- Paperback: 440 pages
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Co.; Revised edition edition (22 May 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1578261171
- ISBN-13: 978-1578261178
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.2 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 424,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Mutual misunderstanding between Arabs and Europeans despite courteous initial contacts is legendary. Too many Europeans are plagued by romanticised images ultimately based on fiction or a naive view of Arabs as Europeans in different dress, a description which vast numbers of Arabs would find insulting. For years I avoided this book because to me its title suggested a simplistic mass categorisation. I was wrong. Patai explains meticulously that although minds vary in any human group, the minds of two groups will display differences just as the minds of individuals do. These differences are based on early upbringing and other influences and Patai presents a great deal of information which helps Westerners to understand the Arab ways of doing things. He is quite clear that he is not alone in his observations and quotes many Arab scholars positively. I am aware that he has been criticised by more recent workers as is the normal course of things in Western intellectual life, but I would still regard this highly readable book as necessary reading for someone who has to work in the Arab world or wants to understand it better. At the same time I would caution against allowing book-knowledge, especially from a somewhat popular book like this, to support a kind of bigotry. An enquiring rather than a dogmatic approach, 'standing on the shoulders of others' will avoid injustice and provide better understanding than the book alone.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
two points to bear in mind regarding the ''Arab mind''. Firstly , i don't reckon that it has been translated to arabic by any publisher . Secondly , the fact that none and i say none in the arab world has written any book whatsoever as a study case or as a response commentary to comment in this book is odd.Tentatively , i tend to agree to a certain degree that this book somehow had shed some lights on certain challenging issues in the arab world including the author's integrating knowledge of the many facets of the culture, such as the language, the arts and literature, and child-rearing practices, and then delineating the ways that these cultural variables influence personality development.However, i strongly believe aside from certain political case studies he had made in the proscript edition of this book., i believe that there are certain lapses or probably some mistakes and i am not quite sure that these were made on purpose and i will highlight some of them:
A- that the arabs has learned to write history and study it from the west although in the terms of the arab history IBN KHALDOUN was one of the pioneers to write history and use historology technique.
B- the author insinuated that all the arabs had the same ways of culture and thinking methodology therefore the arab mind is the same in every arab counntry even though he mentioned that education has prospered in the arab world but only after 1967 war despite the fat that Lebanon has estanlished universities and applied education culture long before 1967.
A- that the arabs has learned to write history and study it from the west although in the terms of the arab history IBN KHALDOUN was one of the pioneers to write history and use historology technique.
B- the author insinuated that all the arabs had the same ways of culture and thinking methodology therefore the arab mind is the same in every arab counntry even though he mentioned that education has prospered in the arab world but only after 1967 war despite the fat that Lebanon has estanlished universities and applied education culture long before 1967.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
58 reviews
65 of 78 people found the following review helpful
Experience tends to validate the observations of this book
25 Dec 2004
Format:Paperback
I took this book to Baghdad for my military assignment and left it there with friends who continue to use it to help inform their experiences. The book helped me understand what I was seeing with my own eyes and helped me avoid mis-steps that probably would have been misinterpreted. The book rang true with my experiences and helped me understand the Iraqi people, who I found to be generally good and noble. This books is not the be-all and end-all for Arab cultural understanding, but it seems to be an excellent jumping-off point. Westerners in Iraq "got points" from the Iraqis by merely TRYING to undertand their culture. Empathy, compassion and RESPECT go a long way in any culture, and certainly for the Iraqis.
191 of 238 people found the following review helpful
important but unsettling in where it is off-base
16 Jun 2002
Format:Paperback
This is a must-read book -- not because it is necessarily brilliant or especially insightful, but because so many people cite it and it captures well many common conceptions of and judgements about the Arab World. I have read this twice since 9/11 along with many other books to come to understand the culture in which I now live and teach. Each time I come away more unsettled, especially as Patai seems all too often to be saying that because the rhetorical strategies and the logical patterns of Arabs may (or may not) be different from Western minds, they are inadequate. While he doesn't often say this directly, the judgementalism that undergirds his discussion screams aloud this view. In many instances, he makes sweeping generalizations about the nature of all Arabs by citing a single instance, whether in Palestine, or Morroco, or Iran, or where ever. He then uses this one instance to make a grand claim that sounds good, but which may or may not have any legs to it. The nature of Arabs is no more universal from country to country than the "West" is universal from France to the US to Germany. Some of his arguments are grounded in citations of the work of others, but it is difficult to know the value of those as, again, there is much that is done as case studies of a single village or situation but used by this author as evidence for a much wider conclusion of the nature of the Arab mind. As an American living in the Gulf, it saddens me that the richness of the people and cultures here become so caricatured in this work. Read it--but don't assume that its pronouncements are gospel.
28 of 33 people found the following review helpful
A Must Read
20 Aug 2007
Format:Paperback
I have lived in the Middle East, on and off, for four years, and no book explained the Arab mind as well as Raphael Patai's. Written over 30 years ago, it still rings true in so many aspects, and definitely helps explain the cultural clashes that still occur and slow down the process of coexisting.
Raphael Patai's love of Arabia and all things Arabic is very obvious throughout his work. Even so, Patai managed to be objective and to portray the good and the bad in Arab culture. Too many authors take one road or the other, allowing personal feelings and thoughts to encroach on the necessary objectivity. Patai, like a true sociologist, presents how a culture was formed, in language easily understandable to the Western mind.
Sometimes dry and drawn out, "The Arab Mind" should nonetheless be mandatory reading for all government workers in the Middle East, as it is truly an indispensible guide through a culture that has been around longer than our own.
Raphael Patai's love of Arabia and all things Arabic is very obvious throughout his work. Even so, Patai managed to be objective and to portray the good and the bad in Arab culture. Too many authors take one road or the other, allowing personal feelings and thoughts to encroach on the necessary objectivity. Patai, like a true sociologist, presents how a culture was formed, in language easily understandable to the Western mind.
Sometimes dry and drawn out, "The Arab Mind" should nonetheless be mandatory reading for all government workers in the Middle East, as it is truly an indispensible guide through a culture that has been around longer than our own.
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