ARAB SOCIETY, SOC 210-01, Fall 2010,

Monday/Thursday, 3:304:45pm, Classroom C117 CORE,

Prof. Emad El-Din Aysha, Office: 2105 HUSS Emails: eaysha@hotmail.com, eedaysha@aucegypt.edu

"Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression."

--- Otto Von Bismarck

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

--- Albert Einstein

Overall Objective: This course focuses on the diversity and transformations in the so-called Arab world. The main goal is not to simply provide information about the region, but to expose students to the methodological and theoretical frameworks underlying the study of the Arab world within the social sciences.

Specific Goals and Outcomes for Students: 1. To increase critical knowledge about the peoples and cultures of the Arab World. 2. To foster an ability to challenge homogenizing and essentialist accounts about the region and its people. 3. To develop students analytical skills to identify, assess and argue issues pertaining to the Arab world by employing social science methodologies and theories. 4. To increase students ability to review and critique literature on the (so-called) Arab world.

Course Outline:

WEEK 1
-

Introducing the Liberal Arts

Monday September 6 In Praise of Illiteracy (Hans Magnus Enzensberger)

Automaton Conformity (Erich Fromm)

Thursday September 9, Eid El Fetr (H), probably no class. Well have to wait and see, but in the meantime read this! Politics and the English Language (George Orwell) Seven Habits of Highly Defective Investors (Paul Krugman)

Theme I Conceptualising the Arab World: Methodological and Theoretical Considerations

WEEK 2 The Sociological Imagination

Monday September 13 Selections from What is History? (E.H. Carr) Why a Perfect Knowledge of All the Rules One Must Know to Act like a Native Cannot Lead to the Knowledge of How Natives Act (Marvin Harris)

Thursday September 16 Why Poor Countries are Poor (Tim Harford) Selections from Development is a State of Mind (Lawrence E. Harrison)

WEEK 3 Identity and Differentiation(s)

Monday September 20 Arab Society: Characteristics and Contradictions (Sir James Craig) Agents of Socialization, www.sociologycentral.com/text/socl/agentssocialization.pdf

Theme II Stratification, Ethnicity and State Formation

Thursday September 23

England, Your England (George Orwell) Introduction, The Arabs in History (Bernard Lewis)

WEEK 4 Patriarchy and Political Sociology

Monday September 27 Selections from Politics in the Middle East (James A. Bill and Robert Springborg)

Thursday September 30 Life Without Chiefs (Marvin Harris) Selections from Oil Sheikhs (Linda Blanford)

Theme III Arab Populations in Motion: Urban, Rural and Transnational

WEEK 5 Monday October4 Contested Spaces of Identity among Arab American Adolescents (K. J. Ajrouch) Intellectual and Ideological Debates on Islamophobia (Vincent Geisser)

Thursday October 7 Selections from The Shiites, Chapter 7-Kipling, (David Pinault) Selections from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church (Malachi Martin)

Theme IV Kinship Structures, Gender and Generations

WEEK 6 Mechanisms of Social Control

Monday October 11, Midterm One

Thursday October 14 The Savage Male (Marvin Harris) Aspects of Pre-Islamic Arabian Society Do Population Policies Matter? (Frank Miele)

WEEK 7 Sex and Decolonisation

Monday October 18 Sexual Tensions of Post-Empire (Katherine Franke) Marriage in the Arab World (Hoda Rashad, Magued Osman, and Farzaneh RoudiFahimi)

Thursday October 21 The Muslim Woman (Lila Abu-Lughod) Is Sleeping With a Married Man Sexist? (Mandy Van Deven)

Theme V Changing Religious Expressions: Traditional, Institutional and Political

WEEK 8
-

The Arab Cosmological Past

Monday October 25 The Evil Eye and Cultural Beliefs among the Bedouin Tribes of the Negev, Middle East (Aref Abu-Rabia) Selections from Classical Art and the Cultures of Greece and Rome (John Onians) Selections from Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (James Henry Breasted)

Thursday October 28, Midterm Two

WEEK 9
-

Modern and Pre-Modern Extremism

Monday November 1 Genesis of Suicide Terrorism (Scott Atran) Selections from The Human Condition (Hannah Arendt) Cults, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult

Thursday November 4 Focus on psychiatry in Egypt (Ahmed Okasha) Why Do We Fear Death? (Ahmed M. Abdel-Khalek) Time and Eternity: An Egyptian Dualism

WEEK 10 The Sociology of Conflict Mismanagement

Monday November 8 Why Arabs Lose Wars (Norville de Atkine) Slavs of Muslim Spain (Michal Warczakowski)

Thursday November 11 The Political Economy of the Egyptian-Israeli QIZ (Vikash Yadav)

WEEK 11, Week off, unfortunately. Kul sana wintu tayibeen... but you still have to do a lot of reading!

