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El-Sayed El-Aswad

El-Sayed El-Aswad (born 1949) received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1988). He received two master’s degrees in Anthropology; one from the Department of Anthropology, Alexandria University (1978), the other from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1984). He is currently a professor of anthropology and served as Chairperson of the Sociology Department (2012-2014) in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). He has taught at Wayne State University (1999-2001), Tanta University (Egypt, where he served as Chairperson of the Department of Sociology 2001-2004), and the University of Bahrain (2004-2008).

Scholarly Work

El-Aswad has published widely in both Arabic and English. His publication record demonstrates cross-disciplinary strengths linking anthropology with sociology, religious studies, worldview, cosmology, folk heritage, folk architecture, history, politics, economics, diaspora studies, and international development.

El-Aswad’s ethnographic fieldwork has focused on Egypt, Emirates, Bahrain and the United States of America. One of his publications, Muslim Worldviews and Everyday Lives (2012) is a cross-cultural examination of how socially and religiously constructed images of the world influence the daily actions of people in various Muslim communities (Sunni and Shi‘a) living in the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, and suburban areas of Detroit, Michigan, USA. The point of departure for the approach of this inquiry is basically cosmological insofar as cosmology or worldview encompasses a totality of the universe, society and person. "El-Aswad's approach is innovative, particularly compared to standard anthropological methods and literature.”

El-Aswad is known as a pioneer in the study of “cosmology” or "ethno-cosmology" and “worldviews” in Muslim societies, in general, and the Arab World, in particular. His scholarly interest in these important topics began in the 1980s while he was conducting ethnographic research in Rural Egypt for his PhD dissertation entitled, "Patterns of Thought: An Anthropological Study of Rural Egyptian World Views." He headed a team (organized by the National Center for Social and Criminological Research [NCSCR] Egypt: 1989-1991) to conduct a national project on the Worldviews of Egyptian Society (rural-urban communities) which resulted in a treatise theorizing the notion of “worldview”.

El-Aswad developed a distinction between ideology and worldview. Though worldview represents a cultural phenomenon it is not treated as forming an ideology. While ideology implies certain economic and political orientations related particularly to power, worldview indicates belief systems shared by a group of people or nation. Worldview is an interpretative and integrative paradigm encompassing assumptions through which people view the world in which they live and interact. Worldview is comparable to “Weltanschauung,”  “meaning system,” “patterns of thought,” “perceptual framework,” and/or “cognitive orientation”. The focus is on the way ordinary people imagine their social world and is not expressed in abstract and theoretical terms, but is manifested in images, stories and legends/heritage. El-Aswad focuses on the relationship between religion and cosmology as shown in his work "Religion and Folk Cosmology", which is an ethnographic study of the cosmological belief system of rural Egyptians. It examines Egyptian folk and sanctified cosmology, a system of meanings built on the dynamics of the visible and invisible (al-ghaib), which is enacted in different courses of public and private scenarios. Its internal dynamics create a particular sense of identity attached to both the local and global Muslim community (Ummah). “In a powerful ethnography, El-Sayed El-Aswad observes a folk cosmology within major religions, which is visible in ‘discursive and non-discursive actions…varied arrays of similes, practices, rituals and ceremonies…and the concepts of the person and body.” The book was translated into Arabic (by the author) in 2005 through the Supreme Council of Culture, Cairo.

El-Aswad has collected folklore material first hand from Egypt, the Emirates and Bahrain focusing on specific cultural themes. For instance, he collected folk material including myths, folk tales, folk songs, folk proverbs, and folk performance highlighting the concept of “patience” in Egyptian society. In his study of the Emirates’ folk architecture, El-Aswad examines the impact of traditional culture and social values on the design of the Emirati folk house. In Bahrain folk material including rituals and discourses were collected for the study of the Shi‘i invisible cosmology. Some of these themes have been examined through the lenses of symbolic anthropology. The main approaches of symbolic anthropology have been addressed in his book, which is considered the first reference to introduce symbolic anthropology to Arabic speaking scholars and students.

