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Books > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900
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Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,216
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Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Hardcover)
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In an era of increasing interaction between the United States and
the countries of the Middle East, it has become ever more important
for Americans to understand the social forces that shape Middle
Eastern cultures. Based on years of his own field research and the
ethnographic reports of other scholars, anthropologist Philip Carl
Salzman presents an incisive analysis of Middle Eastern culture
that goes a long way toward explaining the gulf between Western and
Middle Eastern cultural perspectives. Salzman focuses on two basic
principles of tribal organisation that have become central
principles of Middle Eastern life - balanced opposition (each group
of whatever size and scope is opposed by a group of equal size and
scope) and affiliation solidarity (always support those closer
against those more distant). On the positive side, these pervasive
structural principles support a decentralised social and political
system based upon individual independence, autonomy, liberty,
equality, and responsibility. But on the negative side, Salzman
notes a pattern of contingent partisan loyalties, which results in
an inbred orientation favouring particularism: an attitude of my
tribe against the other tribe, my ethnic group against the
different ethnic group, my religious community against another
religious community. For each affiliation, there is always an
enemy. Salzman argues that the particularism of Middle Eastern
culture precludes universalism, rule of law, and constitutionalism,
which all involve the measuring of actions against general
criteria, irrespective of the affiliation of the particular actors.
The result of this relentless partisan framework of thought has
been the apparently unending conflict, both internal and external,
that characterises the modern Middle East.
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