Invitation to Laughter
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A01=Fuad I. Khuri
academic
anthropologist
anthropology
arab
Author_Fuad I. Khuri
autobiography
beirut
belief
biographical
biography
career
Category=DNBM1
Category=JHM
christian
city
cultural
culture
daily life
eastern world
eating
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnology
faith
fieldwork
food
humor
islam
lebanese
lebanon
memoir
middle east
politics
religion
research
scholarly
science
scientific
true story
urban
women
Product details
- ISBN 9780226434780
- Weight: 284g
- Dimensions: 15 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Apr 2007
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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For the late Fuad I. Khuri, a distinguished career as an anthropologist began not because of typical concerns like accessibility, money, or status, but because the very idea of an occupation that baffled his countrymen made them - and him - laugh. "When I tell them that 'anthropology' is my profession...they think I am either speaking a strange language or referring to a new medicine." This profound appreciation for humor, especially in the contradictions inherent in the study of cultures, is a distinctive theme of "An Invitation to Laughter", Khuri's astute memoir of life as an anthropologist in the Middle East. A Christian Lebanese, Khuri offers up in this unusual autobiography both an insider's and an outsider's perspective on life in Lebanon, elsewhere in the Middle East, and in West Africa. Khuri entertains and informs with clever insights into such issues as the mentality of Arabs toward women, eating habits of the Arab world, the impact of Islam on West Africa, and the extravagant lifestyles of wealthy Arabs, and even offers a vision for a type of democracy that could succeed in the Middle East.
In his life and work, as these astonishing essays make evident, Khuri demonstrated how the discipline of anthropology continues to make a difference in bridging dangerous divides.
Fuad I. Khuri (1935 - 2003) was professor of anthropology at the American University of Beirut from 1964 to 1987. Khuri held a series of visiting professorships at the London School of Economics, University of Manchester, University of Chicago, and University of Oregon. Among his many books are From Village to Suburb, Tribe and State in Bahrain, Imams and Emirs and, most recently, Being a Druze. Sonia Jalbout Khuri has taught mathematics education in Lebanon and the United Kingdom. She also worked as a research assistant and editor with her late husband, Fuad I. Khuri.
