This doctoral research thesis aims to provide a comprehensive depiction of contemporary spiritual engagement outside of religious tradition. Existing research is primarily contextualized within the areas of sociology and religious studies, and an in-depth psychological evaluatio…
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This dissertation examines women’s lives in a rapidly urbanizing rural community in Southern Pakistan to understand their responses to modernity in developing societies. Applying a mixed-methods approach, socio-demographic data is collected and contrasted with oral history and p…
Scholarship on Jamal ad-Din Al Afghani focuses on the apparent contradiction in his writings between those addressed to a European audience and those addressed to an Islamic audience. This paper resolves that contradiction by placing Al Afghani within the discourse of orientalis…
In recent decades, French historical scholarship has begun to re-examine the Second Empire, revising a period once interpreted in terms of failure and national tragedy to reveal a moment in which the roots of France’s “modern” republican polity emerged. Yet in spite of this re-e…
In contemporary Damascus, the modern oboe and an instrument known as its predecessor, the zurna, are heard on a daily basis as they continue to be employed in Syrian popular and folk music practices. After observing the pervasiveness of the sounds of these instruments in Syria, …
As one of the most visible signs of the modern world, the myriad of shopping places and types can be considered as a valuable lens through which to examine the contemporary city. In Alexandria, Egypt, the situation was particularly interesting because retail space was moving in …
This dissertation studies the promise of inclusion in the global information society for marginalized groups in India, a nation that represents a modular case for technology and modernization initiatives in the global South. There has been significant research on the problematic…
Over three and a half decades after his death, Ali Shariati (1933–1977) continues to occupy a major place in the ongoing academic and public debates about the relationship between Islam and modernity. Seldom, however, have commentators attended to the ways in which Shariati's in…
This study examines the performance of the longitudinal media exposure measures used in the 1958 Passing of Traditional Societies in the Middle East by Daniel Lerner and the 1966 cross-sectional study of Causes and Consequences of Individual Change in Six Developing Countries by…
This dissertation examines the history of merchant capitalism in the Southwest from the end of the Civil War to the beginnings of the Great Depression. Rather than studying one mercantile family only, it examines the variety of traders who lived in New Mexico and Arizona. The di…
This dissertation is concerned with Enlightenment in a colonial and postcolonial setting. Its premise is that minority is a fundamental category of experience in post-Enlightenment liberal societies. It attempts a genealogy of secularism in colonial and postcolonial South Asia b…
This dissertation discusses the role of Balinese women, especially in the tourism business. It begins by surveying studies of gender in Southeast Asia and Bali, many of which claimed to find a type of gender egalitarianism. Other scholars pointed out such characteristics as patr…
In this dissertation, based on 25 months of anthropological fieldwork, I examine activists and activism in Palestinian nongovernmental organizations in Israel. I concentrate on the ways organizations enable certain processes of self-identification based on activists' constructio…
Research presented in this dissertation focuses on the emergence, development, and dissolution of the Eurasianist ideology and movement in the 1920s. The invention of exiles from the former Russian Empire, Eurasianism may well be considered as one of the most original product of…
By refuting the commonplace depiction of Islamists' anti-Westernism as a "war against modernity," this dissertation argues that modernization and emulating the West are two distinct socio-economic and political processes. Its central question is whether Islamism can be regarded …
Professor and Playwright Dr. Tess Onwueme is a powerful literary voice focusing on the issues affecting women and families in Africa and its diaspora. With the publication of her first play, A Hen Too Soon (1983), a fresh voice was added to challenge traditional beliefs that end…
This dissertation is based on one year of anthropological field research in Paris and Tehran. It proposes an account of fashion production, commercialization, and consumption in the two cities. Starting from theories of subjectivation, this research analyzes the place of fashion…
By the end of the nineteenth century an apparatus of disciplining modernity had cleansed and regulated the performance of music in Western India. In a new cultural public sphere, an emerging bourgeoisie was presented Sanskritized entertainment in the form of Marathi music drama.…
Southernism was a racist, positivist, and near-colonial ideological discourse, developed in Italy after the unification of 1861. It described the alleged anthropological, religious, and cultural dissonance of Southerners from the rest of the newly formed nation. Reacting to this…