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Getting Through Security: Counterterrorism, Bureaucracy, and a Sense of the Modern
by Mark Maguire David A. WestbrookGetting Through Security offers an unprecedented look behind the scenes of global security structures. The authors unveil the “secret colleges” of counterterrorism, a world haunted by the knowledge that intelligence will fail, and Leviathan will not arrive quickly enough to save everyone. Based on extensive interviews with both special forces and other security operators who seek to protect the public, and survivors of terrorist attacks, Getting Through Security ranges from targeted European airports to African malls and hotels to explore counterterrorism today. Maguire and Westbrook reflect on what these practices mean for the bureaucratic state and its violence, and offer suggestions for the perennial challenge to secure not just modern life, but humane politics. Mark Maguire has long had extraordinary access to a series of counterterrorism programs. He trained with covert behavior detection units and attended secret meetings of international special forces. He found that security professionals, for all the force at their command, are haunted by ultimately intractable problems. Intelligence is inadequate, killers unexpectedly announce themselves, combat teams don’t arrive quickly enough, and for a time an amorphous public is on its own. Such problems both challenge and occasion the institutions of contemporary order. David Westbrook accompanied Maguire, pushing for reflection on what the dangerous enterprise of securing modern life means for key concepts such as bureaucracy, violence, and the state. Introducing us to the “secret colleges” of soldiers and police, where security is produced as an infinite horizon of possibility, and where tactics shape politics covertly, the authors relate moments of experimentation by police trying to secure critical infrastructure and conversations with special forces operators in Nairobi bars, a world of shifting architecture, technical responses, and the ever-present threat of violence. Secrecy is poison. Government agencies compete in the dark. The uninformed public is infantilized. Getting Through Security exposes deep flaws in the foundations of bureaucratic modernity, and suggests possibilities that may yet ameliorate our situation.
Getting to Know Waiwai: An Amazonian Ethnography
by Alan CampbellLiving with the Wayapi, and their charismatic leader Waiwai, is a serious adventure. It is demanding, and can turn dangerous in a moment. The environment is a difficult one, but beautiful and baffling in its richness. And the job of learning about the people is like a journey without end.Alan Campbell tells the story of these people, and of the time he spent with them, in an imaginative, beautifully written account which looks back from a century into the future to relate a way of life that is being destroyed. In doing so, he addresses important and complex issues in current anthroplogical theory in a way which makes them accessible without sacrificing any of their subtlety.
Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed
by Michael Patton Frances Westley Brenda ZimmermanA practical, inspirational, revolutionary guide to social innovationMany of us have a deep desire to make the world around us a better place. But often our good intentions are undermined by the fear that we are so insignificant in the big scheme of things that nothing we can do will actually help feed the world's hungry, fix the damage of a Hurricane Katrina or even get a healthy lunch program up and running in the local school. We tend to think that great social change is the province of heroes - an intimidating view of reality that keeps ordinary people on the couch. But extraordinary leaders such as Gandhi and even unlikely social activists such as Bob Geldof most often see themselves as harnessing the forces around them, rather than singlehandedly setting those forces in motion. The trick in any great social project - from the global fight against AIDS to working to eradicate poverty in a single Canadian city - is to stop looking at the discrete elements and start trying to understand the complex relationships between them. By studying fascinating real-life examples of social change through this systems-and-relationships lens, the authors of Getting to Maybe tease out the rules of engagement between volunteers, leaders, organizations and circumstance - between individuals and what Shakespeare called "the tide in the affairs of men."Getting to Maybe applies the insights of complexity theory and harvests the experiences of a wide range of people and organizations - including the ministers behind the Boston Miracle (and its aftermath); the Grameen Bank, in which one man's dream of micro-credit sparked a financial revolution for the world's poor; the efforts of a Canadian clothing designer to help transform the lives of aboriginal women and children; and many more - to lay out a brand new way of thinking about making change in communities, in business, and in the world.From the Hardcover edition.
