Jonathan Glasser
Biographic Data
| ID | 150441 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan Glasser |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan |
| FAMILY NAME | Glasser |
| SIGNATURE | GLASSER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | William & Mary |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Judeo-Arabic Debates
For its critics, the notion that Jewish usages of Arabic are sufficiently distinct to merit a separate name (Judeo-Arabic) smacks of ideologically motivated linguistic differentiation. But if we accept that language ideology is ubiquitous in human experience, the grounds for questioning or affirming a linguistic boundary become shaky. This article seeks to make room for context-sensitive notions of Judeo-Arabic while remaining attuned to the cond…
Rethinking Patrimony Through the Problem of Hoarding
What does it mean to describe something as a patrimony? In many societies, including in the Maghrib, the concept seemingly speaks for itself. But it is precisely this givenness that should make us take a second look. This article revisits the meaning of patrimony by considering the question of hoarding in Algerian Andalusi musical circles. There is a longstanding claim that the Andalusi repertoire has suffered loss through acts of hoarding repert…
Interpretative Anthropology
Interpretative anthropology names a major stream in disciplinary practice of the last fifty years. First articulated within the context of broader conversations about the analysis of symbols, interpretative anthropology came to be understood by many critics and supporters as a harbinger of the postmodernist turn of the 1980s. Yet on closer examination, interpretative anthropology, particularly as articulated by Clifford Geertz (1926–2006), was cl…
Workers and Thieves
There was something exhilarating about the Arab Spring uprisings, mainly because for a moment they seemed stunningly successful: in quick succession, longstanding autocrats were pushed from power, and many more regimes faced growing protest movements, some of which seemed to be moving in the direction pioneered by Tunisia and Egypt. For a while it was possible to convince yourself that everything had changed and that authoritarian rule was about …
Inhabiting the Margins
Inhabiting the Margins:Middle Eastern Minorities Revisited Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç and Jonathan Glasser A century ago, with World War I marking the Middle East region's bloody passage from Ottoman domination to another imperial order, the fate of certain politically vulnerable populations—whether marked in terms of ethnicity, language, religion, or all three—was a global concern. One hundred years later, what we conveniently but ambiguously call…
Musical Jews
Jewish specialization in musical performance in modern North Africa is sometimes treated as evidence of Jews' integration into the Maghribi social fabric. At the same time, read through the classic ethnomusicological literature, such specialization follows a widespread pattern in which marginal minorities fill the socially problematic role of professional musician. These dueling interpretations mirror a broader scholarly debate about the nature o…
Addi Lahouari, 2013, Deux anthropologues au Maghreb
Dans son nouveau livre, le sociologue Lahouari Addi rend compte de façon claire et stimulante d’une divergence épistémologique dans l’anthropologie anglophone du Maghreb (et plus spécifiquement du Maroc) des années 1960 et 1970. Le résultat est une étude en noir et blanc. D’un côté, la segmentarité et l’explication positiviste du philosophe devenu anthropologue Ernest Gellner, produit tardif d’un structuro-fonctionnalisme britannique appliqué au …
The Lost Paradise
Andalusi musical origins at the Moroccan-Algerian frontier
For North African devotees of Andalusi music, the story of the repertoire's origins in al-Andalus (medieval Muslim Spain) and its post-1492 transfer to the Maghreb is a central part of the practice. The Andalusi origin narrative, with its attunement to current needs and projection of present onto past, echoes key aspects of Bronislaw Malinowski's "charter myth" hypothesis. Yet ethnographic investigation in Morocco and Algeria suggests that origin…
Third Place
Edmond Yafil and Andalusi Musical Revival in Early 20th-Century Algeria
Edmond Yafil was a key figure in the early 20th-century Algerian revival of Andalusi music, a high-prestige urban performance tradition linked to medieval Muslim Spain. Yafil's experiments with printing, transcription, audio recording, amateur associations, concert-hall performance, and new composition helped transform the production, consumption, and circulation of Andalusi music. Although Yafil was widely respected, his reputation was fraught w…
Andalusi Music as a Circulatory Practice
Keywords: commentary, music, circulation, Andalusi, North Africa, genre, revival
Ma'lūf
Book Review| January 01 2010 Ma’lūf: Reflections on the Arab Andalusian Music of Tunisia Ma’lūf: Reflections on the Arab Andalusian Music of Tunisia. Ruth F. Davis. 2004. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press. xi, 135 pp., photos, musical examples, references, index. Cloth $30.00. Jonathan Glasser Jonathan Glasser College of William and Mary Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnomusicology (2010) 54 (1): 160–162. https:/…
Edmond Yafil and Andalusi Musical Revival in Early 20th-Century Algeria
Edmond Yafil was a key figure in the early 20th-century Algerian revival of Andalusi music, a high-prestige urban performance tradition linked to medieval Muslim Spain. Yafil's experiments with printing, transcription, audio recording, amateur associations, concert-hall performance, and new composition helped transform the production, consumption, and circulation of Andalusi music. Although Yafil was widely respected, his reputation was fraught w…
Musical Jews
Jewish specialization in musical performance in modern North Africa is sometimes treated as evidence of Jews' integration into the Maghribi social fabric. At the same time, read through the classic ethnomusicological literature, such specialization follows a widespread pattern in which marginal minorities fill the socially problematic role of professional musician. These dueling interpretations mirror a broader scholarly debate about the nature o…
