What do you think?
Rate this book
Middle East Studies Beyond Dominant Paradigms
Minorities and the Modern Arab World: New Perspectives
In the wake of recent upheavals across the Arab world, a simplistic media portrayal of the region as essentially homogenous has given way to a new though equally shallow portrayal, casting it as deeply divided along ethnic, linguistic, and religious lines. The essays gathered in Minorities and the Modern Arab World seek to challenge this representation with a nuanced exploration of the ways in which ethnic, religious, and linguistic commitments have intersected to create "minority" communities in the modern era.
Bringing together the fields of history, political science, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics, contributors provide fresh analyses of the construction and evolution of minority identities around the region. They examine how the category of "minority" became meaningful only with the rise of the modern nation-state and find that Middle Eastern minority nationalisms owe much of their modern self-definition to developments within diaspora populations and other transnational frameworks. The first volume to upend the conceptual frame of reference for studying Middle Eastern minority communities in nearly two decades, Minorities and the Modern Arab World represents a major intervention in modern Middle East studies.
Bringing together the fields of history, political science, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics, contributors provide fresh analyses of the construction and evolution of minority identities around the region. They examine how the category of "minority" became meaningful only with the rise of the modern nation-state and find that Middle Eastern minority nationalisms owe much of their modern self-definition to developments within diaspora populations and other transnational frameworks. The first volume to upend the conceptual frame of reference for studying Middle Eastern minority communities in nearly two decades, Minorities and the Modern Arab World represents a major intervention in modern Middle East studies.
327 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 18, 2016
1 person is currently reading
20 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 31, 2022
Fitting its title, "Minorities and the Modern Arab World: New Perspectives" offers several chapters written by different authors on the unique struggles and experiences of minorities throughout the Middle East and North Africa. I'll be specifically commenting on Chapter 6: "Assyrians and the Iraqi Communist Party: Revolution, Urbanization, and the Quest for Equality" by Alda Benjamen, as it's one of the few, if not the only, works that focuses on the Assyrian experience within the ICP. While the chapter details the reasons Assyrians joined the communist movement, it also details the ethnic and political repression they faced a consequence of this action.
If it weren't for Chapter 11: "The Chaldean Church between Iraq and America," I maybe would have given the book a better review. While I still recommend reading the chapter, I disagree with the author's approach to ethnicity and believe that they oversimplified or generalized how Chaldean Catholics view themselves.
If it weren't for Chapter 11: "The Chaldean Church between Iraq and America," I maybe would have given the book a better review. While I still recommend reading the chapter, I disagree with the author's approach to ethnicity and believe that they oversimplified or generalized how Chaldean Catholics view themselves.
Displaying 1 of 1 review