Getting to Scale
by Laurence Chandy Akio Hosono Homi Kharas Johannes LinnThe global development community is teeming with different ideas and interventions to improve the lives of the world's poorest people. Whether these succeed in having a transformative impact depends not just on their individual brilliance but on whether they can be brought to a scale where they reach millions of poor people.Getting to Scale explores what it takes to expand the reach of development solutions beyond an individual village or pilot program so they serve poor people everywhere. Each chapter documents one or more contemporary case studies, which together provide a body of evidence on how scale can be pursued. The book suggests that the challenge of scaling up can be divided into two solutions: financing interventions at scale, and managing delivery to large numbers of beneficiaries. Neither governments, donors, charities, nor corporations are usually capable of overcoming these twin challenges alone, indicating that partnerships are key to success.Scaling up is mission critical if extreme poverty is to be vanquished in our lifetime. Getting to Scale provides an invaluable resource for development practitioners, analysts, and students on a topic that remains largely unexplored and poorly understood. Contributors: Tessa Bold (Goethe University, Frankfurt), Wolfgang Fengler (World Bank, Nairobi), David Gartner (Arizona State University), Shunichiro Honda (JICA Research Institute), Michael Joseph (Vodafone), Hiroshi Kato (JICA), Mwangi Kimenyi (Brookings), Michael Kubzansky (Monitor Inclusive Markets), Germano Mwabu (University of Nairobi), Jane Nelson (Harvard Kennedy School), Alice Ng'ang'a (Strathmore University, Nairobi), Justin Sandefur (Center for Global Development), Pauline Vaughan (consultant), Chris West (Shell Foundation)
Getting to Scale
by Laurence Chandy Homi Kharas Johannes Linn Akio HosonoThe global development community is teeming with different ideas and interventions to improve the lives of the world's poorest people. Whether these succeed in having a transformative impact depends not just on their individual brilliance but on whether they can be brought to a scale where they reach millions of poor people. Getting to Scale explores what it takes to expand the reach of development solutions beyond an individual village or pilot program so they serve poor people everywhere. Each chapter documents one or more contemporary case studies, which together provide a body of evidence on how scale can be pursued. The book suggests that the challenge of scaling up can be divided into two solutions: financing interventions at scale, and managing delivery to large numbers of beneficiaries. Neither governments, donors, charities, nor corporations are usually capable of overcoming these twin challenges alone, indicating that partnerships are key to success.Scaling up is mission critical if extreme poverty is to be vanquished in our lifetime. Getting to Scale provides an invaluable resource for development practitioners, analysts, and students on a topic that remains largely unexplored and poorly understood. Contributors: Tessa Bold (Goethe University, Frankfurt), Wolfgang Fengler (World Bank, Nairobi), David Gartner (Arizona State University), Shunichiro Honda (JICA Research Institute), Michael Joseph (Vodafone), Hiroshi Kato (JICA), Mwangi Kimenyi (Brookings), Michael Kubzansky (Monitor Inclusive Markets), Germano Mwabu (University of Nairobi), Jane Nelson (Harvard Kennedy School), Alice Ng'ang'a (Strathmore University, Nairobi), Justin Sandefur (Center for Global Development), Pauline Vaughan (consultant), Chris West (Shell Foundation)
Getting to the Roots of Social Studies Vocabulary, Grades 6-8
by Timothy Rasinski Nancy Padak Rick M. Newton Evangeline NewtonMake learning social studies vocabulary fun and interesting with a roots approach! This resource, geared towards secondary grades, focuses on root words for social studies. Teaching tips and strategies, standards-based lessons, and student activity pages are included to make teaching a breeze and learning fun! By implementing the resources provided in this book into your vocabulary instruction, students will learn to expand their vocabularies by learning how words are built from the roots up!
Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America
by Julilly Kohler-HausmannThe politics and policies that led to America's expansion of the penal system and reduction of welfare programsIn 1970s America, politicians began "getting tough" on drugs, crime, and welfare. These campaigns helped expand the nation's penal system, discredit welfare programs, and cast blame for the era's social upheaval on racialized deviants that the state was not accountable to serve or represent. Getting Tough sheds light on how this unprecedented growth of the penal system and the evisceration of the nation's welfare programs developed hand in hand. Julilly Kohler-Hausmann shows that these historical events were animated by struggles over how to interpret and respond to the inequality and disorder that crested during this period. When social movements and the slowing economy destabilized the U.S. welfare state, politicians reacted by repudiating the commitment to individual rehabilitation that had governed penal and social programs for decades. In its place, they championed strategies of punishment, surveillance, and containment. The architects of these tough strategies insisted they were necessary, given the failure of liberal social programs and the supposed pathological culture within poor African American and Latino communities. Kohler-Hausmann rejects this explanation and describes how the spectacle of enacting punitive policies convinced many Americans that social investment was counterproductive and the "underclass" could be managed only through coercion and force. Getting Tough illuminates this narrative through three legislative cases: New York's adoption of the 1973 Rockefeller drug laws, Illinois's and California's attempts to reform welfare through criminalization and work mandates, and California's passing of a 1976 sentencing law that abandoned rehabilitation as an aim of incarceration. Spanning diverse institutions and weaving together the perspectives of opponents, supporters, and targets of punitive policies, Getting Tough offers new interpretations of dramatic transformations in the modern American state.
Getting Under Our Skin: The Cultural and Social History of Vermin
by Lisa T. SarasohnHow vermin went from being part of everyone's life to a mark of disease, filth, and lower status.For most of our time on this planet, vermin were considered humanity's common inheritance. Fleas, lice, bedbugs, and rats were universal scourges, as pervasive as hunger or cold, at home in both palaces and hovels. But with the spread of microscopic close-ups of these creatures, the beginnings of sanitary standards, and the rising belief that cleanliness equaled class, vermin began to provide a way to scratch a different itch: the need to feel superior, and to justify the exploitation of those pronounced ethnically—and entomologically—inferior. In Getting Under Our Skin, Lisa T. Sarasohn tells the fascinating story of how vermin came to signify the individuals and classes that society impugns and ostracizes. How did these creatures go from annoyance to social stigma? And how did people thought verminous become considered almost a species of vermin themselves? Focusing on Great Britain and North America, Sarasohn explains how the label "vermin" makes dehumanization and violence possible. She describes how Cromwellians in Ireland and US cavalry on the American frontier both justified slaughter by warning "Nits grow into lice." Nazis not only labeled Jews as vermin, they used insecticides in the gas chambers to kill them during the Holocaust.Concentrating on the insects living in our bodies, clothes, and beds, Sarasohn also looks at rats and their social impact. Besides their powerful symbolic status in all cultures, rats' endurance challenges all human pretentions. From eighteenth-century London merchants anointing their carved bedsteads with roasted cat to repel bedbugs to modern-day hedge fund managers hoping neighbors won't notice exterminators in their penthouses, the studies in this book reveal that vermin continue to fuel our prejudices and threaten our status. Getting Under Our Skin will appeal to cultural historians, naturalists, and to anyone who has ever scratched—and then gazed in horror.
Getting Wasted: Why College Students Drink Too Much and Party So Hard
by Thomas Vander VenMost American college campuses are home to a vibrant drinking scene where students frequently get wasted, train-wrecked, obliterated, hammered, destroyed, and decimated. The terms that university students most commonly use to describe severe alcohol intoxication share a common theme: destruction, and even after repeated embarrassing, physically unpleasant, and even violent drinking episodes, students continue to go out drinking together. In Getting Wasted, Thomas Vander Ven provides a unique answer to the perennial question of why college students drink. Vander Ven argues that college students rely on "drunk support:" contrary to most accounts of alcohol abuse as being a solitary problem of one person drinking to excess, the college drinking scene is very much a social one where students support one another through nights of drinking games, rituals and rites of passage. Drawing on over 400 student accounts, 25 intensive interviews, and one hundred hours of field research, Vander Ven sheds light on the extremely social nature of college drinking. Giving voice to college drinkers as they speak in graphic and revealing terms about the complexity of the drinking scene, Vander Ven argues that college students continue to drink heavily, even after experiencing repeated bad experiences, because of the social support that they give to one another and due to the creative ways in which they reframe and recast violent, embarrassing, and regretful drunken behaviors. Provocatively, Getting Wasted shows that college itself, closed and seemingly secure, encourages these drinking patterns and is one more example of the dark side of campus life.
