Facing Fear: The History of an Emotion in Global Perspective

by Michael Laffan (Editor), Max Weiss (Editor)

Overview

Fear is ubiquitous but slippery. It has been defined as a purely biological reality, derided as an excuse for cowardice, attacked as a force for social control, and even denigrated as an unnatural condition that has no place in the disenchanted world of enlightened modernity. In these times of institutionalized insecurity and global terror, Facing Fear sheds light on the meaning, diversity, and dynamism of fear in multiple world-historical contexts, and demonstrates how fear universally binds us to particular presents but also to a broad spectrum of memories, stories, and states in the past.


From the eighteenth-century Peruvian highlands and the California borderlands to the urban cityscapes of contemporary Russia and India, this book collectively explores the wide range of causes, experiences, and explanations of this protean emotion. The volume contributes to the thriving literature on the history of emotions and destabilizes narratives that have often understood fear in very specific linguistic, cultural, and geographical settings. Rather, by using a comparative, multidisciplinary framework, the book situates fear in more global terms, breaks new ground in the historical and cultural analysis of emotions, and sets out a new agenda for further research.


In addition to the editors, the contributors are Alexander Etkind, Lisbeth Haas, Andreas Killen, David Lederer, Melani McAlister, Ronald Schechter, Marla Stone, Ravi Sundaram, and Charles Walker.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400845248
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/14/2012
Series:	Publications in Partnership with the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University , #4
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Michael Laffan is professor of history at Princeton University. His books include The Makings of Indonesian Islam (Princeton). Max Weiss is assistant professor of history and Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. He is the author of In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi‘ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
INTRODUCTION - 1
The Golden Age of Nasserism 3
Idealism and Pragmatism in Nasser's Foreign Policy 11
The Nature of Middle Eastern Politics 14
The Place of the Intervention in Egyptian Memory 16
Structure of the Book 21
CHAPTER ONE - The Road to War 24
The Coup in Yemen 29
The Struggle for Power in Egypt 37
The Accidental Intervention? 49
The Denouement of the Crisis in Cairo 61
CHAPTER TWO - The Soviet-Egyptian Intervention in Yemen 70
The Nature of Soviet Relations with Egypt and Yemen 71
The Egyptian Appeal and the Soviet Response 75
Explaining Soviet Behavior 88
Forms of Early Soviet Involvement 94
CHAPTER THREE - Food for "Peace": The Breakdown of US-Egyptian Relations, 1962–65 102
Recognition 106
Disengagement 113
The Suspension of US Aid 127
The Balance of Payments Crisis 139
CHAPTER FOUR - Guns for Cotton: The Unraveling of Soviet-Egyptian Relations, 1964–66 142
Guns for Cotton 144
The Soviet Quest for Base Rights in Egypt 146
From Jiddah to Moscow 151
In the Cracks of Cold War Geology 159
The Final Unraveling 162
CHAPTER FIVE - On the Battlefield in Yemen--and in Egypt 174
Counterinsurgency 176
Casualties 190
Cost 195
Corruption 199
The Spread of Popular Discontent 206
CHAPTER SIX - The Fruitless Quest for Peace: Saudi-Egyptian Negotiations, 1964–66 215
The First Arab Summit 217
The Second Arab Summit 222
The Jiddah Agreement 232
From the Islamic Pact to the Long Breath Strategy 249
The Kuwaiti Mediation and the Return of Sallal 258
CHAPTER SEVEN - The Six-Day War and the End of the Intervention in Yemen 262
The Sinai Option 266
The Syrian Connection 272
The Soviet Spark 275
The Egyptian Initiative 284
The Impact of the Yemen War on Egyptian Military Performance in the Six-Day War 289
The Khartoum Conference and the Withdrawal of the Egyptians from Yemen 290
AFTERWORD - The Twilight of Egyptian Power 295
Bibliographical Note 313
Bibliography 319
Index 335

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The history of the emotions has become one of the most dynamic fields in historical research in the twenty-first century. By focusing on one emotion—fear—this volume adds another dimension to our understanding of the way people negotiated their encounters with other people and events in the past. It is a riveting read."—Joanna Bourke, author of Fear: A Cultural History

"Ambitious and timely, this book truly advances the discussion of fear across considerable time and regional space. This result is an important next step in emotions history, and a direct link to a variety of developments in the political and religious sphere."—Peter N. Stearns, provost of George Mason University

"Fear is the condition we live in. Or is it? In this timely book, a stellar cast of experts uncovers a perplexing array of concrete historical instances of fear, from the eighteenth-century Tupac Amaru Rebellion in colonial Latin America to Dutch Islamophobia in 2010. The reader will come away with a sense of the mind-boggling diversity of practices by which fear has been experienced. This book harbors a small hope that the current politics of fear might become history."—Jan Plamper, Goldsmiths, University of London

Editorial Reviews

"[S]imply establishing that fear has been a significant factor in history, that it is experienced and represented diversely, and that it forms an inescapable part of our collective memory and contemporary motivation is enough to make the book worth the read and hopefully to inspire more studies of fear and other emotions in society and history."—-Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

From the Publisher

[S]imply establishing that fear has been a significant factor in history, that it is experienced and represented diversely, and that it forms an inescapable part of our collective memory and contemporary motivation is enough to make the book worth the read and hopefully to inspire more studies of fear and other emotions in society and history.

Anthropology Review Database - Jack David Eller