Cultural Encounters in the Arab World: On Media, the Modern and the Everyday (Library of Modern Middle East Studies)

In this groundbreaking book, Tarik Sabry is seeking out the terrain for best understanding the experience of being modern in transitional societies. He adopts a dynamic, ethnographically based approach to the meanings of 'modernness' in the Arab context and, within a relational framework, focuses on structures of thought, everydayness and self-referentiality to explore the process of building a bridge that rejoins the 'modern' in Arab thought with the 'modern' in Arab lived experience. In bringing together modernity as a philosophical category with the bridging spaces of Arab everyday life, Sabry is offering fresh methods of comprehending the question of what it means to be modern in the Arab world today. -- Back cover Explores Experiences Of Being Modern In Arab Transitional Societies. On Encountering And Modernness -- Contemporary Arab Thought And The Struggle For Authenticity : Towards An Ontological Articulation Of The 'modern' -- Arab Popular Cultures And Everyday Life -- The Bridge And The Queue As Spaces Of Encountering -- Modernness As A Multiple Narrative-category : Encountering The West -- Still Searching For The Arab Present Cultural Tense : Arab Cultural Studies. Tarik Sabry. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Table of Content: Chapter 1: On Encountering and Modernness -- Chapter 2: Contemporary Arab Thought and the Struggle for Authenticity -- Chapter 3: Arab Popular Cultures and Everyday Life -- Chapter 4: The Bridge and the Queue as Spaces of Encountering -- Chapter 5: Modernness as Multiple Narrative-Category: Encountering the West -- Chapter 6: Still Searching for the Arab Present Cultural Tense: Arab Cultural Studies -- Chapter 7: Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index Bringing together modernity as a philosophical category with the bridging spaces of Arab everyday life, this title offers fresh methods of comprehending the question of what it means to be modern in the Arab world.