29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
100% Accurate, July 7, 2008
This review is from: Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Hardcover)
Dr. Salzman has hit a home run with this book. I have spent a number of years in the Middle East and have dealt with virtually every segment of the population there, from nomads to farmers to businessmen to politicians, engineers, doctors, women, soldiers, and even insurgents. What I saw while I was there coincides completely with the information contained in this work. Not only does he draw from personal experience, Dr. Salzman also pulls from expert research in the field of Middle Eastern Studies to weave a masterpiece.
Be advised: Dr. Salzman does not pull his punches regarding the shortcomings of Middle Eastern culture. While much of what he writes may be difficult for some to swallow, it is true. Other reviewers may fault him for not conducting a similar review of Western culture, but please note the title; this is a survey of Middle Eastern culture, not Western culture or even culture in general. There are many similarities among cultures across the world, but each culture stresses certain qualities and attributes differently, and Dr. Salzman's expertise in the field of Middle Eastern culture enables him to make an excellent analysis of its particular strengths and weaknesses. Those who take issue with his work will do so along emotional lines because his writing is not "polite" or flattering. When any culture is exposed to the harsh light of educated analysis, the warts will show; Middle Eastern culture is no different from any other in that respect.
In conclusion, for any potential reader, I would like to make this comment. If Dr. Salzman had published this work in 2001, and every American and Allied officer had been required to read this before the invasion of Iraq, the current Iraqi conflict would have ended 3-4 years ago. This book is that accurate, powerful, and insightful. Everyone who has any contact with the Middle East should read it, or ignore it at their own peril.
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sheds critical new light, September 12, 2008
This review is from: Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Hardcover)
McGill University Anthropology Professor Philip Carl Salzman in 1978 founded the Commission on Nomadic Peoples and served as its chair through 1993. In three earlier stints (1967-68; 1972-73; 1976) he had done field research studying n Iranian Baluchistan nomadic, pastoral tribes, and subsequently wrote the anthropology texts,
Black Tents of Baluchistan and
Understanding Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theory. Salzman therefore conceives of Middle Eastern Arab culture as a formal social control he labels "balanced opposition," which he describes in this brief and excellent work.
Salzman notes that within this "ingenious" anthropological "collective responsibility" system, proved by observing actual constructs of the society in question, everyone belongs to "a nested set of kin groups, from very small to very large," each one "vested with responsibility" to defend "each and every one of its members" as well as for any harms its members might cause to "outsiders." Similarly, anthropologists label whatever the group simultaneously does to defend itself "self-help."
Confrontations within this social structure aligns small groups against opposing small groups, mid-sized groups against other mid-sized groups, large groups against opposing large groups etcetera, that is "family vs. family, lineage vs. lineage, clan vs. clan, tribe vs. tribe, confederacy vs. confederacy, sect vs. sect, the Islamic community (umma) vs. the infidels." Thus the system creates a form of deterrence, or "balance between opposites," in which no individual faces any group alone, no small group faces a larger group alone, and so on. Consequently, potential adversaries realize that any target within this system will never be "solitary or meager," but rather always "a formidable formation much the same size as his."
Thus does Salzman observe that Islam was superimposed over this structure, making all smaller groups subordinate segments of the entire "balanced opposition" and "self-help" constructs. Consequently, Islam naturally balances against all non-Muslim nations and people. Despite a somewhat dispersed power base within these subordinate groups, thus allowing for equality at the local or tribal level, Salzman notes that the system overall creates "particularism of loyalties," which quite naturally spawn anti-democratic conditions.
These political values, incompatible with any "universalistic normative," Salzman documents specifically, in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Iran and Afghanistan. He also cites the same depressing statistics used by Ibn Warraq in
Defending the West, namely, the
Arab Human Development Report 2002, plus statistics from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which with neither one can argue, given the authoring agencies' built-in Arabist biases.
As an anthropologist, Salzman maintains amazing objectivity throughout, specifically noting, "...it is not the job of anthropologists to laud societies or to criticize them, or to celebrate or to demean them," making it "a very delicate matter" to address problems and difficulties" within any specific social constructs, particularly in instances that those problems are "culturally driven."
