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The fox knows many things,
but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
—Archilocus
The Hedgehog Review delivers insightful, accessible writing by scholars and cultural critics focused on the most important questions of our day: What does it mean to be human? How do we live with our deepest differences? When does a community become a good community?
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From our Recent Issues
By Ahmed H. al-Rahim
What has been widely dubbed the “Arab Spring” or “Arab revolutions” is, in many respects, a misappellation. The protests and, in some cases, revolts that began in Tunisia in December 2010 and swept through much of the Middle East and North Africa would be more accurately described as postcolonial, national revolts against the regimes of the largely Arab nationalist revolutions or, more accurately, the military coup d’états of the 1950s and 1960s that brought these republican regimes into power. To begin to understand the nature of the recent protests, we need to examine three major events or shifts in the history of the Middle East and North Africa. First is Napoléon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798—the backdrop to much of the region’s modern history—which ushered in modernity to what would, in time, become the territorial nation of Egypt and, more broadly, to the Muslim world.… Read the rest of the essay…>
This interview is a revised version of an interview conducted by Özgür Gökmen for the Turkish monthly journal of socialist culture Birikim 268–269 (August–September 2011).
It is too early to explain the uprisings with a reasonable degree of confidence. We need thorough research to shed light on the developments in the region. The key is to explain in the first place the Tunisian revolution. The rest are probably easier to make judgments about than Tunisia. At this point, all I can say is that these political upheavals did not occur in a vacuum. Certain structural changes have been happening in most Middle Eastern countries in the past three decades that have produced some new claims and actors. The most basic are growing urbanization, demographic change (the youth bulge), and the expansion of higher education, which has caused a rapid growth in the size of the educated classes. And these have coincided with the implementation of neoliberal policies and the increasing footprints of globalization since the 1990s in most of these countries… Read the rest of the essay…>
By Monica Black
n the 1950s, in the midst of what came to be known as the Economic Miracle, West Germany was positively deluged with other wonders: mysterious healings, mystical visions, rumors of the end of the world, and stories of divine and devilish interventions in ordinary lives. Scores of citizens of the Federal Republic (as well as Swiss, Austrians, and others from neighboring countries) set off on pilgrimages to see the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and hosts of angels, after they began appearing to a group of children in the southern German village of Heroldsbach in late 1949… Read the rest of the essay…>
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