Publications:
Nordic Research on the Middle East
3

Ethnic encounter and culture change

Papers from the Third Nordic Conference on Middle Eastern Studies, Joensuu 19-22 June 1995

Edited by M'hammed Sabour and Knut S. Vikør

About this volume

This is the third in a series of volumes based on Middle Eastern studies from the Nordic countries of Scandinavia and Finland. It presents a selection of papers from the Nordic Middle East conference at Joensuu in the Finnish Karelia, 19-22 June 1995.

The theme of the conference was 'Ethnic encounter and culture change'. The Middle East, far from being a static and isolated region, has always been a cross-roads of influences from east, north and south. Rather than seeing 'culture' in the Middle East and North Africa as an eternal, autochthonous and frozen totality that dominates the other aspects of life and society, it should be regarded as an area of experience which, ever changing, is formed by influences from within and without, and which in turn interacts with other elements of the social fabric.

The object of this meeting was to throw some lights on how the 'encounter' between the Middle Eastern or Islamic and the ethnic 'Other' has influenced either or both parties. This was done by a number of case studies from various human and social sciences, and from various regions of the Middle East and North Africa. One important area for encounter is evidently the 'borderland', regions where the cultural influences from the 'centre'; Islamic or Arab, come into contact with new peoples who are foreign to this culture, but become influenced by them. Such cases are the West African 'discovery' of the Islamic Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and early Modern period, which led to profound changes in African society, but still on their own terms; and the later interaction between Middle Eastern Islamic, natively Turkic and colonial Russian influences in Central Asia and further north (Masonen, Landa, Dyakov, Hvoslef and partly Harviainen).

Another important aspect is where the 'Other' appears near the geographic centre of the Middle East, such as in the case of Israel. This is studied both in terms of how the power relationships of the definition of the 'Other' influence inter-ethnic contact (Lønning) and, more empirically, in how the linguistic contrast between the Arabic and Hebrew languages impact language learning of Palestinian Arabs (Shehadeh). This last study can easily read together with the study, from a totally different context, of how native language structures affect a European's order of learning Arabic (Nielsen).

On the other hand, culture contacts can relate to the Arabs abroad and define how they see their life situation at 'home' and in the diaspora (Sabour, Linjakumpu), or it can be an interface that takes place in a colonized or post-colonized society such as Algeria, where a cultural impact can be read from the structuring of the urban space or from the definition of women's participation in society (Bensmaïl, Kopola); processes of definition that may find echoes millennia into the past (LaBianca).

The volume also contains a few conference papers from outside the main theme, on economic and ecological change (Jiyad and the water studies of Hvidt and Wåhlin); while not dealing directly with 'ethnic encounter', their topics are also in a way affected by the general issue of cultural values and their formation.

Throughout these various articles runs a thread of dynamism and interaction between the various elements of social and human life, as well as a dynamic understanding of what constitutes an ethnic, cultural or social identity. It is in this dynamism that the contributions, in all their variety of thematic and geographic focus, find a common point of contact.

(From the Introduction)

Read the Contents page of this volume

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Publication date: Already published (1997)
viii, 270 pp.; £ 18, ISBN 185065-311-9.

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