BRISMES 1994 Annual Conference 4-6 Safar 1415/12-14 July 1994 University of Manchester Manchester, United Kingdom

Abstract

The annual conference of the British Society for Middle Eastern
Studies (BRISMES) was hosted by the Department of Middle Eastern
Studies at the University of Manchester and concentrated on the
theme of "Culture: Unity and Diversity." About two hundred participants
deliberated over approximately ninety papers of varying standards,
in addition to the three plenary sessions. This was achieved by
grouping the speakers, many of whom were from overseas, into
thirty-four panels covering such diverse themes as law, politics, language,
literature, poetry, culture, identity, history, religion, architecture,
mysticism, media, economics, and agriculture. A balance was
also maintained between the historical and the contemporary in many
of these areas. Each session. featured up to five panels, each with
between two and four speakers. These were held simultaneously in
order to give all of the participants in each session the opportunity to
choose the one panel that would be of most interest to them. Some of
the panels were hosted by special interest groups: The Society for
Moroccan Studies; The Association for Cypriot, Greek and Turkish
Affairs; The Manchester University Research Group on Central Asia
and the Caucasus; and two panels in memory of Avriel Butovsky.
The focus of the conference's attention was the plenary session on
each of the three days. A different guest speaker was present for each
session. The most striking presentation was that of Seyyed Hossein
Nasr (George Washington University, USA). The opening plenary
address was by Bozkurt Guvem; (Ankara, Turkey), and the closing
plenary session featured Tayeb Salih (London, UK).
After the opening speeches, Bozkurt Guven????. currently advisor to
the President of Turkey and formerly an anthropologist and architect,
was called upon to speak on the "Quest for National Identity in
Turkey: Cultural Continuity of Historical Diversities." He began by
focusing on the dilemma that a quest for identity generates due to its
deep-rootedness in the sociocultural and historical consciousness of
people at the individual, collective, local, national, static, and transitional
levels. In answer to the question "Who are you?," one's identity
is as much dependent on the attitude of the perceiver as it is on the
perception that the perceived has of himself or herself. It is therefore ...