Customer Reviews

Middle East and Central Asia, The: An Anthropological Approach

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This book is quite dense. It makes for slow and contemplative reading. As a review of the anthropological literature of the Middle East, it should be a required text for any graduate or upper level undergraduate social sciences course focussing on the Middle East or Central Asia. Original source material is summarized and analyzed in comparison to other viewpoints, particularly across time. Anyone with further interest in particular areas of culture could skim the footnotes to find the complete citations for the original material. Each chapter also concludes with an annotated list of further readings, which would also be quite useful for the interested reader. My favorite sections were the second chapter, Intellectual Predecessors: East and West, and the last part of the last chapter, Writing Middle Eastern Anthropology.

This text should definitely be used for those studying the Middle East from an anthropological approach, as it is a high-level, in-depth entry into the facets of the region. However, it is not without its flaws. Namely, the book seems disjointed at points. The author draws mainly from Moroccan example throughout the text, only fair since this is the country in which he has the most experience, yet other case studies from one chapter to the next could provide more continuity and sample similarity at points for a more coherent picture of an individual tribe, for example. Of course, samples need to be diverse, what I am recommending as an improvement is the ability to track a particular group of people through all of the facets that the book covers.

In this respect, the book is very successful. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Orientalism, as the author provided an overarching perspective, as well as the chapter on nomadic lifestyles, which aided me also to gain a sense of perspective during case studies with previously nomadic Moroccan groups. On the whole, I would recommend this book as supplemental reading to an advanced course in the subject, yet it is too bland for those who have specific interest in a specific group or who are not previously accustomed to the subject.