Book Description | "The Culture of Sectarianism is a thoughtful and exciting book. . . . that makes a difference in our understanding of Lebanese history, sectarianism, and national identity."-- "Middle East Journal"
"A fine book . . . Historians of India and the Middle East have often insisted that sectarianism is a creation of modern colonialism, tending to view it as a distortion of secular nationalism. Makdisi's work challenges them on these issues in its call for the study of sectarianism, not as the underbelly of nationalism, but as a modern form of knowledge and sensibility that has spawned a specific cultural outlook."-- "Journal of Interdisciplinary History"
"This work is a meticulous deconstruction of sectarianism as a discourse spawned by a particular historic conjecture--Ottoman reform in the age of European domination--in and around the tiny peripheral society of 19th-century Mount Lebanon. It is also an impassioned insistence not only on the historic but also the moral urgency of recognizing the contingency of, and the human agency in, the emergence of sectarianism and an invitation for hope in a Lebanese future that might yet dare to embrace an alternative modernity. Makdisi's book is not only illuminated by the scholar's insight; it is also animated by empathy for his subject matter and a talent that brings local society and its mountainous vistas vividly to the mind's eye."-- "International Journal of Middle East Studies"
"Unique in style, analysis and conclusions . . . [and] well researched and well written. Not only does it use narratives, among other things, to reconstruct the history of sectarian clashes that befell Mount Lebanon between 1940 and 1960, but it is a history told in a narrative style."-- "Middle Eastern Studies" |