Monday November 15, Eid El Adha (H). Cheap Wars (Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler)

Theme VI Globalisation, Media and Cultures for Change

Thursday November 18, Eid El Adha (H). The Trouble with History (Paul Krugman) The Language Police (Nancy Snow)

WEEK 12 Monday November 22 Hearing the Global Village

Marshall McLuhan declared that the medium is the message. What did he mean and does this notion have any value? (Roderick Munday)

Thursday November 25, Thanksgiving (H). Actually its good theres no class today. Its my birthday, but youre still not off the hook!
-

The Arabs vs. Soft Power

Heroes in Error (Jack Fairweather) Why didnt Al-Hurra succeed? (Magdi Khalil)

WEEK 13 Monday November 29 Theres No Such Thing as Free Speech, and its a good Thing Too! (Stanley Fish) Introduction (Ursula K. Le Guin) Historicizing Arab blogs (Brian Ulrich)

Thursday December 2 Developing Between East and West

Intellectual Property Protection and Antitrust in the Developing World (Susan K. Sell) In Search of Researchers (Mohamed El- Sayed Said) Nipping Egypts Future in the Bud (Amr Imam)

WEEK 14 Monday December 6 The Evolution of the International Economic Order (W. Arthur Lewis) How China Grew Rich (Tim Harford)

Thursday December 9
-

The Liberal Art Contribution

Introduction, BEST SF (Edmund Crispin) Foreword (Stephen King) Narrative Medicine (Paul Wallang)

WEEK 15 Monday December 13 Science Fiction From Below (Mark Engler) From Music to Ethics (Gilad Atzmon) Islams Interpreter (Elizabeth Wasserman)

Thursday December 16, Revision Class!

Final Exam Date and Location to be announced

Course requirements:

You are expected to be in class, on time, and have read all the readings for each lesson. Unjustified absence will be penalised. (You have to have a written medical excuse). The same goes for your attention span, conduct and participation in class. (Mobile phones, pagers and all other means of disturbance must be silenced). You can see below what percentage is allotted to attendance and participation. And yes, we will have in-class discussions and brain-storming sessions.

You have to read everything I give you, and print it up since it will be posted on Blackboard or emailed to you in person. I will periodically ask on points in the readings and I expect you to be familiar with whats there. The more insights you make the better, and while we have set readings, bringing in independent materials will be rewarded books, articles, audio-visual material, websites, etc. Due to data constraints I will post my ppts on an ftpsite for you. The same goes for the stories used for the second assignment. There are the two written assignments. The first is MEDIA REPORT. Here, in the very first week of class, you have to choose a current written media items (can be off the net, but I have to approve it) related to the course. (For instance, birth control, youth unemployment, refugees, minorities, etc.) You then follow it up, keep track of events over the ten following weeks, and write up a summary of whats youve learned about how the media covers such sociological issues. The key word here is sociological imagination! It should be a minimum of 900 words long. The second is an ESSAY assignment which consists of relating stories I will give you to the course and the various themes we are dealing with history, gender, individual freedom, social science, democratization, development, culture, science, technology, etc. Minimum 1,200 words. The reading you should take as a model for your literary essays is Saddam Husayns Novel of Fear, by Ofra Bengio. For both written assignments you have to print it up, as well as email me a SOFTCOPY on Blackboard (to archive), but in an older format (Word 2003, ppt 2007, rtf document) so I can open it. (CD copies are acceptable). Finally, you also have to get organized. Youll have to split up into groups, pick a reading from the syllabus and design a POWER POINT PRESENTATION summarising the authors argument and answering some set questions. (You dont have to give it in class). Again, use old ppt formats!

Grade Distribution:

10% Attendance and Participation 10% Media Report 15% Story Essay 30% Midterms (two of them, 15% each) 10% Group PPt Project 25% Final Exam

Exams will be mixed, part multiple choice but mostly short and long essay questions. No makeup exams but there is extra credit work extra essays or individual projects. Again, missing an exam has to have a valid medical excuse.

Also bear in mind that Im very fond of extra sessions to make up for holidays and surprise absences.

Grading Scale:

90% - 99% 80% - 84% 70% - 74% 60% - 64% 50% - 54%

A B+ BC D+

85% - 89% 75% - 79% 65% - 69% 55% - 59% 40% - 49%

AB C+ CD