Talal Asad | Academic Influence

Why Is Talal Asad Influential?

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Talal Asad is emeritus distinguished professor of anthropology for the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He earned his B.Litt from the University of Edinburgh, and a Bachelor of Letters and Ph.D from the University of Oxford. He is noted for his contributions to theoretical secularism.

His work in secularism challenges the actual impacts of separation of church and state, or the secular and the religious, suggesting that in so doing, the government becomes too distant from the cultural norms and expectations of conduct held by their citizenry. He felt Europe, in particular, was creating an environment in which Islam was still viewed as distinctly different from European religious traditions.

He is the author of The Kababish Arabs: Power, Authority and Consent in a Nomadic Tribe, and most recently, Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative Reason. He was the editor of Anthropology & the Colonial Encounter and a former professor of University of Hull, New School for Social Research, University of Khartoum, and Johns Hopkins University.

His expertise in Islam, religion, government, and the Middle East is internationally recognized, and he has sat on the Economic and Social Research Council for both the United States and England.

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Featured in Top Influential Anthropologists Today

According to Wikipedia, Talal Asad is a Saudi-born cultural anthropologist who is currently a professor of anthropology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. His prolific body of work mainly focuses on religiosity, Middle Eastern studies, postcolonialism, and notions of power, law and discipline. He is also known for his writing calling for an anthropology of secularism. His work has had a significant influence beyond his home discipline of anthropology. As Donovan Schaefer writes:The gravitational field of Asad’s influence has emanated far from his home discipline and reshaped the landscape of other humanistic disciplines around him.

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Talal Asad's Published Works

Number of citations in a given year to any of this author's works

Total number of citations to an author for the works they published in a given year. This highlights publication of the most important work(s) by the author

