Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization

Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization PDF Author: Ali Mirsepassi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521659970
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
In this thought-provoking study, Ali Mirsepassi explores the concept of modernity, exposing the Eurocentric prejudices and hostility to non-Western culture that have characterized its development. Focusing on the Iranian experience of modernity, he charts its political and intellectual history and develops a new interpretation of Islamic Fundamentalism through the detailed analysis of the ideas of key Islamic intellectuals. The author argues that the Iranian Revolution was not a simple clash between modernity and tradition but an attempt to accommodate modernity within a sense of authentic Islamic identity, culture and historical experience. He concludes by assessing the future of secularism and democracy in the Middle East in general, and in Iran in particular. A significant contribution to the literature on modernity, social change and Islamic Studies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of social theory and change, Middle Eastern Studies, Cultural Studies and many related areas.

Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization

Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization PDF Author: Ali Mirsepassi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521659970
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this thought-provoking study, Ali Mirsepassi explores the concept of modernity, exposing the Eurocentric prejudices and hostility to non-Western culture that have characterized its development. Focusing on the Iranian experience of modernity, he charts its political and intellectual history and develops a new interpretation of Islamic Fundamentalism through the detailed analysis of the ideas of key Islamic intellectuals. The author argues that the Iranian Revolution was not a simple clash between modernity and tradition but an attempt to accommodate modernity within a sense of authentic Islamic identity, culture and historical experience. He concludes by assessing the future of secularism and democracy in the Middle East in general, and in Iran in particular. A significant contribution to the literature on modernity, social change and Islamic Studies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of social theory and change, Middle Eastern Studies, Cultural Studies and many related areas.

The Politics of Secularism in International Relations

The Politics of Secularism in International Relations PDF Author: Elizabeth Shakman Hurd
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400828015
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Conflicts involving religion have returned to the forefront of international relations. And yet political scientists and policymakers have continued to assume that religion has long been privatized in the West. This secularist assumption ignores the contestation surrounding the category of the "secular" in international politics. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations shows why this thinking is flawed, and provides a powerful alternative. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd argues that secularist divisions between religion and politics are not fixed, as commonly assumed, but socially and historically constructed. Examining the philosophical and historical legacy of the secularist traditions that shape European and American approaches to global politics, she shows why this matters for contemporary international relations, and in particular for two critical relationships: the United States and Iran, and the European Union and Turkey. The Politics of Secularism in International Relations develops a new approach to religion and international relations that challenges realist, liberal, and constructivist assumptions that religion has been excluded from politics in the West. The first book to consider secularism as a form of political authority in its own right, it describes two forms of secularism and their far-reaching global consequences.

Democracy Is a Good Thing

Democracy Is a Good Thing PDF Author: Yu Keping
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0815701675
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
"Democracy is a good thing. This is true not only for individuals or certain officials but also for the entire nation and for all the people of China."–Yu Keping So begins "Democracy Is a Good Thing," an essay of great influence that has commanded attention and provoked discussion throughout the world. It is the touchstone of this important volume of the same name. As one of China's foremost political thinkers and a leading proponent of democratizing the People's Republic, Yu Keping is a major figure not only in his native land, but also in the international community. This book brings together much of his most important work and makes it readily accessible to readers in the West for the first time. "Democracy Is a Good Thing" created a stir internationally. Perhaps more important, however, is the heated debate it spurred within China on the desirability of democratic reform. That important essay appears here, along with several of Yu Keping's other influential works on politics, culture, and civil society. His topics include China's economic modernization, its institutional environment, and the cultural changes that have accompanied the nation's reforms. Democracy Is a Good Thing pulls back the curtain to reveal ongoing discourse in Chinese political and intellectual circles, discussions that will go a long way toward determining the future of the world's most populous nation.

Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenment

Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenment PDF Author: Ali Mirsepassi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139493256
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Ali Mirsepassi's book presents a powerful challenge to the dominant media and scholarly construction of radical Islamist politics, and their anti-Western ideology, as a purely Islamic phenomenon derived from insular, traditional and monolithic religious 'foundations'. It argues that the discourse of political Islam has strong connections to important and disturbing currents in Western philosophy and modern Western intellectual trends. The work demonstrates this by establishing links between important contemporary Iranian intellectuals and the central influence of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. We are also introduced to new democratic narratives of modernity linked to diverse intellectual trends in the West and in non-Western societies, notably in India, where the ideas of John Dewey have influenced important democratic social movements. As the first book to make such connections, it promises to be an important contribution to the field and will do much to overturn some pervasive assumptions about the dichotomy between East and West.