Getting Wrecked: Women, Incarceration, and the American Opioid Crisis (California Series in Public Anthropology #46)
by Kimberly SueGetting Wrecked provides a rich ethnographic account of women battling addiction as they cycle through jail, prison, and community treatment programs in Massachusetts. As incarceration has become a predominant American social policy for managing the problem of drug use, including the opioid epidemic, this book examines how prisons and jails have attempted concurrent programs of punishment and treatment to deal with inmates struggling with a diagnosis of substance use disorder. An addiction physician and medical anthropologist, Kimberly Sue powerfully illustrates the impacts of incarceration on women’s lives as they seek well-being and better health while confronting lives marked by structural violence, gender inequity, and ongoing trauma.
Getting Your PhD: A Practical Insider's Guide
by Teela Sanders Harriet Churchill`Getting your PhD will no doubt establish itself as a firm favourite' - ESCalate `Packed with practical advice on all aspects of the PhD process, new and continuing research students should find this book of great help' - Professor Malcolm Tight, Lancaster University, UK How to get your Ph. D is an original study guide aimed at prospective and current postgraduate students, covering the process of accessing, undertaking and completing doctoral research in the social sciences and the humanities. The content is unique in incorporating discussion of the less recognised personal, emotional and organisational demands of independent study. Drawing on a variety of student experiences, the authors apply a case study approach to examine the dilemmas and complexities of postgraduate study. The book is organised into four parts covering the research process; writing, publishing and networking; shifting identities and institutions and relationships of support. Each chapter includes an easy to use format including real-life accounts, tips and strategies for problem solving and guidance for additional resources. The guide includes accessible advice and guidance across a spectrum of methodological, personal, emotional, practical and institutional issues.
Gewalterfahrungen gehörloser Frauen: Risikofaktoren, Ressourcen und gesundheitliche Folgen (Sozialer Wandel und Kohäsionsforschung)
by Sabine FriesDie Erkenntnis, dass gehörlose Frauen von verschiedenen Formen von Gewalt und ihren Folgen genauso oder sogar weit häufiger betroffen sein können als andere Frauen, ist in der Öffentlichkeit kaum bekannt. Ein stark erhöhtes Risiko für Gewalterfahrungen ergibt sich bei gehörlosen Frauen vor allem aufgrund einer ausgeprägten gesellschaftlichen Isolation. Ein weiterer wesentlicher Risikofaktor für die im Vergleich zu Frauen mit und ohne Behinderungen überdurchschnittlich hohe Gewaltbetroffenheit gehörloser Frauen ist ihre häufig alternativlose Einbindung in die Gehörlosengemeinschaft. Dies verweist darauf, dass unsere Gesellschaft bislang daran gescheitert ist, gehörlose Menschen ausreichend zu integrieren, und diese so marginalisiert hat, dass sie von der Mehrheitsgesellschaft weitgehend unbemerkt zu Tätern und Opfern werden. Nicht zuletzt hat Gewalt gegen gehörlose Frauen komplexe und weitreichende gesundheitliche Folgen. Das Gesundheitssystem nimmt deshalb eine Schlüsselrolle für die Prävention, Weitervermittlung und Intervention bei Gewalt gegen gehörlose Frauen und ihre Kinder ein.
Gewaltfreie Kommunikation für Dummies (Für Dummies)
by Al WeckertMöchten auch Sie einfühlsamer kommunizieren? Al Weckert erläutert Ihnen die vier Schritte der Gewaltfreien Kommunikation nach Marshall B. Rosenberg: urteilsfreie Beobachtung, Gefühle, Bedürfnisse, Bitten, die eine wertschätzende Kommunikation mit dem Gegenüber ermöglichen. Sie erfahren anhand vieler Beispiele und Übungen, wie die Gewaltfreie Kommunikation im Beruf, in der Partnerschaft und der Erziehung Konflikte entschärft und hilft, Lösungen zu finden, in denen die Belange aller Beteiligten berücksichtigt werden. Außerdem gibt er denen, die Gewaltfreie Kommunikation weitergeben wollen, zahlreiche Hinweise zur Aus- und Weiterbildung.
