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The Arab Mind is a non-fiction cultural psychology book by Raphael Patai, who also wrote The Jewish Mind. It was first published in 1973, and later revised in 1983. An update (Patai has since died) is planned for 2007.
The book advocates a tribal-group-survival explanation for the driving factors behind Arab culture.
The book is widely dismissed as being essentialist, reductionist, and unscientific, with
" methodology...itself based on a fatally flawed set of assumptions -- most importantly, that there is one entirely homogenous Arab culture, derived from nomadic Bedouin culture. This ignores both the diversity and history of a people and civilization that extends across dozens of countries, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, and the deeply rooted Arab culture of cities and agricultural communities."
Contemporary cultural anthropologists have described the book as archaic and dated, as relic of "a bygone era of scholarship" that can "no longer be taken seriously"
As such, it is often considered a classic example of "Orientalist" scholarship; indeed, Patai is criticized in passing at several points in Edward Said's seminal study on the subject, Orientalism.
Contents
Caution: This book was last revised in 1983
Along with prefaces, a conclusion and a postscript, the book contains 16 chapters including Arab child-rearing practices, three chapters on Bedouin influences and values, Arab language, Arab art, sexual honor/repression/freedom/hospitality/outlets, Islam's impact, unity and conflict and conflict resolution, and Westernization. A four-page comparison to Spanish America is made in Appendix II.
The Foreword is by Norvell B. DeAtkine, Director of Middle East Studies at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg.
See also
- Anti-Arabism
- Bedouins
- Essentialism
- Orientalism
- Racialism
- Scientific racism
- The Bookseller of Kabul (in Pakistan)
- Tales from the Expat Harem (in Turkey)
External links
- "The Arab Mind Revisited" by Col. Norvell B. De Atkine (ret.), an updated foreword to the book
- "Inside The Arab Mind" by Lee Smith, Slate (magazine)
- "Misreading 'The Arab Mind'" by Emram Qureshi, The Boston Globe
- "Its best use is as a doorstop" by Brian Whitaker, The Guardian
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