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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
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Summary
Summary
For over a decade the Middle East has monopolized news headlines in the West. Journalists and commentators regularly speculate that the region's turmoil may stem from the psychological momentum of its cultural traditions or of a "tribal" or "fatalistic" mentality. Yet few studies of the region's cultural psychology have provided a critical synthesis of psychological research on Middle Eastern societies. Drawing on autobiographies, literary works, ethnographic accounts, and life-history interviews, The Middle East: A Cultural Psychology, offers the first comprehensive summary of psychological writings on the region, reviewing works by psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists that have been written in English, Arabic, and French. Rejecting stereotypical descriptions of the "Arab mind" or "Muslim mentality,' Gary Gregg adopts a life-span- development framework, examining influences on development in infancy, early childhood, late childhood, and adolescence as well as on identity formation in early and mature adulthood. He views patterns of development in the context of recent work in cultural psychology, and compares Middle Eastern patterns less with Western middle class norms than with those described for the region's neighbors: Hindu India, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Mediterranean shore of Europe. The research presented in this volume overwhelmingly suggests that the region's strife stems much less from a stubborn adherence to tradition and resistance to modernity than from widespread frustration with broken promises of modernization--with the slow and halting pace of economic progress and democratization. A sophisticated account of the Middle East's cultural psychology, The Middle East provides students, researchers, policy-makers, and all those interested in the culture and psychology of the region with invaluable insight into the lives, families, and social relationships of Middle Easterners as they struggle to reconcile the lure of Westernized life-styles with traditional values.
Author Notes
After receiving a Ph.D. in personality psychology from the University of Michigan, Gary Gregg spent five years in southern Morocco, conducting ethnographic research on the partly nomadic Imeghrane confederation in the High Atlas-Dades Valley region, and then a Fulbright- and NSF-sponsored study of identity development among young adults
Reviews 1
Choice Review
Since the Middle East is politically and intellectually perplexing, examining the region from a psychological perspective provides benefits to scholars and policy experts alike. This book repays multiple readings with academic and practical rewards. Gregg (Kalamazoo College) defines the Middle East as a cultural area, from Turkey to Sudan and Morocco to Pakistan, marked by nomadism, peasant agriculture, and urban commerce infused by Arab culture and Islam. As interesting as the data he examines is his dynamic theory of personality, which focuses on developmental periods that display transitions in emotions, relationships, and self-concepts. After examining Western understandings of the Arab-Muslim world (tribal mentality, code of honor, fatalism, tradition above modernity, and a strain of fanaticism in Arab culture), Gregg discusses the complex and variable links between honor and Islam. He then traces the way persons develop basic emotions and motivations as "core selves" that persist from childhood through adolescence and adulthood. Scholars and students alike should read this book for its solid results, conceptual clarity, theoretical sophistication, quality of research, and the familiarity with scientific and anthropological literature in Arabic that it displays. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers. L. J. Alderink emeritus, Concordia College
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. 3 |
| Part I Cultural Context of Development | |
| 1 Misunderstandings | p. 13 |
| 2 The Social Ecology of Psychological Development | p. 44 |
| 3 Honor and Islam: Shaping Emotions, Traits, and Selves | p. 90 |
| Part II Periods of Psychological Development | |
| Introduction to Part II | p. 136 |
| 4 Childbirth and Infant Care | p. 153 |
| 5 Early Childhood | p. 179 |
| 6 Late Childhood | p. 212 |
| 7 Adolescence | p. 252 |
| 8 Early Adulthood and Identity | p. 288 |
| 9 Mature Adulthood | p. 325 |
| 10 Patterns and Lives: Development Through the Life-Span | p. 359 |
| Afterword: A Research Agenda | p. 369 |
| Notes | p. 379 |
| References | p. 421 |
| Index | p. 451 |