Gewaltprävention in Erziehung, Schule und Verein
by Rudi Heimann Jürgen FritzscheDie Sicherheit von Kindern im Zusammenhang mit dem Schutz vor Übergriffen und Gewalt ist ein Grundbedürfnis unserer Gesellschaft. Dieser Herausgeberband gibt einen präzisen Überblick zur Sozialerziehung von Kindern und Jugendlichen für alle Verantwortlichen, die im Rahmen ihrer beruflichen, ehrenamtlichen oder erzieherischen Tätigkeit die notwendigen Impulse setzen wollen und daran interessiert sind, wie sie diese erfolgreich vermitteln. Das Handbuch umfasst einen Grundlagen- und Präventionsteil.
Gewaltpräventive Einrichtungskulturen: Theorie, Empirie, Praxis (Sexuelle Gewalt und Pädagogik #9)
by Peter CaspariIn dem Buch werden günstige Voraussetzungen und Hindernisse für die Implementierung gewaltpräventiver Strukturen in pädagogischen Einrichtungen beschrieben. Der Begriff des „Schutzkonzepts“ wird dabei einer kritischen Betrachtung unterzogen. Als empirisch begründetes Präventionstool für pädagogische Einrichtungen wird das Instrument IPSE zur partizipativen Selbstevaluierung vorgestellt.
Gewissensinterpretationen im Alltag: Möglichkeiten für eine Operationalisierung autonomer und heteronomer Formen moralischer Bindungen
by Marcus HeiseFür die Sozialwissenschaften erscheint das Gewissen als hilfreiches Erklärungskonzept, weil es das Zusammenspiel von Emotionen, moralischen Standards und Prozessen der Selbstreflexion betont. Allerdings illustriert diese große Bandbreite an Phänomenen ebenso die Schwierigkeiten darin, das Gewissen auf theoretisch überzeugende Weise als ein empirisches Konzept abzugrenzen. Unter Rückgriff auf begriffsgeschichtliche Eckpunkte und kognitionstheoretische Ansätze postuliert der Autor, dass individuelle Gewissensinterpretationen zusammenhängende, proximale Konstituenten moralischer Bindungen darstellen und sie in diesem Sinne indikativ sind für die individuelle Verankerung von Moral. Die vorgeschlagene Operationalisierung autonomer und heteronomer Formen moralischer Bindungen, die induktiv auf der Grundlage typenbildender statistischer Verfahren entwickelt wird, bildet einen Kompromiss, der einerseits versucht, eine simplifizierende Dichotomie zwischen autonomen und heteronomen Formen moralischer Bindungen zu vermeiden, dabei aber gleichzeitig die Komplexität reduziert, in der sich Gewissenserfahrungen im Alltag bemerkbar machen. Das Verfahren der latenten Profilanalyse erlaubt entsprechende Zusammenhangsanalysen zwischen verschiedenen Gewissenstypen und sozialpsychologischen Konzepten im Rahmen eines integrierten, statistischen Modells.
Gewollte Kinderlosigkeit: Theoretische Einordnung und empirische Erkenntnisse zur Entscheidung von Frauen für ein Leben ohne Kinder
by Annkatrin Heuschkel Claudia RahnfeldKernanliegen des Buches ist es, das Thema der gewollten und ungewollten Kinderlosigkeit fachlich konkreter zu trennen und das Phänomen der gewollten Kinderlosigkeit empirisch zu untersetzen. Das individuelle Lebenskonzept wirkt sich gleichermaßen auf die Möglichkeiten der persönlichen Selbstverwirklichung sowie das System der Gesellschaft, deren Organisation und Funktion aus. Wissenschaftliche Studien zu den Ursachen gewollter Kinderlosigkeit sind bisher jedoch kaum vorhanden. Die quantitative Befragung von über 1000 Frauen, bei denen eine bewusste Entscheidung für ein Leben ohne Kinder vorliegt, schließt die bestehende Forschungslücke. Die vorliegende Untersuchung trägt zu mehr Transparenz, Akzeptanz sowie Sensibilität gegenüber den Individuen sowie deren Lebensform bei und erweitert die sozialwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse zu weiblicher Selbstbestimmung, modernen Lebensmodellen und alternativen Familienformen.
