Category Archives: Anthropology/Sociology

Tenure Crashers Gone Wrong

Anthropology/Sociology, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Archaeology and Antiquities

In a previous post I commented on the media-made controversy over the tenure case of anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj at Barnard College. In noting a pingback to my post on another blog, I discovered that those who would try to interrupt the tenure process at Barnard have gone even further into the wrong territory. The “Deny Abu El Haj Tenure Committee” has created a website using Prof. Abu El-Haj’s name (http://www.nadiaabuelhaj.com/) in order to attack her. The url has even been copyrighted. For a group that claims to be interested in restoring “honor” to Barnard, it appears any means justifies their tenure crashing end. I am not a lawyer (as my salary would well document), but this site seems a prime case for a libel suit. How can a group copyright a person’s name for a website and use that to attack? Forget the bulldozer, this is what the bull drops on the ground and it sure doesn’t smell like a fact.

Daniel Martin Varisco

Sociology or Anthropology? What’s the Difference?

Anthropology/Sociology, Teaching Resources

Note: The following is an excerpt from my Islam Obscured (New York: Palgrave, 2005, 137-138). I invite comments from both sociologists and anthropologists to help bridge the disciplinal gap in our joint interest and intellectual history over the Middle East.]

What is the difference between the anthropology of Islam and the sociology of Islam?

It is the character of lived experience I want to explore, not the nature of man. Michael Jackson (the ethnographer)

Whether or not an approach to religion is anthropological or sociological is a bit of a red herring. To a certain extent the answer is as trite as the discipline in which a researcher has been trained. But the interchange of labels is too rampant to be dismissed as simple cross-border interchange. Consider that French scholar Jean-Pierre Digard provides “perspectives anthropologiques” in a French journal of “sociologie,” while calling what he does “ethnologie.” In France Jacques Berque and Pierre Bourdieu teach “sociologie.” In Britain a number of social anthropologists regard what they do as a type of sociology, a notable example being Ernest Gellner. Since Gellner was trained as a philosopher and harbored lifelong suspicions of any notion that could be called Wittgensteinian, I suppose one category is as good for him as another. American academics are generally more disciplined. Clifford Geertz is an unabashed anthropologist, although he relies to a great extent on sociologists like Weber and Parsons. Even in formal ethnographies, the bread and butter of anthropological communication, the distinction can be fuzzy. Dale Eickelman, who conducted an ethnographic study of a pilgrimage center in Boujad, Morocco, identified his primary goal as making “sociological sense.” Given that most readers have a relatively clear idea of what sociology is about but little knowledge of what anthropologists do, the word choice may in fact be pragmatic rather than programmatic. Continue reading Sociology or Anthropology? What’s the Difference? →

Creative Reckoning Today

Anthropology/Sociology, Contemporary Art, Egypt

[Note: If you are in the New York Metropolitan area, you may be interested in a lecture by Jessica Winegar at Alwan for the Arts this evening.]

Creative Reckoning: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt Creative Reckoning

Book Reading by Jessica Winegar

Tuesday, September 25, 2007 7 PM

Free and open to the public

Refreshments will be served

Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2006) is an ethnographic study of the intense debates over cultural authenticity and artistic value that occur in a postcolonial society undergoing market liberalization. Based on 33 months of fieldwork in Egypt, the book examines the creation, circulation, and commodification of art in the context of a globalizing cultural economy. Continue reading Creative Reckoning Today →

Yemeni Tribes as Social Entities

Anthropology/Sociology, Tribalism, Yemen

Tribes should be social entities not political participants, says al-Dhaheri

Reported by Zaid al-Alaya’a, Yemen Observer, Sept. 22, 2007

Dr. Mohammed Mohsen al-Dhaheri, chairman of the Political Sciences Department at Sana’a University, spoke with the Yemen Observer about the contemporary role of tribes in the governance of Yemen and the conflict between the traditional and modern authorities. He is the author of two books about the socio-political relationship between the tribes and the state in Yemen.

Yemen Observer: What do you think of the newly established National Solidarity Council, and what do you think prompted its establishment?

