{"id":19,"date":"2011-10-03T17:35:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-03T17:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/?page_id=19"},"modified":"2025-01-17T15:20:43","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T15:20:43","slug":"publications","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/publications\/","title":{"rendered":"Books and Book Chapters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Putting Islam to Work:\u00a0 Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt<\/em> (Berkeley:\u00a0 University of California Press, 1998)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviews:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIn what amounts to a powerful argument for complexity over parsimony, Starrett challenges us to rethink basic assumptions, not only about the nature of political and religious contestation in Egypt, but about the reigning paradigms within which they are conventionally analyzed. Readers. . .cannot but be struck by the keen intelligence, subtlety, and insight that pervade Starrett’s book.\u201d Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Political Science Quarterly<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike most of the prevailing literature on this issue, Putting Islam to Work<\/em> offers refreshing, innovative, and provocative insights and analyses.\u201d Nadje Al-Ali, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cStarrett’s provocative discussion of the Egyptian case provides a framework for analyzing religious manifestations of modernity which reaches far beyond the confines of religious schooling, Egypt, and, indeed, Islam.\u201d Robert Launay, American Ethnologist<\/em><\/p>\n

“[A]n important contribution to modern scholarship. Although there is a very large literature on Islam in Egypt, particularly on aspects of Islamic radicalism in Egypt, this book is the first to conduct an in-depth analysis of the development of religious education in modern Egyptian public and private schools and the role education has played in molding a new Islamic ideology as well as reshaping Egyptian society. . .\u00a0 Starrett has given the richest and most thorough description of Islamic life in Egypt to date. . . The book\u2019s language is both eloquent and smooth, making it enjoyable and easy to read. Putting Islam to Work<\/em> is strongly recommended to anyone who wishes to understand Islam in the modern Muslim world.” Valerie J. Hoffman, Religion and the Arts<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cStarrett has cleared new analytical ground on which unorthodox and critically disorienting approaches to Islam can be developed. . . . Those still looking for new frameworks of ethnographic theory (and new methodologies for ethnographic practice) will find a wealth of them in Starrett’s book. Putting Islam to Work<\/em> contributes to an already vibrant literature on alternative forms of modernity . . . and it will serve as a practical guide to anthropologists who must work in settings defined not only by the peculiarities of place, but by historical processes . . . that are nowadays experienced, and can be apprehended analytically, only by way of mass mediation.\u201d Andrew Shryock, American Anthropologist<\/em><\/p>\n

Purchase Putting Islam to Work<\/em> from: <\/strong>http:\/\/www.ucpress.edu\/books\/pages\/7024.html<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>or from: <\/strong>http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Putting-Islam-Work-Transformation-Comparative\/dp\/0520209273<\/a><\/p>\n

Or fry your face off in front of your computer reading it for free online<\/strong> at: http:\/\/ark.cdlib.org\/ark:\/13030\/ft4q2nb3gp\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0*****<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Jewish Question Again<\/em>,<\/strong> edited by Joyce Dalsheim and Gregory Starrett. Published in November 2020 by\u00a0Prickly Paradigm Press, a new multi-authored volume with essays by Gil Anidjar, Jonathan Boyarin and Martin Land, Holly Case, and Gregory Starrett and Joyce Dalsheim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Excerpt<\/strong>:\u00a0 “We have always already lived in times of recurrence, but some of those times are especially striking. The return of authoritarian nationalism to political respectability, fresh waves of refugees turned away at border crossings or crowded into fenced encampments across the globe, and flashes of racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic violence which the Western democracies\u00a0 were supposed to have transcended; all of these appear as the unwelcome return of a series of rejected pasts.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0There is a sense of disbelief that certain ideas, practices, and policies have not been relegated to the dustbin of the past, but represent something like a \u201creturn of the repressed.\u201d Both the idea of return and the idea of repression lead us to ask again\u2014now, still\u2014about the ongoing relevance of the historical Jewish Question. That is, what is the place of \u201cthe Jew\u201d\u2014the minority, the relic, the rootless stranger, the exiled, the displaced, the immigrant, the diasporic\u2014within the boundaries of the polis?<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 While often equated with anti-Semitism, the Jewish Question was never exclusively about Jews. It was a contest over questions of faith and reason, loyalty to authority and community, the potential for human liberation, and the meaning and future of \u201cChristendom,\u201d \u201cEurope,\u201d and \u201cthe West,\u201d through a specific idiom of otherness. Here we explore these questions in the form of multiple fragments of conversations that intersect each other and fold back on themselves in multiple ways. None of us is at all finished with these issues. Thinking through the politics of their recurrence, therefore, is increasingly urgent.”\u00a0 \u00a0 From the Introduction<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Order the book here:<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/distributed\/J\/bo73418461.html<\/a><\/p>\n

