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This article discusses the concept of surrealism and how it generates a pervasive philosophical structuring of culture and art. As has been noted in 1976, modernism and surrealism have spread to many countries, yet each cultural setting has left its own distinctive imprint. Surrealism in France has a political programmatic edge; surrealism in Latin America luxuriates in the fantastic. In Iran, surrealism generates an emotional tone which can provide access to a pervasive philosophical structuring of Iranian culture, one that plays on a tragic sense of the universe parallel to the tragic sense elaborated in Iranian Shi'ism.

Studies the mobilization of Lebanon's Shi'a community, which has long been on the periphery of Lebanon's political system and on the bottom of the country's economic system. Brief digression on social mobilization and the Shi'as; Impetuses for the reemergence of Harakat Amal; Meaning of Amal.

Chapter 5 explores the ancient cities of the developed Asiatic mode of production in the Sinic, Japanese, Islamic and Indie regions for their contributions to the overall achievements of human urbanization. IMPERIAL CHINA: FROM CITY-STATE TO WORLD METROPOLIS The emergence of the Chinese city The traditional city remains largely unstudied … much of traditional Chinese culture, and particularly its literate aspects, developed primarily in the city … where the elite class resided and where decisions of national and local affairs were made. The world's pre-modern urban history was mainly a Chinese phenomenon (Rozman, 1973:3). Of approximately 4% of the world's population living in cities of over 10,000 inhabitants in 1800, about one third, or 12 million, lived in China which led the world in economic development until the eighteenth century, when it may have been surpassed by Japan, as well as by western Europe. Some two-fifths of the world's population were in China and Japan, yet ‘until now there have been no knowledgeable comparisons of Chinese and Japanese cities with each other or with cities in other countries’ (Rozman, 1973:7). The Chinese people emerged from a blending of north and north-western, nomadic and pastoral Turks, Tungus, Mongols and Tibetans, with settled, agricultural Tai, Miao and Yao further south. The blending continued throughout Chinese history and is culturally paralleled by the joint heritage of northern Yangshao (Eberhard, 1960:48; Stover and Stover, 1976:18–24) and south-central Lungshan (Stover and Stover, 1976:24–6). The hand-coiled, white, red and black painted pottery of the former has striking echoes in Turkestan and Caucasus, while their more widespread grey pottery was a local tradition and their chopsticks, double steamers, tripods and woven silk became characteristically Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]