The Arab World Society, Culture, and State By Halim Barakat. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, 348 pp.

Abstract

This book has an ambitious and comprehensive goal: to analyze
the degenerate contemporary condition of the Arab nation and then
present a “theory of action,” a vision to transcend the current state of
decline and continue the process of nahdah. Barakat’s proposed
approach to the analysis of Arab society is one that he characterizes as
dynamic (treating society as changing rather than static), dialectical
(emphasizing social contradictions and class struggle), and critical
(aimed at transforming the status quo). He treats the Arab world as a
single unit rather than as a number of nation-states. The emphasis on
society rather than political entity does not negate his cognizance that
the Arab world has the potential for both unity and divisiveness.
Barakat arranges his analysis into three sections: Arab identity and
issues of diversity and integration, social structures and institutions
(i.e., family, social classes, religion, and Arab politics), and the
dynamics of Arab culture.
In his diagnosis of the Arab world’s maladies, Barakat offers
interesting and useful insights. In making room for these insights, he
blasts orientalist discourse for its “static and mosaic’’ portrait of the
Arab world and presents a more cogent analysis of Arab reality. In
fact, most orientalists do not acknowledge the existence of the Arab
world, but speak rather of a “Middle East” that contains a dizzying
array of religious, ethnic, and linguistic groups. They characterize the
Arab part of this region as hopelessly divided, culturally inferior, and
unable to modernize. Barakat points out that orientalists contradict
themselves when they speak of both the divided nature of Arab
society and the existence of an “Arab mind” or mentality. Moreover,
most orientalist “scholarship” explains resistance to change among
Arabs in terms of cultural attitudes, thereby ignoring the prevailing
relationship of dependency and the socioeconomic and political contexts
of this resistance. Such assertions “reveal the animosity toward
Arabs (and especially toward Muslims) that underlies many scholarly
pretensions” (p. 22). Barakat cleverly exposes the agenda behind such
scholarship: the justification of Israel’s existence and the preservation
of the status quo under Zionist and western hegemony ...