*****<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Gregory Starrett, editors. Teaching Islam:\u00a0 Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East<\/em>.\u00a0 (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviews:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“An important contribution to both the sociology of education in the Middle East and to the wider academic discourse on the dynamics of religion and identity in the region…. The editors are to be congratulated for producing an illuminating and very well-organized
volume.”\u2014Erik S. Ohlander, MESA Bulletin<\/em><\/p>\n

“This is an important book…. The contributions here provide an interesting perspective on the dynamics of statecraft, religiously based challenges to local regimes, and contemporary
struggles to define legitimate forms of religious expression and practice.”\u2014Fida Adely, International Journal of Middle East Studies<\/em><\/p>\n

“Teaching Islam<\/em> offers many insights into the intersections of nationalism, religious instruction, and “policy interests” across the Middle East.”\u2014Andre Elias Mazawi, Middle East Journal<\/em><\/p>\n

“This book dispels a number of urban legends concerning the contents of Middle Eastern textbooks and the ability of these textbooks to shape the minds of young people. It should prove interesting to a number of readerships, not only within Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, but also in international relations and political science. It is strongly recommended, if not required, reading for journalists covering Middle Eastern affairs and, of course, for policy and decision makers.”–Daniel Birnstiel, British Journal of Middle East Studies<\/em><\/p>\n

Purchase Teaching Islam<\/em> from<\/strong>: http:\/\/www.rienner.com\/viewbook.cfm?BOOKID=1587&search=starrett<\/a><\/p>\n

or from: <\/strong>http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Teaching-Islam-Textbooks-Religion- Middle\/dp\/1588264505\/sr=1-5\/qid=1160591074\/ref=sr_1_5\/104-1094718-4458329?ie=UTF8&s=books<\/a><\/p>\n

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Or<\/strong>\u00a0buy the Indian version<\/strong> with the much prettier cover at:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vanguardbooks.com\/book\/teaching-islamtext-books-and-religion-in-the-middle-east\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a0*****<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Chapters in Edited Volumes:<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\"\"<\/a>Fida Adeley and Gregory Starrett<\/strong>, \u201cSchools, Skills, and Morals in the Contemporary Middle East<\/strong>,\u201d Chapter 21 in Bradley A. U. Levinson and Mica Pollock, eds, A Companion to the Anthropology of Education <\/em>(Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), pp. 349-367.<\/p>\n

EXCERPT<\/strong>:\u00a0 “This chapter reviews anthropological literature on religious education in the Middle
East, and discusses local moral debates about the proper form and content of contemporary schooling. We will examine some historical transformations in how both political elites and the small but growing ranks of the educated middle classes have thought about the nature of religious knowledge, as well as the impact of this process on public education projects that emerged in the late nineteenth century. We examine the role of state schools in\u00a0 producing and transmitting competing moral narratives, and in struggles over religious authority. A review of the literature points to the limits of state efforts to capture a position of moral authority, despite the cooptation of religious institutions and ideas by state actors. The anthropology of education and religion in the Middle\u00a0 East has been particularly illuminating in this respect, pointing to new conceptions of faith and unexpected transformations in religious traditions put into motion by contemporary schooling.”<\/p>\n

See the\u00a0 Levinson and Pollock Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

Purchase A Companion to the Anthropology of Education<\/em> at: <\/strong>http:\/\/www.wiley.com\/WileyCDA\/WileyTitle\/productCd-1405190051.html<\/a><\/p>\n

or at: http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Companion-Anthropology-Education-Blackwell-Companions\/dp\/1405190051<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0*****<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Gregory Starrett<\/strong>, \u201cInstitutionalizing <\/strong>Charisma: Comparative Perspectives on the Promise of Higher Education<\/strong>,\u201d in Christopher Davidson and Peter Mackenzie Smith, eds., University Education in the GCC States: Alternative Approaches to Building Economies, Societies and Nations<\/em>. London: Saqi Books, 2009, pp. 73-91.<\/p>\n