Nevertheless, he does conclude that Middle Eastern Arab and Muslim societies are constructed atop a "complimentary opposition" structure that tends to preclude "building a civil society, establishing democracy at the state level, maintaining state support for state institutions, founding creative educational institutions, inspiring economic development, and building an inclusive public culture..."
The author also affords solid examples of balanced opposition at work within the seemingly mechanical fall back of the Baluch people (straddling Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan) upon feuding and vendetta-driven reactions, as well as by Gazan clans (or "kin groups"), and even Israeli Bedouins. Of course, he also provides examples of the bloody results of these parallel balanced opposition social constructs that today generally also fall within an Islamic superstructure.
As a natural result, these varying groups do not integrate easily or well, thus creating "...sectarian conflicts" even in presumably modern cities like Baghdad, for example, and the "Shiite-Sunni conflict for domination" that ruined Beirut in the 1980s and ultimately making Lebanon itself "Karachi at the turn of the millennium."
Salzman also courageously demonstrates how this "balanced opposition" has historically operated to hallow and even deify the Islamic institution of perennial jihad. He cites the description given by British anthropologist Sir Edward Evan (E. E.) Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973), for example, the "compensation" of Libya's Bedouin of Cyrenaica for their general unorthodox observance of Islamic rituals with their total, religious dedication to military jihad, "holy war against the unbelievers."
Observing the admonishment that "piety and holiness...are not the same," Evans-Pritchard had noted in
The Sanusi of Cyrenaica and
The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People their belief in fulfilling "their obligation under this head in ample measure by their long and courageous fight" within the holy war declared by the Islamic Caliph against the Italians, French, and British. A Bedouin had told Evans-Pritchard, upon his observation that they rarely prayed, "nasum wa najhad, (but) we fast and wage holy war."
And that, of course, was long before the resurgence of Islam that has increasingly dominated the Mideast over the last 30 years.
Thus Salzman dedicates chapter 5, "Turning toward the world: Tribal organization and predatory expansion," to the considerable anthropological evidence of historical jihad, demonstrating that "tribal solidarity and balanced opposition have been and are powerful means of predatory expansion," including the principal of "submission---islam---to God."
Mohammed himself, Salzman concludes used balanced opposition to "frame an inclusive structure within which the tribes had a common, God-given identity as Muslim." Citing others' work, including that of
Marshall Sahlins and
Dr. Andrew Bostom, among others, Salzman evidences and discusses the anthropological manifestations of the Islamic jihad conquests of Arabia, Syria, northern and sub-Saharan Africa, Iberia, the Indian subcontinent, and even as far north as Poland, including the creation of the dhimmi status that Muslims universally imposed on non-Muslims, even in India.
This book is a fabulous and most scholarly endeavor, despite its 212-page brevity (excepting bibliography and index.) Whether or not one is an anthropologist, it sheds critical new light on middle eastern social constructs.
---Alyssa A. Lappen
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rich explanation of Arab Tribalism, June 8, 2008
This review is from: Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Hardcover)
Watch out for the negative reviews that are bound to be posted by multiculturalists.
This book is a powerful, lucidly written and unique contribution to the discussion which brings an ethnographers eye and work to the question of tribalism and its link to Arab political corruption and lack of social progress. Far from a damning ciritcism of Arab culuture Salzam elucidates the brilliance of the tribal dynamic of balanced opposition in reducing violence and granting the strength of group idnetity. For Salzman the problem arises when that same dynamic is so structurally pervasive that it inhibits a society's ability to adhere to abtsract principles such as rule of law and maintenance of individual rights.
Some will accuse Salzman, very unfairly and inaccurately, of being a western triumphalist, trust me, such people are simply outraged that his objectivity has led to critical judgments. His section on the myth of an Islamic tolerant golden age is particularly necessary in light of the usual drivel on the topic.
Salzman's work is part of a growing body of correction to the vision of Edward Said and an all the more important one as it comes from an anthropologist/ethnographer perspective.
Salzman's writing exhibits commendable brevity and clarity considering the nature of the subject.
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