There is no escaping the Jerusalem of the religious imagination. Not once but three times holy, its overwhelming spiritual significance looms large over the city’s complex urban landscape and the diurnal rhythms and struggles that make up its earthbound existence. Nonetheless, writes Paola Caridi, in this intimate and hard-hitting portrayal of the city, it is possible to close one’s eyes and, “like the blind listening to sounds,” discern the conflict and plurality of belonging that mark out the city’s secular character. Jerusalem without God leads the reader through the streets, malls, suburbs, traffic jams, and squares of Jerusalem’s present moment, into the daily lives of the men and women who inhabit it. Caridi brings contemporary Jerusalem alive by describing it as a place of sights and senses, sounds and smells, but she also shows us a city riven by the harsh asymmetry of power and control embodied in its lines, limits, walls, and borders. She explores a cruel city, where Israeli and Palestinian civilians sometimes spend hours in the same supermarkets, only to return to the confines of their respective districts, invisible to each other; a city memorable for its ancient stones and shimmering sunsets but dotted with Israeli checkpoints, “postmodern drawbridges,” that control the movement of people, ideas, and potential attackers. Describing Jerusalem through the lenses of urban planners and politicians, anthropologists and archaeologists, advertisers and scholars, Jerusalem without God reveals a city that is as diverse as it is complex, and ultimately, argues its author, one whose destiny cannot be tied to any single religious faith, tradition, or political ideology.
Jerusalem without God
Portrait of a Cruel City
Paola Caridi
9 August 2017
144 pp.
15X23cm
ISBN 9789774168185
For sale worldwide
12.99
Related products
Copts at the Crossroads
The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Egypt
Mariz TadrosIn the light of the escalation of sectarian tensions during and after Mubarak’s reign, the predicament of the Arab world’s largest religious minority, the Copts, has come to the forefront. This book poses such questions as why there has been a mass exodus of Copts from Egypt, and how this relates to other religious minorities in the Arab region; why it is that sectarian violence increased during and after the 2011 Revolution, which epitomized the highest degree of national unity since 1919; and how the new configuration of power has influenced the extent to which a vision of a political order is being based on the principles of inclusive democracy. The book examines the relations among the state, the Church, Coptic citizenry, and civil and political societies against the backdrop of the increasing diversification of actors, the change of political leadership in the country, and the transformations occurring in the region. An informative historical background is provided, and new fieldwork and statistical data inform a thoughtful exploration of what it takes to build an inclusive democracy in post-Mubarak Egypt.
...read more
Paperback
320 pp.15X23cm
24.95
Anthropology in Egypt, 1900–67: Culture, Function, and Reform
Cairo Papers Vol. 33, No. 2
Nicholas S. HopkinsAnthropology as a discipline came to Egypt around 1900, as foreign anthropologists reported home on the culture they found. Gradually the intellectual approach was influenced by the functionalist school, stressing that a society consists of interlocking parts. As Egyptians took the lead in anthropology, in the 1930s, the discipline entered into the debate about the need to reform Egyptian society and culture especially in the rural areas, against a general background of functionalism. This approach dominated through the 1960s, when there was a break in Egypt because of the Six-Day War and in world anthropology because of the emergence of new intellectual models. This study traces the evolution of anthropology in Egypt through the stories of its practitioners such as Blackman, Galal, Evans-Pritchard, Hocart, Abbas Ammar, Hamid Ammar, Berque, Abou Zeid, el Hamamsy, Uways, and their contemporaries, showing their challenges and accomplishments.
...read more
Paperback
180 pp.14.2X21.6cm
14.95
Bedouins by the Lake
Environment, Change, and Sustainability in Southern Egypt
Ahmed BelalJohn Briggs
Joanne Sharp
Irina Springuel
Sustainable development and environmental change have become two of the watchwords of the new century. But what do they mean for ordinary people living in some of the harshest environments in the world where survival is the driving force? This book sets out to examine these issues and how they affect, and are affected by, Bedouin communities living in the arid areas of the Nubian Desert in southeastern Egypt. Written by a joint Egyptian, Russian, and British research team, this book seeks to examine how the Bedouin of this area have coped with the environmental changes brought about after the construction of the Aswan High Dam and resulting formation of Lake Nasser. After documenting the nature of these changes, the authors show the practical and strategic ways in which the Bedouin have responded by adapting both their use of environmental resources and the social and economic dimensions of their community. Bedouins by the Lake argues that people in these communities are active agents of change and must not be seen as passive victims. For them, sustainable development and environmental change are not abstract academic debates, but real-life, everyday issues around which they must organize their lives.
...read more
Hardbound
200 pp.20 illus., 17 maps
15X23cm
19.95
Creating Families Across Boundaries: A Case Study of Romanian–Egyptian Mixed Marriages
Cairo Papers Vol. 28, No. 1
Ana VineaBased on unstructured interviews with thirteen Romanian–Egyptian couples presently living in Cairo, this study focuses on three interrelated aspects of these mixed marriages: the contexts that allowed the formation of the mixed families; the practices in which the couples engage in terms of household organization, gender relations, and kinship; and the role of religion in the lives of the mixed couples and how both the men and women position themselves in this regard. Cairo Papers Vol. 28, No. 1
...read more
Paperback
144 pp.14X21cm
19.95