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Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society, by Hisham Sharabi. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. 196 pages. $22.50 cloth.
Anyone who has worked or studied in the Middle East is bound to have been troubled by a fundamental question: why is it the Middle East seems to be such a mess? We have all studied various facets of specific Arab countries and are well aware of many of the unique characteristics and problems that beset that area. Yet the challenge comes in trying to advance some broader comprehensive thesis about the nature of Arab states, societies and economies that will explain phenomena such as the faltering sense of the nation state, distorted economies, the perpetuation of societies based on narrow sectarianism, the profusion of radical ideological movements and a history of blighted democracies. Hisham Sharabi addresses precisely these daunting questions, invoking the use of a broad range of many traditional and some not so traditional concepts and categories of analysis. As such his book is an important statement about Arab society and politics that is required reading for anyone concerned with grasping the overall character of Arab politics and society. This is not to say that all will agree with his broad conclusions, but through disagreement we are invited to forge our own explanations. Many of the basic theses of the book are in fact of relevance to studies of other areas of the Third World as well.
It is difficult to do justice to Sharabi's complex--and at times dense--line of argument in a few short paragraphs. His thesis essentially posits that the Arab world today is neither traditional nor modern in character, lying in the grip of a petty-bourgeois elite that has frustrated the emergence of either a full-blown bourgeois class--that would potentially introduce secular liberal democratic values--or a proletarian class that would...