Encounters with Islam

Lawrence Rosen is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. As both an anthropologist and a law scholar, he has worked for over forty years in the Arab world. Rosen was named to the first group of MacArthur Award Fellows and has been a visiting fellow at Oxford and Cambridge. He has written prolifically, and his previous publications include Law as Culture (2008) and Islam and the Rule of Justice (2018).

• Introduction: theme and variation in the encounter of cultures; Part I. Expressive: 1. Choice and chaos: the social meaning of an Islamic art form; Part II. Legal: 2. Tribal law as Islamic law; 3. The meaning of the gift; 4. Islam and the rule of law; Part III. Political: 5. Anthropological assumptions and the Afghan war; 6. Aging out? Youth in the aftermath of the Arab spring; 7. Missionaries and Muslims: Moroccan engagement with the western other; Part IV. Critical: 8. Clifford Geertz, observing Islam; 9. Edward Said's unfinished critique: Orientalism revisited.

Select Guide Rating