism and the resulting impact on intellectual culture has appeared until today. Drawing on the extensive discussion of Said's work in more than 600 bibliographic entries, Daniel Martin Varisco has written an ambitious intellectual history of the debates that Said's work has sparked in several disciplines, highlighting in particular its reception among Arab and European scholars. While pointing out Said's tendency to essentialize and privilege certain texts at the expense of those that do not comfortably it his theoretical framework, Varisco analyzes the extensive commentary the book has engendered in Oriental studies, literary and cultural studies, feminist scholarship, history, political science, and anthropology. He employs "critical satire" to parody the exaggerated and pedantic aspects of post-colonial discourse, including Said's profound underappreciation of the role of irony and reform in many of the texts he cites. The end result is a companion volume to Orientalism and the vast research it inspired. Rather than contribute to dueling essentialisms, Varisco provides a path to move beyond the binary of East versus West and the polemics of blame. Reading Orientalism is the most comprehensive survey of Said's writing and thinking to date. It will be of strong interest to scholars of Middle East studies, anthropology, history, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, and literary studies.
Culture Still Matters: Notes from the Field is a critical defence of anthropology's contributions to analysis of significant social and cultural issues through ethnographic fieldwork, covering theoretical concepts about culture and their critiques in readable prose.
This book is the first in English to survey indigenous knowledge of seasonal, astronomical, and agricultural information in Arab Gulf almanacs. It provides an extensive analysis of the traditional information available, based on local almanacs, Arabic texts and poetry by Gulf individuals, ethnographic interviews, and online forums. A major feature of the book is tracing the history of terms and concepts in the local seasonal knowledge of the Gulf, including an important genre about weather stars, stemming back to the ninth century CE. Also covered are pearl diving, fishing, seafaring, and pastoral activities. This book will be of interest to scholars who study the entire Arab region, since much of the lore was shared and continues through the present. It will also be of value to scholars who work on the Indian Ocean and Red Sea Trade Network, as well as the history of folk astronomy in the Arab World.
This volume is the first critical edition of a medieval almanac from the Arabian Peninsula. It presents the Arabic text, an English translation, and a detailed analysis of a thirteenth-century agricultural almanac (dated by internal evidence to A.H. 670-71/A.D. 1271) compiled by the Yemeni sultan al-Malik al-Ashraf Umar ibn Yusuf, the third sultan of the Rasulid dynasty (13th-15th cent.). This almanac comprises one chapter of al-Ashraf's scientific treatise Kitab al-Tabsira fi ilm al-nujum (Instruction in the science of astronomy and astrology). Al-Ashraf's is the earliest and most detailed of eight extant Rasulid almanacs." "The almanac as a literary and scientific genre in Arab tradition has received little scholarly attention, although hundreds of manuscripts exist. This study of almanac information draws the reader across the arbitrary boundaries of disciplines into the full array of medieval science and esoterica. Al-Ashraf's almanac contains information on astronomy, astrology, time-keeping, meteorology, plants and animals, agriculture (including tax periods), health, and navigation not only for Yemen but for other parts of the medieval world as well. It is the earliest source to document the dates of the Indian Ocean sailing periods to and from the port of Aden. The almanac provides a view of a medieval trading network extending from North Africa and southern Europe to the Indian Ocean and China." "Information in the almanac is derived from both the general Islamic almanac tradition and ethnographic knowledge of local practice and folklore. Although the almanac is not meant to be a descriptive record of the agricultural cycle, for example, it is obvious that most of the information is based on observation of actual practices and on knowledge of folklore. Details of the Yemeni agricultural cycle, primarily for the coastal region and the southern highlands, are extremely valuable and supplement discussions in extant Rasulid agricultural and tax treatises." "Varisco's extensive commentary explains how the terminology and concepts of al-Ashraf's text are related to those of earlier and contemporaneous scientific texts throughout the Islamic world and uses his own ethnographic research on Yemeni rural economy and folklore to enhance his interpretation of the almanac. One of the rewarding aspects of studying the Yemeni almanacs is that many of the agricultural activities mentioned can still be observed and documented. The study of a medieval almanac as part of a living tradition can be accomplished in Yemen better perhaps than anywhere else in the Arab world. The older generation still retains much of the accumulated agricultural and environmental lore from scores of previous generations. Not only would it be impossible to understand some of the almanac terminology without knowledge of present-day Yemeni dialects, but ethnographic study of traditional agriculture and folk science, despite changes over time, helps in the interpretation of old written sources." "Because al-Ashraf's almanac addresses a wide range of subjects, readers from diverse disciplines will find this volume of value. Not only will it be a basic reference for anyone interested in Yemen, both ancient and modern, but it has much to offer scholars of medieval economy, science, and technology. Varisco's textual approach of combining historical and contextual analysis with ethnographic fieldwork further enhances the appeal and value of this study."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
There is a rich corpus of texts about agriculture during the Rasulid era (13th?15th centuries CE) in Yemen. One of the most important crops at the time was the date palm (nakhl), which was grown in the Tihama coastal region, Najran and Hadramawt. This essay provides a translation and analysis of the section on date palms in the 13th century agricultural treatise Milh al-malaha f? ma?rifat al-filaha, written by the Rasulid sultan al-Malik al-Ashraf ?Umar. Details are provided on the varieties of dates, their cultivation, pollination and protection.
