Anthropology of Islam - Article Example

nthrороlоgy оf Islаm Аrtiсlе Summаry Your name: Institution name: Topic One: “The Islamic City: Historic Myth, Islamic Essence and Contemporary Relevance” There have been a resurgence of Islamic beliefs, and once again the questions of the Islamic cities have once again come to the fore (Abu-Lughod, 1987). In many parts of the Arab world, especially in the Middle East, urban planners are searching for the way to reproduce in today’s cities patterns of city building that have been identified as Islamic. According to Marcais, Islam is an urban religion, and in support of this contention, Marcais argued that prophet Muhammad was an urbanite suspicious of nomads (Abu-Lughod, 1987). Marcais has been able to use the earlier chain of orientalism that, the mosque, like the church and synagogue are essentially urban (citadine). In other words, Islam shares with Christianity and Juidasm the same quality of urbanity (Abu-Lughod, 1987). But new cities were founded by new dynasties/powers in Islamdom, thus Islamic civilization was not a set of religions laws and beliefs but also a functioning society which organized the life of its followers into community. Grunebaum in his book, Medival Islam stated that Islam, from its very outset unfolding in an urban milieu, favored city development. It is important to criticize these approaches because most Arab nations planners are trying to recreate Islamic cities- but by means which are inappropriate because these planners focus more on the outcomes, rather than the processes (Abu-Lughod, 1987). They hope, by ordinance and edict, to preserve and to build new cities on an Islamic pattern, because cities are processes and not products. The elements that catalyzed the process that give rise to Islamic cities were: a distinction between the outsiders and members of the Umma (Abu-Lughod, 1987), which led to spatial and juridical distinction by neighborhoods; the segregation of gender which gave rise to a particular solution to the question of spatial organization. In conclusion, It is not possible to recreate Islamic citied by edict (Abu-Lughod, 1987). But planners have capacity to create conditions that might set in motion processes which, in the past, generated the forms of traditional cities in the Arabo-Islamic world. And most important, there have been projection imagination about control over women in public places. Topic Two: “The Historical Construction of Local Culture: Gender and Identity in the Politics of Secularism versus Islam” The voiced disagreement about the content of “Turkishness” has become a commonplace in the public culture of contemporary Turkey (Navaro-Yashin, 1999). This paper explores the implication of politics of gender in competing discourses of “nativity to Turkey”. Yerellik (Nativity) has been over interpreted in Turkish contemporary society. In contemporary Turkish society, Yerellik has been used to signify “local culture” (Navaro-Yashin, 1999). In early, 1990s there have been arguments over the meaning of nativity in Turkey. There was public discord over what “acting like a native” or “being native to Turkey”. Over the years, there have been no secret in Turkish society on the public presentation of life. Islam’s challenge of secularism focuses on the position of women in the Turkish society (Navaro-Yashin, 1999). In fact how women behave in public, how they dress, how much they are covered have become the most important index of adherence to Islam, and the rejection of the secularist order. A lot of concerns have revolved around some central issues. It have been revealed that covered public appearance for women, have been a central to the resonance of “Islamic order” in the stream of secularists consciousness (Navaro-Yashin, 1999). For example, restrictions on public entertainment and drinking have been a conviction about Islam. In the article, Navaro-Yashin (1999) has asked if it is Islam? If it is Turkish local culture?, the public separation of women and men, either through the physical segregation of space or through women’s attires, and does it reflect what is “native” or what ‘was there” before Turkey moved to westernize. Navaro-Yashin (1999) argued that, this is not “the repressed native” striking back as certain cultural critics have argued , but it is what has been reformulated, reconstituted, or constructed as “native” on the part of both Islamists and secularists after many years of westernization in Turkey. In conclusion, the event of sharing of public and institutional space across ideological, cultural, and religious differences have put the notion of Turkey’s culture into question, whether it be in its Islamist or securest enactments and production (Navaro-Yashin, 1999). This has been enhanced as suggested by secularists’ shift of discourse in asserting the authenticity of their lifestyles to Turkey. Anthropological sensitivities to native or local culture have often overlook the historical dynamism in which cultures has taken shape and tend to leave the picture that domain the everyday debate and contestation in which the notion of local