Social Research articles from September 2003

Social Research archives from September 2003

Editor's introduction.(Editorial)
September 22, 2003... For the past four years, Social Research has engaged in an international exploration into the subject of privacy by organizing three conferences dedicated to the subject. We took this--for us--unusual step of organizing multiple conferences on...

An introduction to the public and private debate in Islam.(Part I: public/private: the distinction)
September 22, 2003... THE separation of what is "private" from what is "public" may in some sense be as old as human existence itself. However, the escalating emphasis on the private domain, and the central concern for protecting that which is private from prying...

Boundaries and rights in Islamic law: introduction.(Part II: Islamic law: boundaries and rights)
September 22, 2003... THE terms "public" and "private" form a basic pair of categories in modern liberal society. It is central to the law, and crucial to the ways in which our liberties are protected. Our approval of other societies depends on the measure to which...

Apostasy as objective and depersonalized fact: two recent Egyptian court judgments.(Part II: Islamic law: boundaries and rights)
September 22, 2003... THE court judgments in the recent apostasy trials in the Arab world have brought about fundamental changes in the control of belief and religious affiliation that are directly related to the transformation Islamic law underwent when it became...

Property and the private in a Sharia System.(Part II: Islamic law: boundaries and rights)
September 22, 2003... I As we commonly employ it, the private-public distinction is a Western one, anchored in the history of the rise of modern states and societies and in the economic and legal transformation of Europe. As such, the private-public distinction...

Public and private as viewed through the work of the muhtasib.(Part II: Islamic law: boundaries and rights)
September 22, 2003... THE muhtasib (also called 'amil al-suq and sahib al-suq) was the inspector of public places and behavior in towns in the premodern Middle East and North Africa (and in some communities of Muslims elsewhere). * While the term muhtasib is usually...

The public and private in Saudi Arabia: restrictions on the powers of committees for ordering the good and forbidding the evil.(Part II: Islamic law: boundaries and rights)
September 22, 2003... IN this article I seek to shed light on how Islamic law controls invasions by the state into what we in the United States would call the "private sphere." I examine two disparate bodies of law for what they may say on this topic. The first is...

The Taliban, women, and the Hegelian private sphere *.(Part III: individual, family, community, and state)
September 22, 2003... THE society created by the Taliban in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 constantly evoked outrage and reactions of open-mouthed disbelief in the Western press. Even the ayatollahs in Tehran issued a statement condemning the Taliban for defaming...

The voluntary adoption of Islamic stigma symbols.(Part III: individual, family, community, and state)
September 22, 2003... MY aim in this paper is to privilege the realm of the personal and the emotional subcontinent of Islamic collective identity formation and the ways in which Islamic identity occurs through verbal communication and is transcribed in bodily...

The invasion of the private sphere in Iran.(Part III: individual, family, community, and state)
September 22, 2003... THE Islamic regime that governs Iran constantly violates the private domain of the Iranian citizen through religious and legal means. The intrusion of political power into the private lives of citizens is characteristic of totalitarian regimes....

Ethical formation and politics of individual autonomy in contemporary Egypt *.(Part III: individual, family, community, and state)
September 22, 2003... WITHIN the vast literature produced on contemporary Islam, Islamist movements have often been analyzed through the lens of identity politics. The increasing emphasis on Islamic forms of behavior among Muslims in the Middle East has been...

Media in the Islamic world: introduction *.(Part IV: media and information)(Editorial)
September 22, 2003... THE three papers in this section explore the media's role in shaping the public and private spheres in Islamic countries. Each paper approaches the issue from a different angle and each focuses upon somewhat distinct national and cultural...

Media and information: the case of Iran.(Part IV: media and information)
September 22, 2003... THE election of Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran in May 1997 launched what many of his supporters hoped would be the most ambitious attempt in the Islamic world to bridge the divide between the public and private spheres. In the years...

New media, new publics: reconfiguring the public sphere of Islam.(Part IV: media and information)
September 22, 2003... FOR well over a generation, the public sphere of Islam has been an arena of contest in which activists and militants brought forth challenges to traditional interpretative practices and authority to speak for Islam, especially to articulate its...

The new intra-Arab cultural space in form and content: the debates over an American "Letter".(Part IV: media and information)
September 22, 2003... Introduction ON November 24, 2002, a letter said to have been written by Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist network and the major figure in the global anti-American jihad, was published in the European press....

Privacy in literature and film: introduction.(Part V: representations of privacy in literature and film)
September 22, 2003... THE concept of privacy in the Muslim world is explored in this section through three case studies in film and literature. Our authors readily acknowledge that their examples of privately inspired artistic expressions have been constrained by...

It was in China, late one moonless night.(Part V: representations of privacy in literature and film)
September 22, 2003... Har keh shod mahram-e del dar haram e yar bemand. --Hafez PERPHAPS it should not be surprising that by far the most successful restoration of the erotic to the publicly camouflaged body, in the globally celebrated art of Shirin Neshat,...

The Quest for the "real" woman in the Iranian novel.(Part V: representations of privacy in literature and film)
September 22, 2003... SHAHRNUSH PARSIPUR'S novel, Tuba va Mana-ye Shah (Tuba and the Meaning of the Night) (1989), begins with series of interesting images. It opens at the end of the Qajar dynasty, at a time when Western thought and new ways of living directly...

A private reading of Andre Gide's public journal.(Part V: representations of privacy in literature and film)
September 22, 2003... WHEN I was eight, my mother gave me a diary with a lock and a key. It was made in Turkey in the early 1960s. The fact that this fancy notebook was intended as a "diary" at that time in Turkey was in itself interesting. Until I received my...