E-Book Overview
In this thought-provoking book, Ali Mirsepassi explores the concept of modernity and exposes the Eurocentric prejudices underlying its development. He provides a new interpretation of Islamic Fundamentalism through a detailed analysis of the ideas of key Islamic intellectuals and argues that the Iranian Revolution was not a simple clash between modernity and tradition but an attempt to accommodate modernity within a sense of authentic Islamic identity and culture. He concludes by assessing the future of secularism and democracy in the Middle East in general, and in Iran in particular.
E-Book Content
Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization: Negotiating Modernity in Iran
Ali Mirsepassi
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
In this thought-provoking study, Ali Mirsepassi explores the concept of modernity, exposing the Eurocentric prejudices and hostility to nonWestern culture that have characterized its development. Focussing on the Iranian experience of modernity, he charts its political and intellectual history and develops a new interpretation of Islamic Fundamentalism through the detailed analysis of the ideas of key Islamic intellectuals. The author argues that the Iranian Revolution was not a simple clash between modernity and tradition but an attempt to accommodate modernity within a sense of authentic Islamic identity, culture and historical experience. He concludes by assessing the future of secularism and democracy in the Middle East in general, and in Iran in particular. A significant contribution to the literature on modernity, social change and Islamic Studies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of social theory and change, Middle Eastern Studies, Cultural Studies and many related areas. Ali Mirsepassi is professor of Sociology and Near Eastern Studies and dean for Multicultural Education at Hampshire College, Amherst. He has published extensively in journals such as Contemporary Sociology, Radical History and Social Text.
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Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization
Cambridge Cultural Social Studies Series editors: . , Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, and , Department of Sociology, University at Albany, State University of New York.
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