Author : Fuad I. Khuri
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226434753
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)
Book Synopsis An Invitation to Laughter by : Fuad I. Khuri
Download or read book An Invitation to Laughter written by Fuad I. Khuri and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.