Meaning and Society in the Near East: Examples from the Black Sea Turks and the Levantine Arabs (I)

Abstract

At the turn of the century the societies of the Near East provided materials for some of the most pressing anthropological and sociological issues of the day. W. Robertson Smith, Marcel Mauss, and Max Weber, to name only one representative of three national traditions, all devoted considerable attention to Semitic societies. Since that time, fewer sociologists and anthropologists have had a background in Semitic languages and literatures, and new materials from outside the classical and Semitic cultures have seemed to offer fresher, more challenging problems. In recent decades, Near Eastern societies have come to play a minor role in the development and discussion of anthropological problems. In general, only the tribal societies have maintained any prominence, and even these societies have only been test cases for a theory that was formulated by Evans-Pritchard for the Nuer of sub-Saharan Africa.