Dr. Mohammed al-Dhaheri: First, I would like to say that this is what we can call political meddling. Tribes in Yemen have certain mechanisms to demand their rights. For example, some tribes will block highways or kidnap foreigners to add urgency to their demands. I can not put this council in the frame of a tribal bloc. It is can not what I would call a tribal council nor is it a partisan council. You can see that politicians meet with the sheikhs and with the academics. The council represents a period in tribal meetings that Yemen has not witnessed before. You can not call it an opposition entity as it has many members from the GPC, and academics etc. As you see there is a sort of dichotomy that starts to prevail in Yemen. This council has encountered other gatherings from tribes led by Sheikh al-Shaif. Continue reading Yemeni Tribes as Social Entities →

Bulldozing the [Arti]Facts

Anthropology/Sociology, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Archaeology and Antiquities, Journalism and Media, Orientalism

As an individual in Academe who has already achieved the career-defining rite of pedagogical passage known as “tenure,” the issue of a fellow scholar potentially being denied tenure in a highly politicized media campaign becomes an issue of concern. I am not so puffed up to think that tenure status is ipso facto a mark of praiseworthy expertise. There are far too many examples out there of professors who are not any better for having been collegially granted a life sentence or who drop out of publishing and professional sight once they are “in.” Some use the bestowed honor to promote their own partisan views at the expense of teaching others by example to enhance critical thinking. But one thing that I do find sacred about the status is that it is necessarily judged in the local academic context. If one’s peers and administrative lords agree that a certain professor deserves tenure, then so be it. It is not as though a pope is being elected to shepherd the whole flock. Outside interference is indeed interference, especially when the deliberated judgments of a range of responsible individuals at a major college are being challenged.

One current case at Barnard College has hit the media, a rarity except when an outside group has a strong partisan bias. This is the case of Nadia Abu El-Haj, who teaches anthropology. Continue reading Bulldozing the [Arti]Facts →

A New Old Damascus

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Syria, Travel

by Christa Salamandra
Lehman College, CUNY

If you enter the Old City of Damascus at Bab Sharqi (the Eastern Gate), walk a few yards along a Street Called Straight, and turn down the first narrow alley on your right, you will find, jutting out from among the inward-looking Arab-style houses of this quiet residential quarter, a sign advertising “Le Piano Bar.” Enter through the carved wooden door, walk along the tile-covered foyer, under the songbird’s cage, past a display case strung with chunky silver necklaces, and step up a stone platform to the raised dining room. Here well-heeled Syrians sit at closely spaced tables, drinking arak and Black Label whiskey, and eating grilled chicken or spaghetti. The walls around are decorated, each in a different style. One features a collection of Dutch porcelain plates set into plaster. In another, strips of colored marble hold a series of mosaic-lined, glass-covered displays of wind instruments. A third wall features two floral wrought-iron gated windows draped in a locally produced striped fabric. Wrought-iron musical notes dance on the last. At the from of the long, arch-divided room is a huge mother-of-pearl-framed mirror. Set into the top of the mirror is a digital billboard across which Le Piano Bar’s menu and opening hours float repeatedly. Patrons listen politely as the proprieter sings “My Way” and other Frank Sinatra favorites to a karaoke backing tape. When he finishes, video screens tucked into corners feature Elton John song sing-alongs. Some nights a pianist and clarinetist play Russian songs as patrons clack wooden catanets. Continue reading A New Old Damascus →

Between Cairo and Oxford: An American Dilemma

Anthropology/Sociology, Egypt

About seven years ago, I decided to accept an academic position at the American University in Cairo (AUC). This was well before 9/11, but it nonetheless sparked the same question from nearly every friend and relative: are you sure it’s safe? It was a reasonable question based on what little most Americans know about Egypt. “The Middle East” is known to be violent and volatile, hence Egypt must be so. Third World countries all hate Americans, so Egyptians must. And besides, Egypt is a desperately poor country, and we all know that poverty breeds violence.

Such perceptions have little to do with Egyptian realities. Continue reading Between Cairo and Oxford: An American Dilemma →

Islam Obscured

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Islam and Christianity, Islam: Introduction


“Interior of the Amron Mosque,” Henry Bechard, ca. 1870

[Note: the following excerpt is from the introduction to my recent book on the ways in which anthropologists study and represent Islam.]

What the world does not need is yet another book which assumes Islam can be abstracted out of evolving cultural contexts and neatly essentialized into print without repeating the obvious or glossing over the obtuse. This is–I believe and I hope–not such a book. I have no interest in telling you what Islam is, what it really must be, or even what it should be. In what follows I am more attuned to what Islam hopefully is not, at least not for someone who approaches it seriously as an anthropologist and historian. I bare no obvious axe to grind as either a determined detractor against the religion or an over-anxious advocate for it. Personally, as well as academically, I consider Islam a fascinatingly diverse faith, a force in history that must be reckoned with in the present. The offensive tool I do choose to wield, if my figurative pen can stand a militant symbol, is that of a critical hammer, an iconoclastic smashing of the rhetoric that represents, over-represents and misrepresents Islam from all sides. By avoiding judgment on the sacred truth of this vibrant faith, I shift intention towards an I-view that takes no summary representation of Islam as sacred. Continue reading Islam Obscured →