Anthropology's politics : disciplining the Middle East / / Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar

• Autore: Deeb Lara <1974->
• Pubblicazione: Stanford, California : , : Stanford University Press, , [2016]; ©2016
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (288 p.)
• Disciplina: 301.0956
• Soggetto topico: Anthropology - Political aspects - Middle East; Universities and colleges - Political aspects - United States
• Soggetto genere / forma: Electronic books.
• Persona (resp. second.): WinegarJessica
• Note generali: This book sheds light on the contemporary state of Middle East anthropology as it is situated in broader, intertwined fields of anthropological, academic, national, and global politics. The aim is to track the relationship between anthropological work and politics, taking as the case study the primary region that has, in the post-Cold War era, become the focus of political intervention and politicized discussion. This ethnographic investigation of post-Cold War academic politics is framed in three overlapping histories. First, the authors excavate the institutionalization of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association as the outcome of a longer struggle to establish the "Middle East" as a region of study within anthropology. Second, the authors analyze the relationship of the development of the regional subfield to changes with the AAA more generally, highlighting the sometimes fraught relationships of discipline to region (namely the growing prominence of disciplinary studies and declining interest in "area studies"), as well as on the presumed progressive politics of the discipline. Third, geopolitics are of course critical to discipline-region relations, and this book is situated within an analysis of the impact of post-Cold War geopolitics on the academy in general and scholarship of the Middle East in particular.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-258) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Introduction : academics and politics -- Becoming a scholar -- Making it through graduate school -- Navigating conflicts on the job -- Institutionalizing Middle East anthropology -- Dis/engaging the War on Terror -- Conclusion : undisciplining anthropology's politics -- Appendix A : methods -- Appendix B : AAA motions and resolutions.
• Sommario/riassunto: U.S. involvement in the Middle East has brought the region into the media spotlight and made it a hot topic in American college classrooms. At the same time, anthropology—a discipline committed to on-the-ground research about everyday lives and social worlds—has increasingly been criticized as "useless" or "biased" by right-wing forces. What happens when the two concerns meet, when such accusations target the researchers and research of a region so central to U.S. military interests? This book is the first academic study to shed critical light on the political and economic pressures that shape how U.S. scholars research and teach about the Middle East. Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar show how Middle East politics and U.S. gender and race hierarchies affect scholars across their careers—from the first decisions to conduct research in the tumultuous region, to ongoing politicized pressures from colleagues, students, and outside groups, to hurdles in sharing expertise with the public. They detail how academia, even within anthropology, an assumed "liberal" discipline, is infused with sexism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionist obstruction of any criticism of the Israeli state. Anthropology's Politics offers a complex portrait of how academic politics ultimately hinders the education of U.S. students and potentially limits the public's access to critical knowledge about the Middle East.
• Titolo autorizzato: Anthropology's politics
• ISBN: 0-8047-9684-X
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910460678703321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II