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Janet Abu-Lughod

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Janet Abu-Lughod
Born
Janet Lippman

(1928-08-03)August 3, 1928
Newark, New Jersey
DiedDecember 14, 2013(2013-12-14)(aged 85)
New York City,New York
NationalityAmerican
EducationUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst
OccupationScholar
Known forUrban Studies;World-systems theory
SpouseIbrahim Abu-Lughodm 1951, div. 1991
ChildrenLila,Mariam, Deena, and Jawad

Janet Lippman Abu-Lughod(August 3, 1928 – December 14, 2013) was an Americansociologistwho made major contributions toworld-systems theoryandurban sociology.[1][2]

Early life

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Raised inNewark, New Jersey,United States, she attendedWeequahic High School,[3]where she was influenced by the works ofLewis Mumfordabout urbanization.[4]

Academia

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The 13th century world-system. Map based on Janet Abu-Lughod's work.

Janet Abu-Lughod held graduate degrees from theUniversity of ChicagoandUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst.Her teaching career began at theUniversity of Illinois,took her to theAmerican University in Cairo,Smith College,andNorthwestern University,where she taught for twenty years and directed several urban studies programmes. In 1950-1952 Abu-Lughod was a director of research for the American Society of Planning Officials, in 1954-1957 – research associate at theUniversity of Pennsylvania,consultant and author for theAmerican Council to Improve Our Neighborhoods.[5]In 1987 she accepted a professorship in sociology and historical studies at the Graduate Faculty of theNew School for Social Research,from which she retired as professor emerita in 1998.[6]Upon retirement she held visiting short-term teaching appointments atBosphorous UniversityinIstanbuland on the International Honors Program at theUniversity of Cairo.[5]She published over a hundred articles and thirteen books dealing with urban sociology, the history and dynamics of the World System, and Middle Eastern cities, including an urban history ofCairothat is still considered one of the classic works on that city:Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious.

In 1976 she was awarded a John Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for Sociology.[7]Abu-Lughod received over a dozen prestigious national government fellowships and grants to research in the areas ofdemography,urban sociology,urban planning, economic and social development, world systems, andurbanizationin the United States, theMiddle Eastand the Third World.[5]

She was especially well known for her monographBefore European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350wherein she argued that a pre-modern world system extending across Eurasia existed in the 13th century, prior to the formation of the modern world-system identified byImmanuel Wallerstein.Among a variety of factors, Abu-Lughod emphasized the role ofChampagne fairs,theMongol Empire,theMamluk Sultanate,and the history of theIndian subcontinentin shaping this previous world system. In addition, she argued that the "rise of the West," beginning with the intrusion of armed Portuguese ships into the relatively peaceful trade networks of the Indian Ocean in the 16th century, was not a result of features internal to Europe, but was made possible by a collapse in the previous world system.[8]

Abu-Lughod in her works approaches the social and economic development of global cities with the commitment to seeing and acting on possibilities for constructive social change. The span of her works goes from micro-level studies of territoriality and social change, to the analysis of the diffusion of global cities in the Western and Arab world, to historical studies of medieval cities.[5]

She published several well-received works on American cities includingNew York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities[9]andRace, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.[10]

Personal life

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She was married in 1951–1991 toIbrahim Abu-Lughod.They had four children;Lila,Mariam, Deena, and Jawad.[11]Janet's family background isJewish.[12]She died aged 85 in New York City on December 14, 2013.[1]

Works

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  • Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious.Princeton University Press.1971. pp.284.ISBN978-0-691-03085-2.
  • Rabat, Urban Apartheid in Morocco.Princeton Studies on the Near East. Princeton University Press. 1981. p. 374.ISBN978-0-691-10098-2.
  • Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350.USA: Oxford University Press. 1991. pp.464.ISBN978-0-19-506774-3.
  • Changing Cities: Urban Sociology.Harpercollins College Div. 1991. p. 441.ISBN978-0-06-040138-2.
  • New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities.University of Minnesota Press. 2000. p. 580.ISBN978-0-8166-3336-4.
  • Race, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.USA: Oxford University Press. 2007. p. 360.ISBN978-0-19-532875-2.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ab"JANET L. ABU-LUGHOD Obituary: View JANET ABU-LUGHOD's Obituary by New York Times".legacy.com.Retrieved2014-11-30.
  2. ^John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1973)."Reports of the President and the Treasurer - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation".Reports of the President and the Treasurer.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.ISSN0190-227X.Retrieved2014-11-30.
  3. ^Ortner, Sherry B.New Jersey dreaming: capital, culture, and the class of '58,p. 3.Duke University Press,2003.ISBN0-8223-3108-X.Accessed September 19, 2019. "The most famous graduate of Weequahic High School is Philip Roth, who has written with great ethnographic acumen about the school and the neighborhood in many of his novels (starting with the collection of short stories,Goodbye, Columbus), Other graduates of the school, well known in other circles, include the former basketball star and coach Alvin Attles, a highly placed economist in the Reagan Administration named Robert Ortner (no relation, as far as I know), Feminist philosopher Susan Bordo, and urban sociologist Janet Abu-Lughod (who also happens to be the mother of anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod). "
  4. ^"First Annual Lewis Mumford Lecture"(PDF).2000-04-12. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 2009-08-15.Retrieved2009-08-31.When I was still in high school, there were four books I read that left a life-shaping effect on everything I have since thought about cities. Two of those -- Technics and Civilization (first published in 1934), and The Culture of Cities (first published in 1938) -- were written by Lewis Mumford. They made an urbanist out of me, and I was not alone. Single-handedly, Mumford's writings placed cities on the agenda of ordinary Americans.
  5. ^abcdCaves, R. W. (2004).Encyclopedia of the City.Routledge. p. 3.
  6. ^"Getcited - Janet Abu-Lughot".Archived fromthe originalon 2009-02-17.Retrieved2009-08-31.
  7. ^"Guggenheim Fellowships".Archived fromthe originalon 2009-02-11.Retrieved2009-08-31.
  8. ^Reviews forBefore European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350:
  9. ^Reviews forNew York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America's Global Cities:
  10. ^Reviews forRace, Space, and Riots in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles:
  11. ^جدلية (March 17, 2014)."In Memoriam: Janet Abu-Lughod".Jadaliyya - جدلية.RetrievedMay 17,2020.
  12. ^Rosen, Lawrence (2014-04-20)."Gendered Orientalism".The American Interest.Retrieved2023-09-08.
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