Product Description

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 organization 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 decentralized 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 favoring 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 characterizes the modern Middle East.

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Product Details

Publisher	Humanity Books
ISBN	1591025877
Features	ISBN13: 9781591025870 Condition: USED - Very Good Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Format	Hardcover
Author	Philip Carl Salzman
EAN	9781591025870
Label	Humanity Books
Dewey Decimal Number	303.60956
Studio	Humanity Books
Number Of Pages	224
Title	Culture and Conflict in the Middle East
Publication Date	2008-02-27
Manufacturer	Humanity Books

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Customer Reviews

very insightful and revealing

Review by dune cruiser, 2010-08-10

there is not a lot i can say about this book, apart from it is a ground breaking, extremely insightful discussion on the tribal mind that still largely determines middle eastern thought patterns

sometimes verging on antagonism towards his subject, especially when he discusses the aspects of tribalism that had found their way into islam (which part i believe is a bit out of proportion and reactionary), mr salzman gradually builds up his thesis about what he calls 'balanced opposition' as the prevalent ideology of the middle east. his writing, occasionally rambling, occasionally winding, is a powerful piece of rigorous scientific enquiry into the middle eastern mind

the book needs some reflection, though, as it focusses on the 'big picture' rather than on minute detail

a true masterpiece, it should be on the bookshelf on everyone who cares about middle eastern affairs, either as a scientist, or as a traveller, or as an ideologist, or in any other capacity. also a very timely and accessible addition to literature about the middle east, and, generally, an enjoyable read

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Tribal Society and the Modern World

Review by Blair Dowden, 2010-05-23

The thesis of this book is that traditional Arab society is based on "balanced opposition" between tribal groups. Loyalty is always to the group closest to yourself, groups being tribes based on kinship. You defend your tribe against the neighboring tribe, but when attacked by outsiders you unite with the tribe you were formerly fighting against.

Balanced opposition is decentralized, in that no central organization is required. It is democratic, kin that decision making is collective. It is egalitarian, in that there is no ascribed status, rank or hierarchy into which people are born. Everybody is a member of a nested set of kin groups. These groups are vested with responsibility for the defense of each and every one of its members and responsibility for the harm each and every one of its members do to outsiders. If there is a confrontation, groups face other groups of a corresponding size: family vs. family, lineage vs. lineage, clan vs. clan, tribe vs. tribe, sect vs. sect, Arabs vs. non-Arab Muslims, and finally the Islamic community (the umma) vs. the infidels.

Arab society is based on much the same individual freedom, egalitarianism and responsibility as the West. The difference is the tribal orientation as opposed to the western orientation toward rule of law. Salzman says,

"The Middle East has at its core many of the values that are presently believed to be essential characteristics of the modern western world: egalitarianism, individualism, pluralist, competitiveness, personal initiative, social mobility, freedom; but these are set within a distinctive historical [or cultural] context based on chivalric honor, female seclusion, and patrilineality and that also favored invidious distinctions between men and women, whites and blacks, tribesman and peasants, nobles and commoners, freedmen and slaves, and particularly between Muslims and infidels."

This book goes into great detail about the functioning of tribal societies, which is the topic of the author's research. Islam is mentioned only in passing until we reach chapter five, where suddenly the historical record of Islam comes under a sustained attack. Much detail is given of the brutality of the Muslim conquests and the repression of non-Muslims. While this is a necessary correction to simplistic notions of Islamic peacefulness and tolerance, I think the author paints too uniform a picture of a complex history. There were intervals in Islamic history with relatively tolerant societies with advanced learning and culture (under religiously moderate rulers), along with intolerance and religious extremism he describes. This is best illustrated in the example he gives of the reaction to a Jewish official in the Muslim government of Grenada (in Spain). He describes the five thousand Jews that were slaughtered after this event, but does not mention the relatively moderate regime that appointed the official in the first place, which had just been overthrown by a more fundamentalist group.

He then lists the reasons for the uncompromising Arab rejection of the state of Israel. In increasing order of importance, he cites conflict over the physical land and resources, the use of the conflict by Arab rulers distract their subjects from internal problems, balanced opposition, and the Arab concept of honor. Balanced Opposition means that Arabs must always unite to fight the non-Arab presence in their territory, no matter what conflicts are happening between themselves. Honor is about the fact the God intended Muslims to rule non-Muslims. Arabs can never forget the humiliation of being defeated by the infidel, especially when so few Jews can hold off so many Arabs.

The last chapter, "Root Causes", examines the prospects for Middle Eastern countries. What appear on the surface to be nation states will continue to have conflict between the central state apparatus and the tribal groups on the periphery. The tribal orientation of the population makes it very difficult for meaningful change to occur. The author is not very optimistic on this point.

Iraq is a good example of a supposed nation state that was really more of a collection of tribes held together by the brutality of Saddam Hussein. Even in the cities much of the population arrived from outlying tribes and tribal ways are still strong. The results of the American invasion should have been predictable. The support the Americans expected from the population never appeared, because the tribal ethic compels people to fight the foreign invader no matter what they think of the more closely related ruling tribe that is oppressing them. After the fall of Saddam, Iraq fractured along tribal lines. Recent American success has been a result of adapting to the tribal reality. When the local tribes felt threatened by the foreign Al Qaeda fighters they fought back, and accepted aid from the Americans to accomplish that goal.

This book is well worth reading both for understanding tribal societies in general, and gaining some insight into the way of thinking of Middle Eastern people.

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Culture war

Review by n_da_FOB, 2009-03-05

A book by a culture warrior for culture warriors. The author is knowledgeable, and this is a book of ideas. Unfortunately the ideas are fascistic. If you are a rightist culture warrior seeking self-confirmation, go ahead. And if you want to understand how neocons rationalize imperialism, read this book. But also read Edward Said's Orientalism to understand what's wrong with this book.

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Sheds critical new light

Review by Alyssa A. Lappen, 2008-09-12

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 in 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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Highly engaging and informative

Review by E. Rodriguez, 2008-09-01

From all I have read about the past and current situation in the Middle East, this book has provided the most illuminating account of the stumbling blocks Arab countries face today. Philip Carl Salzman's genuine desire to understand the land and its population without prejudice shines through at almost every page. Vivid descriptions of the landscape and human encounters transport your imagination to the desserts, plateaus and valleys of the Middle East giving you a deep understanding of the strong need for undisputed loyalty amongst tribesmen and how tribal believes and values infiltrate and influence almost all aspects of Middle Eastern life from government to family structures. You will be left better equipped understanding the conflicts in this troubled region and see perhaps clearer why economic prosperity and social equality is still a distant dream not solely prevented by the west. Philip Carl Salzman's personal believes, values and most of all loyalties also shine through and may not resonate with everyone. I fell however that he admirable managed to prevent his believes and political views from clouding his findings resulting in disciplined reporting of his research and thereby maintaining his academic integrity.

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