Sanders is awful on Israel. He must be aware that US stance on Israel is directly linked to the wars he opposes, and yet he intentionally fails to connect those dots.
I don't think a Sanders run will do much to pull HRC to the left. And it certainly won't do anything to change US Israel policy.
Sorry! No academic insult intended! He's more on the anthropological side of things, so didn't know if you were familiar with him.
Let me push this a bit further. There is a fair amount of cultural and religious debate as to whether radical Islam is, in fact, Islam. The consensus, both inside and outside the Islamic world, seems to be that it is not. But as Eliade and many others have noted, any religion when viewed historically is a moving target. Christianity is not now what it was 500 years ago. And 500 years ago it was again different from what it was 1500 years ago, etc. Islam is no different, nor are the Pueblo religions, for that matter.
Knowing that no religion is static, that revitalization movements are based in religion, and accepting for argument's sake that radical islamic movements are revitalization movements, I'd argue that radical Islam has to be considered a valid part of Islam--whether or not internal religious authorities (or western political leaders) are prepared to accept it as such.
I think his model is hugely overlooked these days. Wallace's original article is available here, free to read online if you've got a jstor account: link to v.gd . There's fairly extensive literature on it since then. I'd be interested to get your impressions regarding its utility in the ME-- and/or for explaining phenomena like the Tea Party, for that matter.
When the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico kicked the Spanish out of their region in 1680 (See REVOLT by Matt Liebmann 2012), the first thing they did (after killing all the Spanish they could) was destroy the mission churches, religious paraphernalia, mission bells, and all other Spanish colonial artifacts and architecture they could lay their hands on. They burned it, buried it, broke it, tore it down. In its place, the Pueblos constructed a new environment, based on what they saw as traditional Pueblo culture. The revolt was a rejection of the harsh Spanish occupation and culture, and an attempt to recreate the world of their ancestors. That required destruction of all traces of the former, and then new construction of the latter. The revolution was led by a radical cleric/shaman named Po pe' (Po'pay). The Pueblo revolution was typical of a well-known and well-understood class of social phenomena called "revitalization movements" (see Wallace 1956).
ISIS has all the trappings of a modern-day revitalization movement, following Wallace's definition. As such, Wallace's model shows ISIS behavior to be consistent, even predictable. As a revitalization movement, ISIS *should* be doing what it's doing at museums and sites w/in the region they control--just as the Taliban ultimately did at places like Bamiyan. Recently, these actions have been termed "cultural genocide" in the press. I think that term misses the mark, especially given how long Wallace's model has been out there.
As an archeologist, I view the destruction of archeological sites and the attack on our database of past cultures as anathema. But Wallace's work gives us a basis for understanding why ISIS and movements like ISIS do what they do.
© 2026 All Rights Reserved
Weak Tea. US culpability under-weighted.
Sanders is awful on Israel. He must be aware that US stance on Israel is directly linked to the wars he opposes, and yet he intentionally fails to connect those dots.
I don't think a Sanders run will do much to pull HRC to the left. And it certainly won't do anything to change US Israel policy.
Sorry! No academic insult intended! He's more on the anthropological side of things, so didn't know if you were familiar with him.
Let me push this a bit further. There is a fair amount of cultural and religious debate as to whether radical Islam is, in fact, Islam. The consensus, both inside and outside the Islamic world, seems to be that it is not. But as Eliade and many others have noted, any religion when viewed historically is a moving target. Christianity is not now what it was 500 years ago. And 500 years ago it was again different from what it was 1500 years ago, etc. Islam is no different, nor are the Pueblo religions, for that matter.
Knowing that no religion is static, that revitalization movements are based in religion, and accepting for argument's sake that radical islamic movements are revitalization movements, I'd argue that radical Islam has to be considered a valid part of Islam--whether or not internal religious authorities (or western political leaders) are prepared to accept it as such.
Hi Juan,
I think his model is hugely overlooked these days. Wallace's original article is available here, free to read online if you've got a jstor account: link to v.gd . There's fairly extensive literature on it since then. I'd be interested to get your impressions regarding its utility in the ME-- and/or for explaining phenomena like the Tea Party, for that matter.
Hi Juan et al.,
When the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico kicked the Spanish out of their region in 1680 (See REVOLT by Matt Liebmann 2012), the first thing they did (after killing all the Spanish they could) was destroy the mission churches, religious paraphernalia, mission bells, and all other Spanish colonial artifacts and architecture they could lay their hands on. They burned it, buried it, broke it, tore it down. In its place, the Pueblos constructed a new environment, based on what they saw as traditional Pueblo culture. The revolt was a rejection of the harsh Spanish occupation and culture, and an attempt to recreate the world of their ancestors. That required destruction of all traces of the former, and then new construction of the latter. The revolution was led by a radical cleric/shaman named Po pe' (Po'pay). The Pueblo revolution was typical of a well-known and well-understood class of social phenomena called "revitalization movements" (see Wallace 1956).
ISIS has all the trappings of a modern-day revitalization movement, following Wallace's definition. As such, Wallace's model shows ISIS behavior to be consistent, even predictable. As a revitalization movement, ISIS *should* be doing what it's doing at museums and sites w/in the region they control--just as the Taliban ultimately did at places like Bamiyan. Recently, these actions have been termed "cultural genocide" in the press. I think that term misses the mark, especially given how long Wallace's model has been out there.
As an archeologist, I view the destruction of archeological sites and the attack on our database of past cultures as anathema. But Wallace's work gives us a basis for understanding why ISIS and movements like ISIS do what they do.