| Details | | Publication Date: | 1997-06-01 |
| Size | | Height: | 8.8 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 10.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
In the postcolonial era, Arab societies have been ruled by a variety of authoritarian regimes. Focusing on his native Morocco, Abdellah Hammoudi explores the ideological and cultural foundations of this persistent authoritarianism. Building on the work of Foucault, Hammoudi argues that at the heart of Moroccan culture lies a paradigm of authority that juxtaposes absolute authority against absolute submission. Rooted in Islamic mysticism, this paradigm can be observed in the drama of mystic initiation, with its fundamental dialectic between Master and Disciple; in conflict with other cultural forms, and reelaborated in colonial and postcolonial circumstances, it informs all major aspects of Moroccan personal, political, and gender relations. Its influence is so pervasive and so firmly embedded that it ultimately legitimizes the authoritarian structure of power. Hammoudi contends that as long as the Master-Disciple dialectic remains the dominant paradigm of power relations, male authoritarianism will prevail as the dominant political form.
Industry Reviews
Though we now have many highly sophisticated studies of women's place and role in Arab societies, the analysis of men and masculinities is largely absent. Hammoudi's subtle readings of power relations in Morocco force the reader to think more widely of those relations in Arab societies as a whole. He invites a complete rethinking of how we should understand the significance of Sufi religious groups in the modern period and of their complex relations to other social forms.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Gilsenan
In this cultural history, Hammonudi asks how one accounts for the prevalence of authoritarian political systems in Arab societies, and what the constraints are against the development of a civil society. . . . The book was translated from the French. It contains detailed, useful notes and bibliographic citations.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Beck
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