Published Papers

Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (1994) (2236)
Formations of the Secular (2020) (1643)
Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (1974) (768)
The idea of an anthropology of Islam (2009) (731)
Anthropological Conceptions of Religion: Reflections on Geertz (1983) (354)
Is Critique Secular?: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech (2009) (270)
On Suicide Bombing (2007) (203)
Anthropology and the Analysis of Ideology (1979) (197)
Ethnographic representation, statistics and modern power (1994) (168)
Anthropology & the colonial encounter (1973) (152)
Trying to Understand French Secularism (2006) (143)
Reading a Modern Classic: W. C. Smith's "The Meaning and End of Religion" (2001) (132)
The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category (2008) (129)
On torture, or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment (1996) (108)
Free Speech, Blasphemy, and Secular Criticism (2013) (102)
Where Are the Margins of the State? (2009) (97)
Market Model, Class Structure and Consent: A Reconsideration of Swat Political Organisation (1972) (95)
The Kababish Arabs: Power, authority and consent in a nomadic tribe (1971) (90)
Thinking about religion, belief, and politics (2011) (82)
What Do Human Rights Do? An Anthropological Enquiry (2000) (82)
Agency and pain: An exploration (2000) (80)
Two European Images of Non-European Rule ∗ (1973) (79)
Are There Histories of Peoples Without Europe? A Review Article (1987) (78)
Thinking About Tradition, Religion, and Politics in Egypt Today (2015) (76)
The anthropology of politics : a reader in ethnography, theory, and critique (2002) (75)
Reflections on Violence, Law, and Humanitarianism (2015) (58)
On ritual and discipline in medieval Christian monasticism (1987) (55)
THINKING ABOUT THE SECULAR BODY, PAIN, AND LIBERAL POLITICS (2011) (55)
Multiculturalism and British Identity in the Wake of the Rushdie Affair (1990) (53)
Secular Translations (2018) (51)
Europe against Islam : Islam in Europe (1997) (49)
The Idea of Europe: Muslims and European Identity: Can Europe Represent Islam? (2002) (44)
Ethnography, Literature, and Politics: Some Readings and Uses of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (1990) (44)
Notes on body pain and truth in medieval Christian ritual (1983) (40)
Anthropological texts and ideological problems: an analysis of Cohen on Arab villages in Israel ∗ (1975) (36)
British Social Anthropology (1979) (36)
Medieval heresy : An anthropological view (1986) (36)
Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (1970) (36)
Thinking about Secularism and Law in Egypt (2001) (35)
Provocations of European Ethnology (1997) (31)
Thinking about terrorism and just war (2010) (31)
Equality in Nomadic Social Systems? (1978) (27)
Religion, Nation-State, Secularism (2018) (22)
Fear and the Ruptured State: Reflections on Egypt after Mubarak (2012) (20)
Toward a Genealogy of the Concept of Ritual (2017) (15)
Seasonal Movements of the Kababish Arabs of Northern Kordofan (1964) (14)
Muhammad Asad between Religion and Politics (2011) (14)
Ideology, class and the origin of the Islamic state (1980) (13)
A Comment on Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory (1993) (11)
A Note on the History of the Kababish Tribe (1966) (10)
Genealogies of Religion, Twenty Years On: An Interview with Talal Asad (2014) (10)
The critique of orientalism: a reply to professor Dodd (1980) (9)
Explaining The Global Religious Revival: The Egyptian Case (2007) (9)
Slaves of the white myth: The psychology of neocolonialism (1980) (9)
Boundaries and Rights in Islamic Law: Introduction (2015) (8)
Reflections on laïcité & the public sphere (2005) (6)
RESPONSE TO GIL ANIDJAR (2009) (6)
Class Transformation under the Mandate (1976) (6)
Thinking about Religion through Wittgenstein (2020) (5)
Local Horror/Global Response (2001) (5)
Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, by Talal Asad. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, 355 pp. $42.50; $15.95 (paper) (1994) (4)
Reply to Judith Butler (2013) (4)
Explaining the Global Religious Revival (2010) (3)
Some Thoughts on the WTC Disaster (2002) (3)
Thinking about Secularism (2015) (2)
Primitive Sta Tes and the Reproduction of Production Rela Tions (1985) (2)
Cosmopolitanism and Peace? (2011) (1)
Introdução a "Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter", Talal Asad (2018) (1)
Thinking About Law, Morality, and Religion in the Story of Egyptian Modernization (2005) (1)
Religion, Power and Protest in Local Communities: The Northern Shore of the Mediterranean. ERIC WOLF (1986) (1)
Portrait (2020) (1)
Asian Stars in Atlanticland (2016) (0)
Portrait: Talal Asad (2020) (0)
The Frame as Borderland: Secular Gazes and Believing Bodies in Bani Abidi’s The From Here (2010) (2021) (0)
University of Southern Denmark Inter-religious Relations as a New Foundation for Comparative Religion Reeh, Niels (2020) (0)
‘Ilm and the Individual: Religious Education and Religious Ideas in Pakistan (2019) (0)
CHAPTER 17. Thinking about the Secular Body, Pain, and Liberal Politics (2020) (0)
Ideology and Cultural Identity: Modernity and the Third World Presence. JORGE LARRAIN (1995) (0)
Fantastic Community Brian Keith Axel (2002) (0)
On the Secular State: A Response to Mohamad Amer Meziane (2021) (0)
F. Eickelman Dale, The Middle East: An Anthropological Approach (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1981). Pp. xiv + 336. (1982) (0)
Leonard Binder, ed., The Study of the Middle East. Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1976). vii + 648 pp., index. $25.00 cloth. (1977) (0)
Talal Asad (ed.). Anthroplogy and the colonial encounter. New Jersey : Inthaca Press and Humanities Press, 1975. 285 p. (1978) (0)
18. Thinking about the Secular Body, Pain, and Liberal Politics (2019) (0)
Ideology, class and the origin of the Islamic state: Rejoinder to Suliman Bashear (1981) (0)
A REPLY TO PROFESSOR DODD1 (2016) (0)
11 Responses (2006) (0)
1. Secular Equality and Religious Language (2018) (0)
Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order. By Tomaž Mastnak. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002. Pp. 387. $50.00. (2003) (0)
The Memoirs of Babikr Bedri. Translated by Yousef Bedri and George Scott. London: Oxford University Press, 1969. Pp. xxi+250, maps. 55s. (1970) (0)
On the Frontiers of Islam: Two Manuscripts Concerning the Sudan under Turco-Egyptian rule, 1822–1845. Edited by Richard Hill. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. Pp. xxx + 234, map, index, footnotes, appendices. £3·00. (1972) (0)
Secularism , Liberal Democracy and Islam in Europe : A Habermasian Critique of Talal (2015) (0)
Radical Orthodoxy : Theology , Philosophy , Politics (2012) (0)
The State of the Secular: Theology, Prayer, and the University (2008) (0)
Book Reviews (1996) (0)
The Territories of Science and Religion (2019) (0)
Introduction: Thinking about Secularism (2020) (0)
Edward Said’s Presence and Absence in Contemporary Arab Thought (2016) (0)
Ideja antropologije islama / The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (2022) (0)
Sudanese Ethics. By Tore Nordenstam. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1968. Pp. 239. Sw. Kr. 15. (1970) (0)
On Torture, or Cruel, Inhuman, and (2016) (0)
Ethnicity and Nationalism in Post-Imperial Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) (1994) (0)
Interrogating Post-Secularism : (2011) (0)

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