Nur Yalman, Professor
Peabody Museum 24 B | (617) 495-2435 | e-mail
Professor of Social Anthropology and of Middle Eastern Studies, Department of Anthropology
Senior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows
professional associations
- Association of Turkish American Scientists: Washington, DC., March 2002, Special Award for Scholarly and Scientific Contributions
- Keynote Speaker for the 50th Anniversary Meeting of the Japanese Ethnological Society, Osaka
- Member of Special Commission, Create 21, of Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo
- Honorary Doctorate, Soka University, Japan 1993
- Medal of Highest Honors, Soka University, Japan, 1992
- Visiting Professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1967
- Visiting Fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge, England, 1966-67
education
- B.A., Robert College (1950)- Istanbul, Turkey
- B.A., M.A., Ph.D., University of Cambridge (1950-1958)
- M.A. Harvard University - (1972)
Fields of concentration
South Asia (Sri Lanka and India), West (Middle East), and South-East Asia, Japan; Social Theory; Political, Religious and Social Institutions; Structure and Symbolism
teaching
- Thought and Change in the Modern Middle East
- Religion and Modernization: Cultural Revolutions and Secularism
- Social Theory and Social Anthropology
- Structure and Dialectics
- The Politics of Modernization in the Middle East, South and South East Asia
- Society and Religion in South Asia: Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam
- Identity, Kinship, Gender, Family and the role of Women
selected publications
Under the Bo Tree, University of Chicago Press, 1967.
Religion and Civilization, in Dialogue of Civilizations: a New Peace Agenda for a New Millenium, eds. M. Tehranian & D.W.Chappell, IBTauris:London and New York, 2002
The "Rashomon Effect": Considerations of an Existential Anthropology, 2002 (in press, Hawaii University Press)
"Thinking Across Cultures", Interview with Patti Marxsen, Boston Research Center for the 21st Century, Newsletter, Fall 2002/Winter 2003, Number 20
"Dialogue of Civilizations: Efforts Beyond the Self in World Religions" in SGI Quarterly: Buddhist Perspectives on Peace, Culture and Education, January 2002
"El mundo arabe: esperando a Bismarck" (The Arab World: Waiting for Bismarck), (in Spanish),in Hacia donde va el islam?", in La Vanguardia, Barcelona, Spain, Feb. 2002
'Further Observations on Love (or Equality)" , in Cultural
Horizons, ed. Jane Warner, Syracuse University Press, 2001
"Modernizacion y religion en el islam", (Modernization and Religion in Islam)(in Spanish) in La Vanguardia , Barcelona, Spain, Nov. 18, 2001
"Science and scientists in International Conflict: Traditions and
Prospects", in Technology and Society, Special Issue, Scientists, Wars, and Diplomacy, guest editors:J.H. Ausubel, A.Keynan and J-J. Salomon, vol.23, #3, August 2001, Pergamon
"Terrorist Mayhem in America: What is to be done?" in Peace and Policy, vol.6, 2001, also in The Harvard Crimson
"Fast Forward Societies and Cold Cultures: Science and Resistance" Published in Science, Technology and Society, ed. H. Ansal & D. Calisir, Institute of Social Sciences Publication, No.1, Istanbul, 1999.
"On Secularism and Its Critics: Notes on Turkey, India and Iran," Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.)25,2. Sage Publications, New Delhi, London, 1991.
"Some Observations on Secularism in Islam: or the Cultural Revolution in Turkey," Daedalus, 1973; reprinted in Post-Traditional Societies, ed., S.N. Eisenstadt, Norton, 1972, 139-69.
Playing Chess with Unusual Cats: Levi-Strauss, Claude, American Ethnologist, 23(4):901-903, 1996. (Review Article)
"The Raw: the Cooked: Nature: Culture: Observations on Le Cru et le Cuit", in The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism, ed., E. Leach, Tavistock Publications, London, 1967.
"On the Purity of Women in the Castes of Malabar and Ceylon", awarded the Curl Bequest Prize of the R.A.I. for 1962, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (London), Vol. 93, 1963.
"On Land Disputes in Eastern Turkey," in Islam and its Cultural Divergence, ed., G. Tikku, University of Illinois Press, 1971.
"The Semiotics of Kinship", in Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. V, ed., Sebeok, Emeneau and Ferguson et al., 1968.
"De Tocqueville in India: an Essay on the Caste System," Man, Vol. 4, No. 1, March 1969, 123-131 (review article).
"The Raw: the Cooked: Nature: Culture: Observations on Le Cru et le Cuit", in The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism, ed., E. Leach, Tavistock Publications, London, 1967.
"Intervention and Extrication: the Officer Corps in the Turkish Crisis", in The Military Intervenes: Case Studies in Political Development, ed., Bienen, Russel Sage Foundation, New York, 1967.
"The Ascetic Buddhist Monks of Ceylon", Ethnology, July 1962; also in Cultural Anthropology, ed., Hammond, Macmillan; reprinted in Gods and Rituals, ed., Middleton, 1967.
"Cultural Transpositions of Creativity," Comparative Literature Studies, 17(2), June, 1980, Part 11.
"Ataturk: Hero, Nation Founder, Reformer," in Turkey Today, May, 1982.
languages
Turkish, German, French, (fairly fluent) Sinhalese. Also, some Persian, Italian, and Arabic
Travel
India, Sri Lanka, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar, Turkey, England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro, Russia, Spain, Morocco, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Mexico
important experience
- Member of Boards of Trustees: Koc University, Istanbul. Robert College, Istanbul.
- Editorial Board of Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
- Editorial Board of RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics
- Council of Foreign Relations
- American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
- Association of Social Anthropologists
- American Anthropological Association
- Association of Asian Studies
interests and activities
Organizing Member for Pugwash Conferences for Peace Initiatives between Greece and Turkey heldin Castelgandolfo and in Rome, Italy.