The late Edward Said remains one of the most influential critics and public intellectuals of our time, with lasting contributions to many disciplines. Much of his reputation derives from the phenomenal multidisciplinary influence of his 1978 book Orientalism. Said's seminal polemic analyzes novels, travelogues, and academic texts to argue that a dominant discourse of West over East has warped virtually all past European and American representation of the Near East. But despite the book's wide acclaim, no systematic critical survey of the rhetoric in Said's representation of Orientalism and the resulting impact on intellectual culture has appeared until today. Drawing on the extensive discussion of Said's work in more than 600 bibliographic entries, Daniel Martin Varisco has written an ambitious intellectual history of the debates that Said's work has sparked in several disciplines, highlighting in particular its reception among Arab and European scholars. While pointing out Said's tendency to essentialize and privilege certain texts at the expense of those that do not comfortably it his theoretical framework, Varisco analyzes the extensive commentary the book has engendered in Oriental studies, literary and cultural studies, feminist scholarship, history, political science, and anthropology. He employs "critical satire" to parody the exaggerated and pedantic aspects of post-colonial discourse, including Said's profound underappreciation of the role of irony and reform in many of the texts he cites. The end result is a companion volume to Orientalism and the vast research it inspired. Rather than contribute to dueling essentialisms, Varisco provides a path to move beyond the binary of East versus West and the polemics of blame. Reading Orientalism is the most comprehensive survey of Said's writing and thinking to date. It will be of strong interest to scholars of Middle East studies, anthropology, history, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, and literary studies.
Offers a fascinating window into how the fraught politics of apology in the East Asian region have been figured in anglophone literary fiction. The Pacific War, 1941-1945, was fought across the world’s largest ocean and left a lasting imprint on anglophone literary history. However, studies of that imprint or of individual authors have focused on American literature without drawing connections to parallel traditions elsewhere. Beyond Hostile Islands contributes to ongoing efforts by Australasian scholars to place their national cultures in conversation with those of the United States, particularly regarding studies of the ideologies that legitimize warfare. Consecutively, the book examines five of the most significant historical and thematic areas associated with the war: island combat, economic competition, internment, imprisonment, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Throughout, the central issue pivots around the question of how or whether at all New Zealand fiction writing differs from that of the United States. Can a sense of islandness, the ‘tyranny of distance,’ Māori cultural heritage, or the political legacies of the nuclear-free movement provide grounds for distinctive authorial insights? As an opening gambit, Beyond Hostile Islands puts forward the term ‘ideological coproduction’ to describe how a territorially and demographically more minor national culture may accede to the essentials of a given ideology while differing in aspects that reflect historical and provincial dimensions that are important to it. Appropriately, the literary texts under examination are set in various locales, including Japan, the Solomon Islands, New Zealand, New Mexico, Ontario, and the Marshall Islands. The book concludes in a deliberately open-ended pose, with the full expectation that literary writing on the Pacific War will grow in range and richness, aided by the growth of Pacific Studies as a research area.
If films drawing on Middle East tropes often highlight white Westerners, figures such as Sinbad and the Thief of Bagdad embody a counter-tradition of protagonists, derived from Islamic folklore and history, who are portrayed as ‘Other’ to Western audiences. In Muslim Heroes on Screen, Daniel O’Brien explores the depiction of these characters in Euro-American cinema from the silent era to the present day. Far from being mere racial masquerade, these screen portrayals are more complex and nuanced than is generally allowed, not least in terms of the shifting concepts and assumptions that inform their Muslim identity. Using films ranging from Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Bagdad, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, El Cid, Kingdom of Heaven and The Message to The Wind and the Lion, O’Brien considers how the representational strategies of Western filmmakers may transcend such Muslim stereotypes as fanatic antagonists or passive victims. These figures possess a cultural significance which cannot be fully appreciated by Euro-American audiences without reference to their distinction as Muslim heroes and the implications and resonances of an Islamicized protagonist.
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