Gezählte Beachtung: Theorien des Populären
by Thomas HeckenTheorien des Populären setzen bisher oftmals bei sozialen Verhältnissen an (z.B. populäre Kultur als Kultur der machtlosen ‚niederen‘ Schichten) oder bestimmen das Populäre über die Merkmale der so bezeichneten Artefakte (etwa als Gegenteil der autonomen, komplexen ‚high art‘). Gemäß dem Diktum „Populär ist, was bei vielen Beachtung findet“ geht dieser Band einen anderen Weg – im Mittelpunkt stehen Dimensionen des Quantitativen. Populär ist demnach, was in relativ großer Zahl angeklickt, gekauft, rezipiert und dessen Häufigkeit in Top-Ten-Listen oder anderen Rankings behauptet wird. Im Lichte dieser Bestimmung werden bisherige Theorien des Populären diskutiert und neue Forschungsansätze erprobt.
Ghana 1957-1966: Politics of Institutional Dualism (Routledge Revivals)
by Benjamin AmonooFirst Published in 1981, Ghana 1957-1966 presents a comprehensive overview of the period when the Convention People’s Party (CPP) ruled Ghana under a one party system. It covers the intricate relationship which grew up between CPP and the Civil Service in Ghana at national, regional, district and local levels. Dr Amonoo argues that the process of adapting the civil service institutions to the purposes and orientation of the CPP leadership was never completed, and that the result was a duality of institutions in the governmental administrative machinery. One was politically conditioned and orientated to serve the purposes of the CPP leadership, while the other remained rigidly bureaucratic and distant from the party. Both arrangements created problems for the CPP regime and thus it was that Ghanaian government and politics during this period lacked a single sense of purpose. The author stresses that the empirical realities need to be fully accounted in any attempt to explain government and politics of the CPP period. This book is a must read for scholars and researchers of African studies, African history, and African politics.
Ghana - Culture Smart!
by Ian UtleyThe "Gateway to Africa," Ghana welcomes around a million tourists, aid workers, and business travelers a year--visitors who invariably come away with glowing reports of a fertile land, tropical scenic beauty, rich culture and traditions, and many first-rate tourist attractions. It is, however, the Ghanaians themselves who make the biggest impression. It is through their hospitality and love of peace that Ghana has a claim to be the safest and friendliest country in Africa. Ghanaians are welcoming to foreign guests, respectful to each other, strong followers of tradition, and have deep familial and communal values. For most visitors, Ghana comes as a wonderfully refreshing change, with valuable lessons to teach the outside world. Ghanaians like to do things their own way, and Ghana is a proud country that does not cater exclusively to tourists but rather expects them to fit in with the Ghanaian pace and way of life. Thus a visit to Ghana is not without its downsides, and visitors can experience frustrations and barriers. This revised and updated edition of Culture Smart! Ghana explains the complexities and nuances of Ghanaian society with clarity and humor. Visitors are expected to be sympathetic to their customs and beliefs, and their hosts will have no hesitation in saying, "We don't do that here," should a faux pas be made or a taboo broken. It is important to Ghanaians that they, and their guests, follow certain rules and codes of conduct. Culture Smart! Ghana describes these rules, explains where they come from, helps to disperse the frustrations and barriers, and offers the reader an opportunity to enjoy more fully all that this beautiful country has to offer.
Ghana’s Ashanti Pioneer Newspaper: Aim High, Strive Hard, Go Forward
by Jarvis L. HargroveThis book is a history of a prominent Ghanaian newspaper, the Ashanti Pioneer, as well as well-known figurers in the country itself. It utilizes the stories published in the newspaper to recount the history of the press, including its key individuals and groups, and to provide a unique perspective on the most important events in the Gold Coast during the mid-twentieth century, just prior to and after independence. This work will show that the Ashanti Pioneer influenced public opinion on several subjects. From its opening in 1939, the newspaper contributed greatly to the spread of newsworthy information throughout Ghana, formerly known as the Gold Coast, from Kumasi to the coastline and to its Northern borders. Readers interested in African History, independence movements and newspaper history will find this work insightful.
