Cultural Sociology within Innovative Treatise: Islamic Insights on Human Symbols

Mahmoud Dhaouadi

2013년 7월 · University Press of America

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This innovative book stresses the distinction of the human race from other species by using what the author calls Human Symbols (HS): language, thought, religion, knowledge/science, and cultural values and norms. Mahmoud Dhaouadi emphasizes the central position of HS in the creation of the identity of both the individual and society. That is, humans are Homo Culturus, a notion hardly found in social sciences like Marxism, behaviourism, structuralism, and psychoanalysis. This book explores the strong link between HS and the slow growth and development of the human body and claims that human duality is composed of the body and HS, not the body and the soul. HS explain some distinct human traits, such as why human babies learn to walk later than animal babies, the long human lifespan when compared with that of most animals’ lifespan, the human mind, and the potential for the eternal survival of human thought. As such, HS constitute a cultural theory. Dhaouadi also asserts that HS have neither weight nor volume in the material sense of the words, as they are transcendental and spiritual. This new conceptualization of HS helps us understand the quick transmission of spoken and written words as well as how we can put enormous written material onto a few memory sticks. This innovative vision of the nature of HS is endorsed by a fresh interpretation of the verses of the Quran. Cultural Sociology within Innovative Treatise will be a significant contribution to the field of sociology, particularly to the sociological study of culture in both the Islamic and Western worlds.

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Mahmoud Dhaouadi has studied English, psychology, and sociology in Iraq, the U.S., and Canada, respectively. He has taught at universities in Canada, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Malaysia, and Oman. Dhaouadi has published numerous books in English, Arabic, and French and has published more than 200 essays, articles, and book reviews in these languages. He is the creator of the Human Symbols (HS) theory. His research interests lie in Tunisian society, Arab-Islamic thought, Ibn Khaldun’s scholarship, the universe of cultural symbols, and crime and deviance.