The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity

The Intellectual Foundations of Chinese Modernity PDF Author: Edmund S. K. Fung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107547674
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the early twentieth century, China was on the brink of change. Different ideologies - those of radicalism, conservatism, liberalism, and social democracy - were much debated in political and intellectual circles. Whereas previous works have analyzed these trends in isolation, Edmund S. K. Fung shows how they related to one another and how intellectuals in China engaged according to their cultural and political persuasions. The author argues that it is this interrelatedness and interplay between different schools of thought that are central to the understanding of Chinese modernity, for many of the debates that began in the Republican era still resonate in China today. The book charts the development of these ideologies and explores the work and influence of the intellectuals who were associated with them. In its challenge to previous scholarship and the breadth of its approach, the book makes a major contribution to the study of Chinese political philosophy and intellectual history.

The Poesis of Peace

The Poesis of Peace PDF Author: Klaus-Gerd Giesen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317021150
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Exploring the relations between the concepts of peace and violence with aesthetics, nature, the body, and environmental issues, The Poesis of Peace applies a multidisciplinary approach to case studies in both Western and non-Western contexts including Islam, Chinese philosophy, Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Established and renowned theologians and philosophers, such as Kevin Hart, Eduardo Mendieta, and Clemens Sedmak, as well as upcoming and talented young academics look at peace and non-violence through the lens of recent scholarly advances on the subject achieved in the fields of theology, philosophy, political theory, and environmentalism.

Religion, Society, and Modernity in Turkey

Religion, Society, and Modernity in Turkey PDF Author: Serif Mardin
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815628101
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
This book collects Serif Mardin’s seminal essays written throughout the span of his prolific career. Comprising some of the author’s finest and most incisive writings, these essays deal with the historical background, political travails, and socioeconomic metamorphosis of Turkey during a century of modernization. With his characteristic sophistication and breadth of vision, Mardin provides readers with a remarkably objective analysis of ideology, civil society, religion, urban life, and violence in late Ottoman and Republican Turkey. Mardin moves easily from sociological topics on violence and class-consciousness to the history of the Ottoman Empire, and the philosophy and culture of modern Turkey within the greater Middle East. These influential pieces—collected for the first time in one volume—represent an invaluable addition to the field of Middle East studies.

Beyond Shariati

Beyond Shariati PDF Author: Siavash Saffari
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316738272
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Ali Shariati (1933–77) has been called by many the 'ideologue of the Iranian Revolution'. An inspiration to many of the revolutionary generation, Shariati's combination of Islamic political thought and Left-leaning ideology continues to influence both in Iran and across the wider Muslim world. In this book, Siavash Saffari examines Shariati's long-standing legacy, and how new readings of his works by contemporary 'neo-Shariatis' have contributed to a deconstruction of the false binaries of Islam/modernity, Islam/West, and East/West. Saffari argues that through their critique of Eurocentric metanarratives on the one hand, and the essentialist conceptions of Islam on the other, Shariati and neo-Shariatis have carved out a new space in Islamic thought beyond the traps of Orientalism and Occidentalism. This unique perspective will hold great appeal to researchers of the politics and intellectual thought of post-revolutionary Iran and the greater Middle East.

American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 18:2

American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 18:2 PDF Author: Zahra A1 Zeera
Publisher: International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), established in 1984, is a quarterly, double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and distributed worldwide. The journal showcases a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world including subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam.

Hidden Liberalism

Hidden Liberalism PDF Author: Hussein Banai
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108851517
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Compared to rival ideologies, liberalism has fared rather poorly in modern Iran. This is all the more remarkable given the essentially liberal substance of various social and political struggles – for liberal legality, individual rights and freedoms, and pluralism – in the century-long period since the demise of the Qajar dynasty and the subsequent transformation of the country into a modern nation-state. The deeply felt but largely invisible purchase of liberal political ideas in Iran challenges us to think more expansively about the trajectory of various intellectual developments since the emergence of a movement for reform and constitutionalism in the late nineteenth century. It complicates parsimonious accounts of Shi'ism, secularism, socialism, nationalism, and royalism as defining or representative ideologies of particular eras. Hidden Liberalism offers a critical examination of the reasons behind liberalism's invisible yet influential status, and its attendant ethical quandaries, in Iranian political and intellectual discourses.