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Presents information about the geography, history, government, and economy of this country located on the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula and describes many aspects of the lifestyle of its people. ... Read more

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In a groundbreaking study of contemporary Arab political poetry, Flagg Miller provides a wide range of insights into the ways that modern media aesthetics are shaped by language and culture. Investigating a vibrant audio-recording industry in southern Yemen, The Moral Resonance of Arab Media shows how new forms of political activism emerge through sensory engagements with Arabic poetry and song. From the 1940s onward, a new cadre of political activists has used audio-recording technologies, especially the audiocassette, to redefine traditional Muslim authorship.

Cassette producers address conflicted views about the resurgence of tribalism by showing Yemenis how to adapt traditional mores toward more progressive and pluralistic aims. Skilled bards continue to perform orally marked tribal verse. As Miller demonstrates through an analysis of several centuries of changing media ecology, however, oral performance is anything but static. Much of the power of orality stems from its relation to writing, print, and audiovisual media that link tribal ideals with metropolitan and national discourses. Through an examination of the lives and works of individual poets, singers, and audiences, Moral Resonance shows how tribalism becomes a resource for critical reform when expressed in tropes of community, place, person, and history. Yemenis' use of audiocassettes turns such tropes into cultural resources for morally evaluating political liberalism.

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The history of the Jews of Yemen began a long time before the advent in 622 AD of Islam. Their political and social highpoint came during the last generations of the Judaized Yemenite Kingdom of Himyar (c. 400-525). This text contains 16 studies, ecompassing various aspects of Jewish existence in Yemen as a "dhimmi" (protected) religious minority under Islam: history, social and cultural relations with the Muslim environment, culture, literature and language. ... Read more

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An in-depth exploration of gender, health care training, and globalization.

Using the Hodeida Urban Primary Health Care Project as a case study, Marina de Regt offers a fascinating analysis of how development policies of the state interconnect with agendas of global donor organizations and the employment of women in the face of social disapproval and barriers to advancement. She demonstrates women's positive impact on the complex workings of Yemeni health institutions.

Her highly accessible writing blends keen observations steeped in personal experience with a thorough grounding in the theoretical literature. Through interviews and the experience of working directly with the women she writes about, de Regt gives voice to her subjects and offers an extraordinary portrait of the lives, emotions, and work of women dedicated to healing in a time of great political change. This vitally important work not only challenges preconceived notions about how health care is distributed in the Middle East but also questions the way women participate, facilitate, and resist the political change around them. ... Read more

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Yemen has recently come to the attention to global strategic planners.This report puts these executives on the fast track.Ten chapters provide: an overview of how to strategically access this important market, a discussion on economic fundamentals, marketing & distribution options, export and direct investment options, and full risk assessments (political, cultural, legal, human resources).Ample statistical benchmarks and comparative graphs are given. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Countries and Their Cultures, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 2261 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Covers the broad range of popular religious culture of the United States at the close of the twentieth century. Beliefs, practices, symbols, traditions, movements, organizations, and leaders from the many traditions in the pluralistic American community are represented. Also includes cults and phenomena that drew followers, such as Heaven's Gale and UFOs. ... Read more

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Chapters: Khat, a New Day in Old Sana'a, Al-Akhdam, Culture of Yemen. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 27. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Qat, or khat (Catha edulis, family Celastraceae; pronounced , ; Arabic: //; Ge'ez t; Somali: ), is a flowering plant native to tropical East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Qat contains the alkaloid called cathinone, an amphetamine-like stimulant which is said to cause excitement, loss of appetite and euphoria. In 1980 the World Health Organization classified qat as a drug of abuse that can produce mild to moderate psychological dependence. The plant has been targeted by anti-drug organizations like the DEA. It is a controlled or illegal substance in many countries, but is legal for sale and production in many others. Qat is a slow-growing shrub or tree that grows to between 1.5 metres and 20 metres tall, depending on region and rainfall, with evergreen leaves 510 cm long and 14 cm broad. The flowers are produced on short axillary cymes 48 cm long, each flower small, with five white petals. The fruit is an oblong three-valved capsule containing 13 seeds. Man consuming qat in Sana'a, Yemen, January 2009Catha edulis appears to have originated in East Africa. It now occurs in Arabia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, the Congo, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and South Africa. Sir Richard Burton suggested that qat was introduced to the Yemen from Ethiopia in the 15th century, although this probably occurred much earlier. The ancient Egyptians considered the qat plant a "divine food" which was capable of releasing humanity's divinity. The Egyptians used the plant for more than its stimulating effects; they used it as a metamorphic process and transcended into "apotheosis", intending to make the user god-like. The earliest known documented description o...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=56324 ... Read more