culture is implicated. Topic Three: Recent Moves in the Sociology of Literature’ Sociology of literature is more like a field of flowers than a field of battle. In the past, sociology of literature has produce impressive theoretical assertions, brilliant, but isolated insights, and rich veins of research findings, but has not been organized around key debates or questions the way a proper field ought to be organized (Griswold, 1993). The sociology of literature has not been a favorite son of organized social science. Since the emancipation of literature study from the rigid research dicta historically entitled to offer aesthetic, historical and sociological generalization and criticism (Griswold, 1993). The academic disciplines that have been charged with the analysis and history of literature have been caught unaware by the impact of best seller, mass literature, the comics, popular magazines, and so forth. Academicians have maintained an attitude of indifference to the lower depths of imagination print. A challenge and a field have been left open and the sociologists are required to do something about it. Almost all scholars who have contributed to the collection of essays are in agreement that a “scientific” approach or method to the history of literature would lead to nowhere (Griswold, 1993). Not only do they believe that each literature work contains in them some non-rational elements, scholars also consider any approach inadequate with regard to the very nature of the work under investigation (Griswold, 1993). Consequently, sociology of literature as it was developed ten decade ago is rejected and condemned as “historicizing psychologism,” as “historical pragmatism” and as “positivistic method.” The above discourse is well illustrated in the works of various writers (Griswold, 1993). For example, Sulochana Rangeya Raghava, observes that ‘the novel is the most socially conditioned of literary forms as it seems to replicate society (Griswold, 1993). In other words, novel is the most socially conditioned of literary forms as it seems to replicate society as it is, at given time (Griswold, 1993). A writer will only come into forefront only as agency of literature in relation to the society. In conclusion, sociologist treating literature in classroom setting will encounter a divided reaction (Griswold, 1993). A lot of students will want to display interest in new scientific experience, but as study goes on, some of student will try to protest against analytical “dismembering” of poetic material (Griswold, 1993). Most students are eager for guidance in an uncharted sea since they will never have been quite able to find out what is good and what is bad. Topic Three: “‘Arabesk and Sema’, in The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey” The Arabesk debate describes the way in which musicians from Turkey dispute, discuss and attribute meaning to their music. This debate has been examines over “Arabesk”, a musical genre that is popular across Turkey (Stokes, 1992). Martin Stokes in his book is a study of urban music-making in Instabul, focusing on numerous activities of professional artists or musicians and their audiences in that city. A lot of writers have look at Arabesk debate in the context of Islam, state cultural politics and experience of urbanization in Turkey (Stokes, 1992). Within this context, numerous discussions on the role of the music education, media, the construction of gender, technology of popular music making, emotions through musical performance and the concepts of musicianship in Turkish society (Stokes, 1992). In looking at the interplay between urban music-making at a local level and national cultural politics, this article have challenge both “mass culture” theory and general assumptions about the study of music in the society. For Arabesk was certainly all of these things and more. The condemnatory discourse I have been describing dissipated for a variety of reasons. Liberal reaction to the 1980 coup meant that Atatürkian edicts about culture and Westernization carried less and less weight (Stokes, 1992). The Islamist leaders of the early 90s, the political of Anatolian elites led to a reaction to westernization, the U.s and EU globalization and digitization, at all societal levels, meant that culture could no longer be controlled in the old ways (Stokes, 1992). Recent anti-Arabesk outbursts by the intelligentsia—for example, those by concert pianist Fazıl Say—have not been treated particularly seriously References Navaro-Yashin, Y. (1999) ‘The Historical Construction of Local Culture: Gender and Identity in the Politics of Secularism versus Islam’, in C. Keyder (ed.) Istanbul between the Global and the Local. Rowman and Littlefield, Boulder. Abu-Lughod, J. (1987) ‘The Islamic City: Historic Myth, Islamic Essence and Contemporary Relevance’, in International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 19, 2. Griswold, W. (1993) ‘Recent Moves in the Sociology of Literature’, in Annual Review of Sociology 19. Stokes, M. (1992) ‘Arabesk and Sema’, in The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Read More