Publication: Discussion. Asia’s New Century: Happiness: Changing Life Styles. Development, Modernization, Welfare in the 20th Century. Asia pursued the modern European model of happiness while confronting the great contradictions inherent therein. We reconsider traditional Asian concepts of happiness and explore the ways on which 21 century Asia should proceed. Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, March&Mac226; 03. ISBN4-00-026834-1
3 January 2001, Doha, Qatar: "Perspectives for Peace in West Asia", Conference on Regional Security.
8 January 2001, Teheran, Iran: Conference on Culture and Information Technology, "Prospects for a Dialogue of Civilizations: Iran, Turkey and the West".
16 June 2001, Moscow, Russia. "Problems of Ideology and Modernity in Asia" in Eurasia: a New Peace Agenda
Jakarta Conference, University of Indonesia: A Critical time: Keynote address: Conference on Civil Society in Asia. Japan Institute for Indonesian Studies, Jakarta, June 28, 1999
Keynote Speaker and Paper, Hokkaido University and Toyota Foundation conference on "Democracy and culture in Contemporary Asia, Sapporo, Nov.14, 1998. Paper: "Asian Values? Is Second Rate Democracy 'bon pour l'orient'? - OK for Asia?"
April 1995 A lecture at the Committee on South Asia, University of
Virginia, entitled "The Festival of Clandestine Love: Kataragama and Valli in Sri Lanka."
research projects
New Directions in Political Thought in the Islamic World in Asia Fall 2004
(i) Much has changed in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy. There have been massive repercussions in the US as well as in most western countries. Domestic politics have been affected as never before. Given the magnitude of the calamity it is not surprising - however unfortunate - that some of our most vaunted traditions concerning civil rights and individual freedoms should have come into question. If the reactions have been so profound in the US and in the West, what has happened in the East, specifically in the major Muslim countries in Asia?
I have been concerned for a long time about the problem of the so-called "modernization" in religion. This involves the adjustment of "traditional" systems of belief to new challenges of the modern world which have often involved dramatic "secularist" cultural revolutions, as was the case in Russia, Turkey, and China in recent memory. It has been the major topic of some of my Core courses (FC 17 & SA 36) and also of my publications. More specifically, I am now interested in how the intellectuals among Muslims in Asia are interpreting and using these events which have so shaken the world for their own traditions.
(ii) In this research project, I plan to examine recent developments concerning the political role of such Islamic intellectuals in a number of key countries. This concerns their ideas, hopes, aspirations, their reactions to the west, and to the use of terror and violence, in order to understand the prospects for more "open" societies. How do they evaluate the hope for orderly and "open" political structures with so many violent groups in the shadows? Have the tensions between the Western powers and the Islamic world so poisoned the atmosphere that Western philosophical ideals of liberal society have been set aside by those thinkers whose teachings affect the lives of millions of Muslims? Or, alternatively, have the shocks of the absolute horror of the outrages opened a new opportunity for a new "democratic" Islamism as in Turkey? How are the various schools of Islamic thought managing the intellectual divide between representative government on the one hand, and the claims of divinely guided spokesmen for a totalitarian reign of virtue on the other? The matter has immense urgency. Journalists with little knowledge of these countries are busy forming public opinion in the West. It is important to go beyond the headlines in order to understand the issues in the debates between various Islamic factions. It may then be possible to engage them in more constructive, more "open" directions.
I have already carried out a great deal of research in Turkey and Iran. The circumstances in which these two countries find themselves illustrate to some extent the framework of Islamic debate. Turkey has held elections in which an entire political class of republican leaders have been swept aside in an astonishing development. The formidable secularist traditions of the republican state, which go back to the jeunes turcs, and to Auguste Comte ("Ordre et Progres") of the 19th century, have been challenged as never before. All this has taken place in a peaceful and free atmosphere in which the Islamist party, claiming to be "Islamic democrats" - "just like the Christian democrats of the West" - won 34% of the vote. But what of the rest of the 66%? The future remains pregnant, but the intellectual debates are pursued with passion in all media, from TV to the massive daily papers with immense circulation.
In Iran, conditions are in some ways the mirror image of Turkey. The state has been taken over by a heavily indoctrinated Shiite clergy. Controlled elections have not been able to open up the arena of political action to the satisfaction of the "liberals". It is thought that the disappointing experience with "autocratic" and "divinely guided" Islamism has turned the more educated population massively away from religion. As Turkey becomes more accommodating towards religion in political life, Iran is moving in the opposite direction.
(iii) These developments are being closely watched by educated people all over the Islamic world. I am proposing to find out how the key thinkers in the following countries are reacting to these matters. Their reactions will determine the future course of major populations.
I already have a great deal of material on Turkey. I plan to carry out further interviews in Iran, especially with the help of some major intellectuals there. We have contributions for Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Further east, developments in Malaysia and Singapore are significant. In Thailand there are important and influential members of the Islamic community with profound interest in this topic. Another major area of inquiry will be Indonesia. The British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, indicated the key role of Indonesian Islamic thinkers for the future of relations with the West in his address (Feb. & Mar. 26, '03) to the vast audience of the key Islamic group, Nahdat-ul Ulema -- 40 million members -- whose leader, Abdurrahman Wahid was the last president of Indonesia. I have had contact with these people and plan to return to discussions with them.
Altogether, this is a subject of immense importance for all concerned. The plan calls for research and interviews, as well as discussions with key persons invited to a research seminar held at Harvard in Spring 2004. With the presence of senior academics and distinguished visitors, the forum is open to qualified students at both the graduate and undergraduate level, and is likely to produce important and possibly far-reaching results.
