Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism

by Zachary Lockman

Overview

Zachary Lockman's informed and thoughtful history of European Orientalism and US Middle East studies, the 'clash of civilizations' debate and America's involvement in the region has become a highly recommended and widely used text since its publication in 2004. The second edition of Professor Lockman's book brings his analysis up to date by considering how the study of the Middle East has evolved in the intervening years, in the context of the US occupation of Iraq and the 'global war on terror'.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521133074
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/12/2009
Series:	The Contemporary Middle East , #3
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Zachary Lockman teaches modern Middle Eastern history at New York University. His previous publications include Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 (1996). He has served as president of the Middle East Studies Association, speaks and writes widely on current events in the Middle East and US foreign policy, and is a contributing editor of Middle East Report.

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. In the beginning; 2. Islam, the West and the rest; 3. Orientalism and empire; 4. The American century; 5. Turmoil in the field; 6. Said's Orientalism: a book and its aftermath; 7. After Orientalism?; Afterword.

Editorial Reviews

The first half of this book surveys how the West has "imagined" the Middle East from early encounters to the twentieth century. In the second half, Lockman narrows his focus, tracing the American image of the Middle East over the past half-century. One chapter, devoted to the scholarly debate sparked by Edward Said's Orientalism, offers the best available short analysis of the views of Said, Bernard Lewis, and other major thinkers. Other themes include modernization theory, which emerged soon after World War II as a critical determinant of American thought about the Middle East; U.S. governmental support for Middle Eastern studies; and the role of think tanks. Lockman ends with a tough but fair and persuasive critique of Martin Kramer's broadside Ivory Towers in the Sand, which charges that American academic scholarship on the contemporary Middle East gets it all wrong. Most impressive about Lockman's study of these "contending visions," past and present, is the perceptive and fair appraisal he offers of those whose vision he does not share.

Foreign Affairs

"Lockman's book will be widely read. There can be no doubt that the subject is an important one, not just to those in the field of Middle East Studies, but to the academic community and to a segment of the general public as well. As the book argues, a knowledge of the history of Middle East Studies is vital in assessing arguments put forward by academics, pundits and politicians."
Edmund Burke III, Department of History, University of California, Santa Cruz

"...a well crafted piece of historical synthesis, based on a wide array of secondary sources."
International Journal

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