The Arab World: Society, Culture, and State

by Halim Barakat

Book Overview

This wide-ranging examination of Arab society and culture offers a unique opportunity to know the Arab world from an Arab point of view. Halim Barakat, an expatriate Syrian who is both scholar and novelist, emphasizes the dynamic changes and diverse patterns that have characterized the Middle East since the mid-nineteenth century.

The Arab world is not one shaped by Islam, nor one simply explained by reference to the sectarian conflicts of a "mosaic" society. Instead, Barakat reveals a society that is highly complex, with many and various contending polarities. It is a society in a state of becoming and change, one whose social contradictions are at the root of the struggle to transcend dehumanizing conditions. Arguing from a perspective that is both radical and critical, Barakat is committed to the improvement of human conditions in the Arab world.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520084276
• ISBN13: 9780520084278
• Release Date: October 1993
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.11 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Arab World vs. the Arab Mind!

Someone who had read the "Arab Mind" of Raphael Patai, has to read this book also. This book elaborates the social-cultural devolpment and psychology of the Arab Region through different prespectives. Although Halim Barakat sounds very "arabic-emptionalized" in some conclusions and concepts, his book offers a possible answer of the big question: WHY they (Arab People, wherever they exist) think and act in this way, but also WHY people in different cultures think and act in different way. Very intersting concepts and hypothesis for new thories, which could be useful for cross-cultural researchers in general.

A must read book, accurate explaination

This book explains why Raphael Patai's book "The Arab Mind" is wrong and stereotyped.Barakat explains here everything accurately. A must read!