In Impasse of the Angels, Stefania Pandolfo takes the critical engagement of anthropology to its limit by presenting the relationship between observer and observed as one of interacting equals and mutually constituting subjects. Narrating, debating, and imagining, real characters take center stage and, through their act of speech, invent a people rather than stand for it. Exploring what it means to be a subject in the historical and poetic imagination of a Moroccan society, Impasse of the Angels listens to dissonant and often idiosyncratic voices elaborate the fractures, wounds, and contradictions of the Maghribi postcolonial present. Passionate and lyric, ironic and tragic, it is a transformative narrative experiment traveling the boundary of ethnography and fiction.

Introducing a new concept of urban space, Cities and Metaphors encourages a theoretical realignment of how the city is experienced, thought and discussed. In the context of ‘Islamic city’ studies, relying on reasoning and rational thinking has reduced descriptive, vivid features of the urban space into a generic scientific framework. Phenomenological characteristics have consequently been ignored rather than integrated into theoretical components. The book argues that this results from a lack of appropriate conceptual vocabulary in our global body of scholarly literature. It challenges existing theories, introduces and applies the concept of Hezar-tu (‘a thousand insides’) to rethink the spaces in historic cores of Fez, Isfahan and Tunis. This tool constructs a staging post towards a different articulation of urban space based on spatial, physical, virtual, symbolic and social edges and thresholds; nodes of sociospatial relationships; zones of containment; state of intermediacy; and, thus, a logic of ambiguity rather than determinacy. Presenting alternative narrations of paths through sequential discovery of spaces, this book brings the sensual features of urban space into the focus. The book finally shows that concepts derived from local contexts enable us to tailor our methods and theoretical structures to the idiosyncrasies of each city while retaining the global commonalities of all. Hence, in broader terms, it contributes to a growing awareness that urban studies should be more inclusive by bringing the diverse global contexts of cities into the body of our urban knowledge.

Today, almost a generation has passed since the Iran–Iraq war and the memory of it is set to diminish with each passing generation. The following questions emerge. Can we say that the gradual disappearance of war’s memory means that, increasingly, Iranians will see the Iran–Iraq war solely as an historical event? How can we defend or reject this idea? Today, with which elements and values should we look at the Iran–Iraq war memorials and ceremonies? To what extent will war museums and materials culture be influenced by these new values? In the period during and immediately after the Iran–Iraq war (1980-88), national bereavement and commemoration of martyrs was neither apparent in common state policy nor a social need. Even at the turn of the 21st century, anyone walking through Iranian cities, many of which had been the main scene of the bloody massacre and direct targets of the Iraqi Republican Guard, will have found traces of the terrible, almost unimaginable, human losses. However, today’s Iranians can see modern war memorials and monuments in many parts of the urban and rural landscape. Yet, at the same time, the changing landscape has separated Iranians from such remnants of the violence. It can be argued that many people, in their wish to look forward to a more hopeful future, do not wish to be reminded of this period in Iranian history. This book was originally published as a special issue of Visual Anthropology.

Through a dual engagement with the unconscious in psychoanalysis and Islamic theological-medical reasoning, Stefania Pandolfo’s unsettling and innovative book reflects on the maladies of the soul at a time of tremendous global upheaval. Drawing on in-depth historical research and testimonies of contemporary patients and therapists in Morocco, Knot of the Soul offers both an ethnographic journey through madness and contemporary formations of despair and a philosophical and theological exploration of the vicissitudes of the soul. Knot of the Soul moves from the experience of psychosis in psychiatric hospitals, to the visionary torments of the soul in poor urban neighborhoods, to the melancholy and religious imaginary of undocumented migration, culminating in the liturgical stage of the Qur’anic cure. Demonstrating how contemporary Islamic cures for madness address some of the core preoccupations of the psychoanalytic approach, she reveals how a religious and ethical relation to the “ordeal” of madness might actually allow for spiritual transformation. This sophisticated and evocative work illuminates new dimensions of psychoanalysis and the ethical imagination while also sensitively examining the collective psychic strife that so many communities endure today.

