The Clash of Modernities: The Islamist Challenge to Arab, Jewish, and Turkish Nationalism

Adopting a methodology influenced by Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems analysis and Edward Said's notion of a "contrapuntal imagination" in order to challenge essentializing understandings of civilizations, nations, etc., Samman (sociology, Macalester College) explores how different movements in the Middle East have coopted and/or challenged Western colonizers' temporal frames of modernity (temporal in that the "modern" West is framed as more "advanced" than other cultures). He compares the responses of what he calls the "Occidentalizing" nationalist projects of the Zionists and the Kemalist Turks; the "cultural schizophrenia" of the Arab nationalists of the early and mid-20th century, who sought to adopt the temporal lens of modernity in relation to exterior materiality while retaining "essential" marks of cultural identity in the inner, spiritual domain; and the Islamist response, which he argues seeks an Islamization/Orientalization of both the exterior and interior. He also explores how all of these projects impacted the construction of gender. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)