Theory, politics, and the Arab world : critical responses / edited by Hisham Sharabi.

"The papers were presented at a faculty study group held at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, during the academic year 1987-88"--Pref.

"Published in cooperation with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University"--T.p verso.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. The Scholarly Point of View: Politics, Perspective, Paradigm, Hisham Sharabi 2. Policy-Making and Theory Building: American Political Science and the Islamic Middle East, Lisa Abu-Lughod 3. Anthropology's Orient: The Boundaries of Theory on the Arab World, Halim Barakat 4. Beyond the Always and the Never: A Critique of Social-Psychological Interpretations of Arab Society and Culture, Halim Barakat 5. The Contemporary Sociology of the Middle East: An Assessment, Samih Farsoun and Lisa Hajjar 6. Taming the West: Trends in the Writing of Modern Arab Social History in Anglophone Academia, Judith E. Tucker 7. Studies of Anglo-American Political Economy: Democracy, Orientalism and the Left, Peter Gran.

Challenging established thinking about the Middle East, and informed by post-modern, neo-Marxist and feminist theory, these essays argue that the political concerns of the West and stereotypical ways of viewing Islam have influenced the way the Arabs have been treated in Western thinking