"A must-read for lawyers, business people, and other professionals wanting helpful negotiation advice." -Robert Mnookin, author of Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight "As social creatures, we are always trying to influence each other. Russell Korobkin’s book lays out five techniques that anyone can use to ensure you get what you want and leave enough on the table so others win, too. The book moves quickly, is full of examples, and provides step-by-step actionable instructions to help you negotiate anything. Everyone needs this book." -Paul J. Zak, author of Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies From leading negotiation expert Russell Korobkin comes this revelatory guide that distills the keys to bargaining into five simple-yet-sophisticated tools that anyone can master. The Five Tool Negotiator stands apart in a category saturated with breezy, self-help volumes as a compulsively readable and highly researched must-have for anyone looking to improve their bargaining skills. Nationally renowned UCLA law professor Russell Korobkin distills insights drawn from his decades of studying and teaching the keys to successful negotiations into five simple-yet-sophisticated strategies: Bargaining Zone Analysis * Persuasion * Deal Design * Power * and Fairness Norms. Incorporating lively anecdotes and fascinating social science experiments, Korobkin brings to life concepts from the disparate fields of psychology, economics, and game theory. Designed for use at both the flea market and in the C-suite, this game-changing, universal approach provides a formula that a savvy reader can implement immediately: · Tool #1, Bargaining Zone Analysis, enables you to identify the range of agreements that will benefit both parties. · Tool #2, Persuasion, convinces your counterpart that reaching an agreement will benefit them more than they otherwise would have recognized, making them willing to give you more. · Tool #3, Deal Design, structures the agreement in ways that increase its value to both parties. · Tool #4, Power, forces your counterpart to agree to terms relatively more desirable to you. · Tool #5, Fairness Norms, enables you to seal a bargain that both parties can feel good about. From negotiating the price of a used car to closing a multimillion-dollar merger, Korobkin meticulously explains how to answer the following questions that arise in every negotiation: Should you make the first offer or let the other side go first? What makes some proposals seem more fair than others? How do you decide whether to accept an offer, reject it, or make a counteroffer? When should you propose an unusual agreement structure? What steps can you take to make a bluff believable? Readers will come away with a roadmap to becoming a truly complete negotiator, able to understand bargaining as both a strategic and social activity. Intuitively accessible and reassuringly persuasive, The Five Tool Negotiator promises to be a classic in the art of bargaining strategy.

What is 'art' in the sense of the Islamic tradition? Mohammed Hamdouni Alami argues that Islamic art has historically been excluded from Western notions of art; that the Western aesthetic tradition's preoccupation with the human body, and the ban on the representation of the human body in Islam, has meant that Islamic and Western art have been perceived as inherently at odds. However, the move away from this 'anthropomorphic aesthetic' in Western art movements, such as modern abstract and constructivist painting, have presented the opportunity for new ways of viewing and evaluating Islamic art and architecture. This book questions the very idea of art predicated on the anthropocentric bias of classical art, and the corollary 'exclusion' of Islamic art from the status of art. It addresses a central question in post-classical aesthetic theory, in as much as the advent of modern abstract and constructivist painting have shown that art can be other than the representation of the human body; that art is not neutral aesthetic contemplation but it is fraught with power and violence; and that the presupposition of classical art was not a universal truth but the assumption of a specific cultural and historical set of practices and vocabularies. Based on close readings of classical Islamic literature, philosophy, poetry, medicine and theology, along with contemporary Western art theory, the author uncovers a specific Islamic theoretical vision of art and architecture based on poetic practice, politics, cosmology and desire. In particular it traces the effects of decoration and architectural planning on the human soul as well as the centrality of the gaze in this poetic view - in Arabic 'nazar'- while examining its surprising similarity to modern theories of the gaze. Through this double gesture, moving critically between two traditions, the author brings Islamic thought and aesthetics back into the realm of visibility, addressing the lack of recognition in comparison with other historical periods and traditions. This is an important step toward a critical analysis of the contemporary debate around the revival of Islamic architectural identity - a debate intricately embedded within opposing Islamic political and social projects throughout the world.

Orphans of Islam portrays the abject lives and 'excluded body' of abandoned and bastard children in contemporary Morocco, while critiquing the concept and practice of 'adoption,' which too often is considered a panacea. Through a close and historically grounded reading of legal, social, and cultural mechanisms of one predominantly Islamic country, Jamila Bargach shows how 'the surplus bastard body' is created by mainstream society. Written in part from the perspectives of the children and single mothers, intermittently from the view of 'adopting' families, and employing bastardy as a haunting and empowering motif with a potentially subversive edge, this ethnography is composed as an intricate, open-ended, and arabesque-like evocation of Moroccan society and its state institutions. It equally challenges received sociological and anthropological tropes and understandings of the Arab world.