Ghazali's Politics in Context (Culture and Civilization in the Middle East)
by Yazeed SaidImam Abü Hamid al-Ghazalı is perhaps the most celebrated Muslim theologian of medieval Islam yet little attention has been paid to his personal theology. This book sets out to investigate the relationship between law and politics in the writings of Ghazalı and aims to establish the extent to which this relationship explains Ghazalı’s political theology. Articles concerned with Ghazalı’s political thought have invariably paid little attention to his theology and his thinking about God, neglecting to ask what role these have contributed to his definition of politics and political ethics. Here, the question of Ghazalı’s politics takes into account his thinking on God, knowledge, law, and the Koran, in addition to political systems and ethics. Yazeed Said puts forward the convincing argument that if Ghazalı’s legal and political epistemology provide a polemic analogous to his writings on philosophy, for which he is more famed, they would reveal to us a manifesto for an alternative order, concerned with a coherent definition of the community, or Ummah. This book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of the Middle East, political theology and Islamic studies.
The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam: A comparative study of the late medieval and early modern periods (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern History)
by Ali AnooshahrThe Ghazi Sultans were frontier holy-warrior kings of late medieval and early modern Islamic history. This book is a comparative study of three particular Ghazis in the Muslim world at that time, demonstrating the extent to which these men were influenced by the actions and writings of their predecessors in shaping strategy and the way in which they saw themselves. Using a broad range of Persian, Arabic and Turkish texts, the author offers new findings in the history of memory and self-fashioning, demonstrating thereby the value of intertextual approaches to historical and literary studies. The three main themes explored include the formation of the ideal of the Ghazi king in the eleventh century, the imitation thereof in fifteenth and early sixteenth century Anatolia and India, and the process of transmission of the relevant texts. By focusing on the philosophical questions of ‘becoming’ and ‘modelling’, Anooshahr has sought alternatives to historiographic approaches that only find facts, ideology, and legitimization in these texts. This book will be of interest to scholars specialising in Medieval and early modern Islamic history, Islamic literature, and the history of religion.
Ghazālī’s Epistemology: A Critical Study of Doubt and Certainty (Routledge Studies in Islamic Philosophy)
by Nabil Yasien MohamedFocusing on Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) – one of the foremost scholars and authorities in the Muslim world who is central to the Islamic intellectual tradition – this book embarks on a study of doubt (shakk) and certainty (yaqīn) in his epistemology. The book looks at Ghazālī’s attitude to philosophical demonstration and Sufism as a means to certainty. In early scholarship surrounding Ghazālī, he has often been blamed as the one who single-handedly offered the death-blow to philosophy in the Muslim world. In much of contemporary scholarship, Ghazālī is understood to prefer philosophy as the ultimate means to certainty, granting Sufism a secondary status. Hence, much of previous scholarship has either focused on Ghazālī as a Sufi or as a philosopher; this book takes a parallel approach, and acknowledges each discipline in its right place. It analyses Ghazālī’s approach to acquiring certainty, his methodological scepticism, his foundationalism, his attitude to authoritative instruction (taʿlim), and the place of philosophical demonstration and Sufism in his epistemology. Offering a systematic and comprehensive approach to Ghazālī’s epistemology, this book is a valuable resource for scholars of Islamic philosophy and Sufism in particular, and for educated readers of Islamic studies in general.
The Ghaznavid and Seljuk Turks: Poetry as a Source for Iranian History (Routledge Studies in the History of Iran and Turkey)
by G.E. TetleyThis new view on aspects of the Ghaznavid and Seljuk dynasties concentrates on the relationship of the panegyric poets Farrukhi Sistani (c.995-1032) and Mu'izzi (c.1045-1127) to the Ghaznavid and Seljuk rulers and dignitaries for whom they wrote. Dr Tetley investigates the reliability of the historical information which may be gathered from the poems, and draws comparisons with other historical sources. A solid and impressive work of learning, of interest to scholars in Oriental Studies, Medieval Literature, and History, The Ghaznavid and Seljuk Turks: Poetry as a Source for Iranian History, is the first extended English study of Mu'izzi it presents much new material concerning both this little-studied poet and also the better-known Farrukhi. Additionally, there is a valuable exploration of the relationship between Persians and Turks, a highly significant factor during the rule of the two dynasties.