Suchergebnisse

This book is about the epic battle between modernity and militant Islam that is reshaping the Middle East. The author goes inside the militant Islamic movements in ten countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Algeria, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Iran. She shows that just as there is no unified Arab world, so there is no single Islam. The movements are as different as the countries in which they are rooted

Explores the motivation of Palestinian suicide bombers to argue that the reservoir of potential suicide bombers is larger than many Americans understand. Narratives from Palestinian men and women show that modern suicide bombing is increasingly female in all countries. The increased "feminization" of suicide attacks does not reflect religious or ideological motivations, but are a response to foreign occupation. Heavy-handed counterterrorism tactics only humiliate & enrage Palestinians & inspire more recruits for martyrdom missions. The US complacency about terrorism is a luxury that Americans can ill afford, although a panicky overreaction would jeopardize the immunity to jihadist ideology that is our nation's best & most enviable defense. References. J. Harwell

Victoria Thompson's study of the French market begins with the Richard Terdiman's premise that societies faced with rapid change engage in "semiotic activity" (Discourse/Counter Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). In other words, the tensions surrounding political, economic, and social upheaval send individuals scurrying to categorize and explain the new world confronting them. Certainly, the boom-and-bust economy of nineteenth-century France generated such anxieties. Interestingly, many of those fears focused on female sexuality, a topic that might seem remote from the debates over living wages for working-class men or the appearance of new credit mechanisms. The problem that interests Thompson is twofold. First, how did French society cope with the potentially destructive power of early capitalism, a power that could dissolve familial bonds and up-end social hierarchies? Second, how did new gender norms work within the new market framework? The French answer to both problems was the creation of a "virtuous marketplace," one in which honor and self-control shaped men's economic practices, and in which distinct gender roles kept women a respectable distance from the temptations of material gain.