Minorities and the Modern Arab World: New Perspectives

Description

In the wake of recent upheavals across the Arab world, a simplistic media portrayal of the region as essentially homogenous has given way to a new though equally shallow portrayal, casting it as deeply divided along ethnic, linguistic, and religious lines. The essays gathered in Minorities and the Modern Arab World seek to challenge this representation with a nuanced exploration of the ways in which ethnic, religious, and linguistic commitments have intersected to create "minority" communities in the modern era. Bringing together the fields of history, political science, anthropology, sociology, and linguistics, contributors provide fresh analyses of the construction and evolution of minority identities around the region. They examine how the category of "minority" became meaningful only with the rise of the modern nation-state and find that Middle Eastern minority nationalisms owe much of their modern self-definition to developments within diaspora populations and other transnational frameworks. The first volume to upend the conceptual frame of reference for studying Middle Eastern minority communities in nearly two decades, Minorities and the Modern Arab World represents a major intervention in modern Middle East studies. Pt. ONE Conceptualizing Minorities 1. From Millet to Minority -- Another Look at the Non-Muslim Communities in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries / Peter Sluglett -- 2. Across Confessional Borders -- Microhistory of Ottoman Christians and Their Migratory Paths / Jacob Norris -- 3. Becoming a Sectarian Minority -- Arab Christians in Twentieth-Century Palestine / Laura Robson -- 4. Egypt and Its Jews -- Specter of an Absent Minority / Joel Beinin -- Pt. TWO Minorities, Nationalism, and Cultural "Authenticity" 5. When Anticolonialism Meets Antifascism -- Modern Jewish Intellectuals in Baghdad / Aline Schlaepfer -- 6. Assyrians and the Iraqi Communist Party -- Revolution, Urbanization, and the Quest for Equality / Alda Benjamen -- 7. Struggle over Egyptianness -- Case Study of the Nayruz Festival / Hiroko Miyokawa -- 8. From Minority to Majority -- Inscribing the Mahra and Touareg into the Arab Nation / Samuel Liebhaber -- Pt. THREE Minorities in the Transnational Sphere 9. Tunisia's Minority Mosaic -- Constructing a National Narrative / David Bond -- 10. Majority and Minority Languages in the Middle East -- Case of Hebrew in Mandate Palestine / Liora R. Halperin -- 11. Chaldean Church between Iraq and America -- Transnational Social Field Perspective / Yasmeen Hanoosh -- 12. Permanent Temporariness in Berlin -- Case of an Arab Muslim Minority in Germany / Lucia Volk