El-Aswad was a Fulbright Fellow (July-September 1990) at the University of Michigan where he conducted a project entitled, “American Worldviews: An Anthropological Study of Diversity and Unity of American Culture.” He was awarded a Ford Foundation scholarship, Middle Eastern Social Science Research (October 1990 - June 1991) to conduct the project, “The Construction of Egyptian Political Identity.” El-Aswad has secured funding for a number of timely research projects including the UAE University award (2013-2014) for the research project, “Heritage, Modernity and National Identity: A Case Study of the United Arab Emirates”; the Emirates Foundation for Youth Development (August 2013) for the research, “The Culture of Giving in the United Arab Emirates”; the UAE University award  (2012-2013) for the research project, “E-Folklore and Cyber-Communication among Emirati Youth”, and the UAE University award (1991-1992) for the research project, “The Folk House: An Anthropological Study of Folk Architecture and Traditional Culture of the Emirates Society”.

El-Aswad established the Unit of Folkloric and Anthropological resources at the United Arab Emirates University in 1994. In view of his contributions to the scholarship of Middle East and Gulf societies, El-Aswad achieved the United Arab Emirates University Award (June 2014) for “excellence in scientific research publication in the academic year 2013-2014”. In light for his contribution to the field of teaching, El-Aswad was awarded the UAE University prize for “excellence in Teaching and Student Activities for the academic year 1995-1996”.

El-Aswad has been actively involved in the field of editorship. He is Editor-in-Chief of Horizons in Humanities and Social Sciences: An International Refereed Journal, published by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, UAEU (the Journal will be available online on May 2015). He currently serves on the International Advisory Board of the Digest of Middle East Studies (DOMES), USA as well as on Editorial Advisory Board of Muslims in Global Societies Series. He is also a co-editor of CyberOrient: Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East, and a contributing editor of Tabsir: Insight on Islam and the Middle East. El-Aswad serves as a consultant for the Gulf Encyclopedia for Sustainable Urbanism (Harvard University Press). El-Aswad was elected a member of the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES). He was elected a member of the Board of the Middle East Section, American Anthropological Association (2000-2003).

Selected Scholarly work

•	el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2006). Spiritual Genealogy: Sufism and Saintly Places in the Nile Delta. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 38 (4): 501-518.

•	el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2006). Applied Anthropology in Egypt: Practicing Anthropology within Local and Global Contexts. National Association for the Practice of Anthropology Bulletin. American Anthropological Association. 25, No. 1: 35-51.

•	el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2010). Narrating the Self among Arab Americans: A Bridging Discourse Between Arab tradition and American Culture. Digest of Middle East Studies (DOMES), 19 (2): 234-248.

•	el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2010). Dreams and the Construction of Reality: Symbolic Transformation of the Seen and Unseen in the Egyptian Imagination. Anthropos: International Iournal of Anthropology and Linguistics, 105 (2): 441-453.

•	el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2012). Muslim Worldviews and Everyday Lives. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.

•	el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2013). Images of Muslims in Western Scholarship and Media after 9/11. Digest of Middle East Studies (DOMES), 22 (1): 39–56.

•	el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2014). Metaphors Arab Women Live By. HAWWA: Journal of Women in the Middle East and Islamic Cultures, 12 (1): 36-48.

•	el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2014). E-Folklore and Cyber-Communication among Emirati Youth. International Journal of Intangible Heritage, Vol. 9: 49-62.

•	el-Aswad, el-Sayed. (2014). Patience in Sunni Muslim Worldviews. Encyclopaedia of Psychology and Religion, David A. Leeming (ed.) pp: 1318-1321 (Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London),

External links

https://uaeu.academia.edu/elSayedelAswad http://www.tabsir.net/elaswadtabsir.html

References