Suchergebnisse

Critical Comparisons in Politics and Culture. John Bowen and Roger Petersen. eds. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 266 pp.

Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Andrew Shryock. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 359 pp.

Is romantic love a particularly Western and modern phenomenon, or a universal experience? This article argues that both these approaches err in taking sexual attraction as the essential characteristic of romance, whereas historical and personal accounts stress idealization of a particular other. Romantic love is properly defined as an experience of transcendence and is elaborated in cultural configurations of three basic types. The first is in hierarchical and internally competitive societies where marriage is a political matter and romantic relations are always adulterous and often non-sexual; the second is in individualistic, fragmented and fluid societies where love and marriage go together; the third is in highly structured disharmonic societies where romantic ties between youth are severed by arranged marriages. ; ¿Es el amor un fenómeno particularmente occidental y moderno o una experiencia universal? Este artículo argumenta que ambos enfoques yerran al tomar la atracción sexual como la característica esencial del romance, mientras que las experiencias históricas y personales tensionan la idealización de un otro particular. El amor romántico se define propiamente como una experiencia de trascendencia y se elabora en configuraciones culturales de tres tipos básicos. El primero se encuentra en sociedades jerárquicas e internamente competitivas donde el matrimonio es una cuestión política y las relaciones románticas son siempre adúlteras y a menudo no-sexuales; el segundo, en las sociedades individualistas, fragmentadas y fluidas adonde amor y matrimonio van juntos; el tercero, en sociedades desarmónicas altamente estructuradas, donde los lazos románticos entre los jóvenes son desechos por matrimonios arreglados.

The prevalence of despotism in the premodern Middle East is linked with the need of rulers to maintain centralized authority in a hostile environment. The idea of oriental despotism was invented by European political thinkers to critique European politics. The image of an absolute ruler who holds sway over a society lacking any public, civil life is not an accurate depiction of the premodern Middle East. While no tradition of political citizenship developed in the Middle East, & a strong antipathy toward rulers & political roles was pervasive, the populous was never merely submissive or docile. The values of egalitarianism, competitive individualism, & responsible independence prevailed on the local level in both rural & urban settings. It is argued that while despotism was the rule at the national level, Middle Eastern societies evinced a high level of autonomy & democratic participation at the local level. Ernest Gellner's Khaldunian model (1981) of center-periphery oscillation in Middle Eastern culture is extended to consider the central importance of Mohammed's historical emergence. 60 References. H. von Rautenfeld