Andalusi musical origins at the Moroccan-Algerian frontier
For North African devotees of Andalusi music, the story of the repertoire's origins in al-Andalus (medieval Muslim Spain) and its post-1492 transfer to the Maghreb is a central part of the practice. The Andalusi origin narrative, with its attunement to current needs and projection of present onto past, echoes key aspects of Bronislaw Malinowski's "charter myth" hypothesis. Yet ethnographic investigation in Morocco and Algeria suggests that origin…
Inhabiting the Margins
Inhabiting the Margins:Middle Eastern Minorities Revisited Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç and Jonathan Glasser A century ago, with World War I marking the Middle East region's bloody passage from Ottoman domination to another imperial order, the fate of certain politically vulnerable populations—whether marked in terms of ethnicity, language, religion, or all three—was a global concern. One hundred years later, what we conveniently but ambiguously call…
Third Place
Andalusi Music as a Circulatory Practice
Keywords: commentary, music, circulation, Andalusi, North Africa, genre, revival
Ma'lūf
Book Review| January 01 2010 Ma’lūf: Reflections on the Arab Andalusian Music of Tunisia Ma’lūf: Reflections on the Arab Andalusian Music of Tunisia. Ruth F. Davis. 2004. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press. xi, 135 pp., photos, musical examples, references, index. Cloth $30.00. Jonathan Glasser Jonathan Glasser College of William and Mary Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnomusicology (2010) 54 (1): 160–162. https:/…
Edmond Yafil and Andalusi Musical Revival in Early 20th-Century Algeria
Edmond Yafil was a key figure in the early 20th-century Algerian revival of Andalusi music, a high-prestige urban performance tradition linked to medieval Muslim Spain. Yafil's experiments with printing, transcription, audio recording, amateur associations, concert-hall performance, and new composition helped transform the production, consumption, and circulation of Andalusi music. Although Yafil was widely respected, his reputation was fraught w…
Third Place
The Lost Paradise
Andalusi musical origins at the Moroccan-Algerian frontier
For North African devotees of Andalusi music, the story of the repertoire's origins in al-Andalus (medieval Muslim Spain) and its post-1492 transfer to the Maghreb is a central part of the practice. The Andalusi origin narrative, with its attunement to current needs and projection of present onto past, echoes key aspects of Bronislaw Malinowski's "charter myth" hypothesis. Yet ethnographic investigation in Morocco and Algeria suggests that origin…
Addi Lahouari, 2013, Deux anthropologues au Maghreb
Dans son nouveau livre, le sociologue Lahouari Addi rend compte de façon claire et stimulante d’une divergence épistémologique dans l’anthropologie anglophone du Maghreb (et plus spécifiquement du Maroc) des années 1960 et 1970. Le résultat est une étude en noir et blanc. D’un côté, la segmentarité et l’explication positiviste du philosophe devenu anthropologue Ernest Gellner, produit tardif d’un structuro-fonctionnalisme britannique appliqué au …
Inhabiting the Margins
Inhabiting the Margins:Middle Eastern Minorities Revisited Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç and Jonathan Glasser A century ago, with World War I marking the Middle East region's bloody passage from Ottoman domination to another imperial order, the fate of certain politically vulnerable populations—whether marked in terms of ethnicity, language, religion, or all three—was a global concern. One hundred years later, what we conveniently but ambiguously call…
Musical Jews
Jewish specialization in musical performance in modern North Africa is sometimes treated as evidence of Jews' integration into the Maghribi social fabric. At the same time, read through the classic ethnomusicological literature, such specialization follows a widespread pattern in which marginal minorities fill the socially problematic role of professional musician. These dueling interpretations mirror a broader scholarly debate about the nature o…
Interpretative Anthropology
Interpretative anthropology names a major stream in disciplinary practice of the last fifty years. First articulated within the context of broader conversations about the analysis of symbols, interpretative anthropology came to be understood by many critics and supporters as a harbinger of the postmodernist turn of the 1980s. Yet on closer examination, interpretative anthropology, particularly as articulated by Clifford Geertz (1926–2006), was cl…
Workers and Thieves
There was something exhilarating about the Arab Spring uprisings, mainly because for a moment they seemed stunningly successful: in quick succession, longstanding autocrats were pushed from power, and many more regimes faced growing protest movements, some of which seemed to be moving in the direction pioneered by Tunisia and Egypt. For a while it was possible to convince yourself that everything had changed and that authoritarian rule was about …
Rethinking Patrimony Through the Problem of Hoarding
What does it mean to describe something as a patrimony? In many societies, including in the Maghrib, the concept seemingly speaks for itself. But it is precisely this givenness that should make us take a second look. This article revisits the meaning of patrimony by considering the question of hoarding in Algerian Andalusi musical circles. There is a longstanding claim that the Andalusi repertoire has suffered loss through acts of hoarding repert…
The Judeo-Arabic Debates
For its critics, the notion that Jewish usages of Arabic are sufficiently distinct to merit a separate name (Judeo-Arabic) smacks of ideologically motivated linguistic differentiation. But if we accept that language ideology is ubiquitous in human experience, the grounds for questioning or affirming a linguistic boundary become shaky. This article seeks to make room for context-sensitive notions of Judeo-Arabic while remaining attuned to the cond…
History (11 works) · Art (6 works) · Hispanic-African Historical Relations (5 works) · History (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender (4 works)