Philip Carl Salzman

Philip Carl Salzman is professor of anthropology at McGill University.

Research

Salzman received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1972. He has done field research among pastoral peoples, in Baluchistan (Iran), Rajasthan (India), and Sardinia (Italy).[1]

He has a particular interest in the study of social change, and in "the ways in which particular groups have transformed over time." Perceiving change as "part of social organization rather than extraneous to it."[1]

Salzman is drawing attention for his book Culture and Conflict in the Middle East.[2]

He applies his expertise in the study of tribal societies to contemporary conflicts. He demonstrates "how the dual pattern of tribal self-rule and tyrannical centralism continues to define life in the Middle East, and using it to explain the region's most characteristic features, such as autocracy, political mercilessness, and economic stagnancy. It accounts [...] for [...] Islam's 'bloody borders' - the widespread hostility toward non-Muslims."[3]

"The Arab Middle East has remained largely a pre-modern society, governed by clan relationships and violent coercion. People... tend to trust only their relatives, and then only relative to their degree of closeness... A pervasive cult of honour requires that people support their own groups, violently if necessary, when conflict arises.

"What is missing in the Arab Middle East are the cultural tools for building an inclusive and united state. The cultural glue of the West and other successful modern societies --consisting of the rule of law and constitutionalism, which serve to regulate competition among unrelated groups -- is absent in the Arab world. The frame of reference in a tribalized society is always "my group vs. the other group." This system of "balanced opposition" is the structural alternative that stands in stubborn opposition to Western constitutionalism [...] Islam [...] has failed as a political organizing principle.."[4]

David Brooks describes Salzman's work as arguing that, "many Middle Eastern societies are tribal. The most salient structure is the local lineage group. National leaders do not make giant sacrifices on behalf of the nation because their higher loyalty is to the sect or clan. Order is achieved not by the top-down imposition of abstract law. Instead, order is achieved through fluid balance of power agreements between local groups." [5]

Public reception

Stanley Kurtz calls Culture and Conflict in the Middle East "a major event: the most penetrating, reliable, systematic, and theoretically sophisticated effort yet made to understand the Islamist challenge the United States is facing in cultural terms." [6]

Zerougui Abdelkader, an adjunct professor at American University, in reviewing the book states that "Some of Salzman’s observations about tribes in the Middle East are sound, but his overall thesis has little value. This book is flawed both empirically and logically... There may be more ethnic divisions and allegiances in New York City — with its Little Italy, Chinatown, and Black and Spanish Harlem and the Polish and Irish neighborhoods of Queens — than there are tribal and clan affiliations in Cairo and Tripoli." [7]

Publications

Books

Chapters and Articles

Articles Available Online

Notes

  1. 1 2 Entry with the McGill Universities website
  2. ↑ Scholar: Tribalism Rules in Iran, Iraq and Syria
  3. ↑ The Middle East's Tribal Affliction, Assyrian International News Agency, 1/22/2008
  4. ↑ Why Arabs Suffer, National Post, 01/11/2008
  5. ↑ "A Network of Truces," by David Brooks, New York Times, April 8, 2008
  6. ↑ PREVIEW: I and My Brother Against My Cousin
  7. ↑ ["Book Review Culture and Conflict in the Middle East" Middle East Policy Council]

External links

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