EXCERPT<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0“For more than a century now, public discussion of education in the Middle East has been marked by two opposite idioms: that of hope and transformation, and that of crisis and failure.\u00a0 These idioms tend not to follow one another cyclically as new and improved educational programs are implemented successfully and then become outmoded with time, the sort of growth-and-decay model Ibn Khaldun might have outlined had he worked for an education ministry.\u00a0 Instead, they persist . . .as binary alternatives, both expressing and generating nearly constant anxiety and dissatisfaction with the current state of education, no matter what it looks like.\u00a0 The discourse of crisis and failure accuses schools, along with the whole of the educational establishment, of inefficiency, mismanagement, willful disregard of the public good, and misdirection of effort.\u00a0 Schools are accused either of being hopelessly tradition-bound and out of step with the times; or, conversely, of bending to every new fad and fashion, habitually failing to find \u201cwhat works\u201d for students, for businesses, for sponsors, and for society at large.\u00a0 In either case, schools never seem quite capable of providing an appropriate body of knowledge and skills to their students (or their \u201cproducts,\u201d in the words of contemporary planners), or appropriate \u201cproducts\u201d to the market.<\/p>\n

The discourse of hope feeds on the discourse of failure by promising that just one more set
of modifications\u2013training more science and math teachers, or providing more or less classroom time for religion, or writing new history textbooks, or more emphasis on music and art, or defunding music and art programs in favor of engineering and business management, or better assessment of student learning, or regional quality assurance programs, or more emphasis on faculty research with better laboratories, or more emphasis on student research and foreign study, or better critical thinking skills\u2013will create . . . .both citizens and nations able to do something political leaders call \u201ccompeting in the knowledge-based global economy of the twenty-first century.\u201d”<\/p>\n

Purchase University Education in the GCC <\/em><\/strong>at: https:\/\/saqibooks.com\/books\/saqi\/higher-education-in-the-gulf-states\/<\/p>\n

or at<\/strong>:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Higher-Education-Gulf-States-Economics\/dp\/0863566979<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0*****<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Gregory Starrett, “When\u00a0 Theory is Data:\u00a0 Coming to Terms with \u2018Culture\u2019 as a Way of Life,”<\/strong> chapter\u00a012 in Melissa J. Brown, ed., Explaining\u00a0 Culture Scientifically<\/em> (University\u00a0of Washington Press, 2008).<\/p>\n

EXCERPT<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0“If concepts like culture. . .[have become so]\u00a0successful. . .that we have lost control over their use, we should recognize this as an interesting anthropological problem in itself.\u00a0 It is what these concepts were designed to do
(for how to spread enlightenment without spreading enlightening concepts?)\u00a0 What does it mean for anthropology when our analytical vocabulary is fastened onto by people who deploy it to build their
own institutions, goals, understandings, and experiences of the world?\u00a0 Can we use these concepts to understand institutions organized around these concepts themselves?\u00a0 In exploring this issue, I will use evidence from the Middle East to look at the careers of
two cultural objects:\u00a0 the practice of mass popular schooling, and the idea of “function.”\u00a0 The spread of the idea and the transformation of local and national societies wrought by schooling were parts of an integrated process. . . . I will argue that contemporary unease about the concept of culture flows from the fact that life and thought among the global middle classes have become so saturated with social science perspectives that we have lost sight of the fact that these perspectives are cultural ones, ones that we hold and use to help organize our own lives.”<\/p>\n

See the Explaining Culture<\/em> Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy Explaining\u00a0Culture Scientifically<\/em> at:\u00a0 <\/strong>http:\/\/www.washington.edu\/uwpress\/search\/books\/BROCUL.html<\/a><\/p>\n

or at: <\/strong>http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Explaining-Culture-Scientifically-Melissa-Brown\/dp\/0295987898<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0*****<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Gregory Starrett<\/strong>, \u201cIslam after Empire: Turkey\u00a0<\/strong>and the Arab Middle East<\/strong>,\u201d chapter 2 in Michael Feener, ed., Islam in World\u00a0Cultures: Comparative Perspectives<\/em>.\u00a0 Santa Barbara, CA:\u00a0 ABC-CLIO, 2004, pp. 41-74.<\/p>\n