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Does political inclusion produce ideological moderation? Schwedler argues that examining political behaviour alone provides insufficient evidence of moderation because it leaves open the possibility that political actors might act as if they are moderate while harbouring radical agendas. Through a comparative study of the Islamic Action Front party in Jordan and the Islah party in Yemen, she argues that the IAF in Jordan has become more moderate through participation in pluralist political processes, while the Islah party has not. The variation is explained in part by internal group organization and decision-making processes, but particularly by the ways in which the IAF has been able to justify its new pluralist practices on Islamic terms while the Islah party has not. Based on nearly four years of field research in Jordan and Yemen, Schwedler contributes both an important theory of ideological moderation and detail about these powerful Islamist political parties. ... Read more

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This volume contains an important and detailed examination of the evolution of Sabaic language and culture, utilizing a number of previously unpublished pre-Islamic South Arabian inscriptions. ... Read more

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Yemen's archaeological treasures tell the story of a rich pre-Islamic civilisation of international significance. This is a definitive account of the evolution of a unique and complex culture. Since its publication in Italian in 1996, this work has gained an international reputation as a valuable work of scholarship. ... Read more

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In this first full-scale ethnographic study of Yemeni tribal poetry, Steven Caton reveals an astonishingly rich folkloric system where poetry is both a creation of art and a political and social act. Almost always spoken or chanted, Yemeni tribal poetry is cast in an idiom considered colloquial and "ungrammatical," yet admired for its wit and spontaneity. In Yemeni society, the poet has power over people.By eloquence the poet can stir or, if his poetic talents are truly outstanding, motivate an audience to do his bidding. Yemeni tribesmen think, in fact, that poetry's transformative effect is too essential not to use for pressing public issues.Drawing on his three years of field research in North Yemen, Caton illustrates the significance of poetry in Yemeni society by analyzing three verse genres and their use in weddings, war mediations, and political discourse on the state. Moreover, Caton provides the first anthropology of poetics. Challenging Western cultural assumptions that political poetry can rarely rise above doggerel, Caton develops a model of poetry as cultural practice. To compose a poem is to construct oneself as a peacemaker, as a warrior, as a Muslim. Thus the poet engages in constitutive social practice.Because of its highly interdisciplinary approach, this book will interest a wide range of readers including anthropologists, linguists, folklorists, literary critics, and scholars of Middle Eastern society, language, and culture. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Poetry Made Me
The number of books written on Napoleon or the American Civil War exceeds the imagination.Diets, dogs, and data processing are often found on the shelves too.But then there are topics nobody ever thinks of taking up until one brave soul decides to give it a try.Over time, anthropology has moved closer to literature, using literary analysis and discourse.Steven Caton has combined research and thought on disparate, sometimes esoteric topics into a complex and fascinating book on the place of poetry in tribal Yemeni culture.I would be lying if I said it were easy to read.I imagine that the number of people who NEED to read or who WANT to read Caton's book is exceedingly small.Yemen is not even central to the thoughts of most anthropologists in the world.Thus, not only do you need to care about Yemen, but you should also have some expertise in poetry, in aesthetics, in ideas about social construction of self, and in such intellectual exercises as cultural theory and the poetic process.Though I am an anthropologist with an amateur interest in Yemen, I still came to this book lacking most of these things.I found it mighty rough going.Some academics and a few graduate students are probably the majority of Caton's readership.Too bad.

PEAKS OF YEMEN I SUMMON is an extraordinarily interesting work.It's not simply an ethnography of poetry in Yemeni society, though it could be called that; it's an attempt to tackle larger issues about ways of becoming a Yemeni man, about poetry and identity, about poetry and cultural change.Yemeni tribespeople, at least 20 years ago, used poetry as a vital weapon in life's battles---for honor, prestige, and persuasion.At weddings, they used a form called balah to fight word battles, both humorous and real, over issues of prestige, and used the same poems to indicate proper Islamic and Yemeni tribal values to the young man being married. (women live in another sphere of poetry, not accessible to male researchers)Music accompanied balah, the verses were always impromptu and orality supreme, i.e. the poems were never, ever written down.Zamil, a second type of poem, was also chanted on politically-charged occasions, typically when two quarreling groups tried to iron things out.Qasidah, a third kind of poetry, was produced by individual poets alone and could be listened to on tape (in the 1980s), much more like poetry in our own society, but it also often concerned itself with politics.Poets lived precarious lives in a politically unstable society.The central government in San'a strives for control, the tribes struggle to maintain autonomy.Caton spends a lot of time explaining how poetry is intrinsic to political maneuvering and power politics in Yemeni society."The composition of poetry", he says, "is embedded in an extremely important political process---the dispute mediation---in which power, such as it exists in this system, must be achieved through persuasion."Caton states that he wishes to demonstrate poetry's centrality to the entire sociopolitical and cultural system.He wants to show how poetry in Yemen connects intimately to cultural belief and social practice, unlike in the West.I believe he succeeds brilliantly.You need patience to wade through the detail and the intricate loops of reasoning.If you persevere you will be rewarded with a lot of interesting insights and thought-provoking views.It's a high risk/high gain book.I wonder if anyone in Washington has even heard of it ?"Arbitration of disputes among Arabs" and "values in Islamic societies" are hardly useless topics these days ! ... Read more