EXCERPT<\/strong>:\u00a0 “God, the Qur\u2019an says, is closer to you than your jugular vein (50:16). That immanent presence impels pious Muslims to think seriously about God\u2019s intentions for individuals and for humanity as a whole, about his expectations of thought and\u00a0conduct, passions and plans. Since the late eighteenth century, and increasingly in the years leading up to the twenty-first century, Islam\u2019s place in people\u2019s daily lives has been in a state of accelerating change. As are our own lives, the lives of Muslims around the world are increasingly defined by global markets, instant communication, changing family forms, and the continued pressures of economic inequality, the growth and decay of empires, and the specters of genocide and cultural dissolution. Because of the facts of geography and history, all these things are felt more keenly today in the Middle East than they are in the United States. But crisis can bring creativity, as it often does in periods of global integration, whether Greek or Arab, Mongol or Ottoman. The crisis of what we call \u201cmodernity\u201d has meant, for Muslims, thinking more and more about the rights and responsibilities of common people\u2014and not just of the traditional elites of wealth or education or political power\u2014in forging, nurturing, and protecting Islamic society. This is the element of Islam in the contemporary Middle East that will be emphasized in this chapter.”<\/p>\n

Buy Islam in World Cultures<\/em>
at\u00a0http:\/\/www.abc-clio.com\/product.aspx?isbn=9781576075166<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0*****<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Gregory Starrett<\/strong>, \u201cMuslim Identities and the Great\u00a0Chain of Buying<\/strong>,\u201d in Dale F. Eickelman and Jon Anderson, eds., New Media and\u00a0the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere, <\/em>2nd<\/sup> edition.\u00a0 Bloomington:\u00a0 Indiana\u00a0University Press, 2003,\u00a0pp. <\/strong>80-101.<\/p>\n

EXCERPT<\/strong>:\u00a0 “Among Muslim groups. . .technological and market-driven changes in information distribution have very diverse effects. It has been argued that . . .obsolescence has to some extent. . .begun to overtake traditionally trained indigenous religious intellectuals in urban areas of the Middle East as growing literacy rates, publishing, and changing discursive practices bring growing numbers of literate citizens into public debates on religious, social, and political questions. But for African-American Muslims, who have not experienced Islam in the context of comprehensive insititutional orthodoxies, issues of counter-hegemony currently so important in the Arab world. . .are often less significant than creating a Muslim identity in the first place through forming a community with its own body of knowledge and interpretive traditions. . . .For African-American Muslims, links to [the
market in intellectual commodities] are forged primarily at the household level, as religious media\u2014particularly books and videotapes\u2014are purchased with personal funds and shared with other community members in the mosque, which serves as a public forum where the use and interpretation of these commodities are negotiated. At the same time, the gradual construction of an inventory of communally held intellectual commodities and practices is shaped by multiple links to a wide range of non-Islamic media.”<\/p>\n

See the New Media<\/em> Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy New Media in the Muslim World<\/em>\u00a0at:<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/iupress.org\/9780253216052\/new-media-in-the-muslim-world-second-edition\/<\/a><\/p>\n

or at: <\/strong>http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/New-Media-Muslim-World-Emerging\/dp\/0253216052\/sr=1-1\/qid=1160677147\/ref=sr_1_1\/104-1094718-4458329?ie=UTF8&s=books<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0*****<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Gregory Starrett<\/strong>, \u201cThe Anthropology of Islam<\/strong>,\u201d in\u00a0 Steven Glazier, ed., Anthropology of Religion:\u00a0 A Handbook<\/em>.\u00a0 Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1997, pp.\u00a0 279-303.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>
Buy Anthropology of Religion\u00a0<\/em>at: http:\/\/www.abc-clio.com\/product.aspx?id=2147493369<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Truth in advertising<\/strong> here: as perfectly brilliant and comprehensive as this\u00a0review of the literature\u00a0was when it was written in 1994 (a “very thorough discussion of virtually every important work produced on the subject in question” [American Anthropologist<\/em> 100(1):206], which “raises the question of how one ‘religion’ can be localized and accommodated in so many different ways” [American Ethnologist<\/em> 25(3):512]), it was getting yellow around the edges by the time the book was published in 1997, and it’s utterly out of date now. Anthropological research on Islam has\u00a0experienced an extraordinary\u00a0flowering over the last twenty years. More anthropologists are writing about Islam, and their work is becoming more and more sophisticated.\u00a0The complication is that, as in every other field of endeavor, fashions come and go, and memories are very short. It’s\u00a0always worth looking back at what were the engaging questions for a past generation, and comparing them to what excites us intellectually now.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Putting Islam to Work:\u00a0 Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt (Berkeley:\u00a0 University of California Press, 1998) Reviews: \u201cIn what amounts to a powerful argument for complexity over parsimony, Starrett challenges us to rethink basic assumptions, not only about the nature of political and religious contestation in Egypt, but about the reigning paradigms within which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":558,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P69uQY-j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/558"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":71,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1377,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions\/1377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/gregory-starrett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}