Arab books and human development.

AuthorRogan, Eugene

THE 2002 ARAB HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Report was a landmark document. Written by Arab social scientists, it was the first auto-critique to address the challenges faced by the Arab world at the start of a new century. The 2002 Report set out an agenda of reform based on three perceived 'deficits': the freedom deficit, a deficit of empowerment of women, and the 'human capabilities/knowledge deficit relative to income.' To support their bold assertions, the Report's authors assembled data from a wide range of sources, and, drawing on the model of the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Reports, sought to view the social and economic challenges from new and innovative angles. Consequently, the AHDR 2002 provided a wealth of new ideas to stimulate discussion and debate on the contemporary Arab world.

Given the weight of data and arguments, the general reader might be forgiven for having overlooked a brief paragraph, in a chapter otherwise dedicated to research and information technology, on the state of books in the Arab world. "There are no reliable figures on the production of books," the Report contends, "but many indicators suggest a severe shortage of writing; a large share of the market consists of religious books and educational publications that are limited in their creative content." Drawing on a 1999 study, (1) the Report continued:

The figures for translated books are also discouraging. The Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one fifth of the number that Greece translates. The cumulative total of translated books since the Caliph Maa'moun's [sic] time (the ninth century) is about 100,000, almost the average that Spain translates in one year. (AHDR 2002, p. 78) It is no coincidence that the authors chose the Caliph Ma'mun as a starting point. The Caliph is credited with initiating one of the most important translation projects in human history. A convinced rationalist, al-Ma'mun (r. 813-33) established in Baghdad the famous 'House of Wisdom' (Dar al-Hikma) dedicated to the translation of Greek philosophical works, preserving in Arabic the wisdom of ancient Greece for all posterity. The irony of the quote is to say that the Arab world today, representing 270 million people spread over 22 countries, can only manage one-fifth the translations of modern Greece.

Such round figures are hard to substantiate. The National Book Centre of Greece, founded by the Ministry of Culture, does not keep records on translations into Greek. However, they reported 6826 books total published in Greece in 2002. (2) While it is possible that one quarter of Greece's publications were translations, it is not clear to me that this would be a sign of publishing vitality. The figure for Spain is spurious; its total figure for book publishing, of which translations would be a minor part, does not exceed several thousand each year. Yet these shortcomings in the statistics have not hindered the international reception of the AHDR's data on Arab book publishing.

The AHDR figures were seized upon by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to illustrate the isolation of the Arabs in an increasingly globalized world.

On education, the report reveals that the whole Arab world translates about three hundred books annually--one fifth the number that Greece alone translates; investment in research and development is less than one seventh the world average; and Internet connectivity is worse than in sub-Saharan Africa. Friedman derived the title of his column from a quote in the AHDR: "The Arab world is at a crossroads. The fundamental choice is whether its trajectory will remain marked by inertia ... or whether prospects for an Arab renaissance, anchored in human development, will be actively pursued."

The authority of the AHDR and The New York Times combined to give these data great weight in public debate. Respected analysts noted for their sympathy with the Arab world, such as Vartan Gregorian, quoted the book figures to demonstrate the need for an opening of the Arab mind to outside influences as a strategy for countering the power of Islam in Arab politics. (4) U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell explicitly cited the AHDR to validate a new American policy to invest in social change in the Arab world, repeating the quote Friedman cited of the region at a 'crossroads' between 'inertia' and 'renaissance.' (5)

Books in the Arab world had thus come to be associated with the forces retarding an Arab renaissance. And so the authors of the AHDR 2003 returned to the subject in some detail. While cautioning readers about the lack of reliable statistics 'on the actual amount of literary production in the Arab world,' they draw on UNESCO figures to assert that, in 1991, "Arab countries produced 6,500 [emphasis in the original] books compared to 102,000 books in North America, and 42,000 in Latin America and the Caribbean." Still drawing on UNESCO figures, the 2003 Report claimed:

Book production in Arab countries was just 1.1 percent of world production, although Arabs constitute 5% of the world's population. The publication of literary works was lower than the average level of book production. In 1996, Arab countries produced no more than 1945 literary and artistic books, which represents 0.8% of international production. This is less than what a country such as Turkey produces, with a population about one-quarter that of the Arab countries. In general, Arab book production centers mainly on religious topics and less on other fields such as literature, art and the social sciences. (AHDR 2003, p. 77) This preoccupation with religious books, first raised in the 2002 Report, recurs throughout the 2003 text. "There are no accurate statistics on the types of books preferred by Arab readers," the Report notes. "but according to many publishers and observers, the bestsellers at the Cairo International Book Fair are religious books, followed by books categorized as educational." (AHDR 2003, p. 78) The Report then directs the reader to a table that purports to support these generalizations. Comparing the relative distribution of published books, by field, in ten Arab countries and the rest of the world in 1996, the table shows that the Arab world did produce more than three times the world relative distribution of books on religion--some 17.5% of Arab books, compared to just over 5% of the rest of the world. However, religious books represented a distinct minority, and the smallest category overall, of the relative distribution of books in Arabic, with the social sciences representing closer to 20%, the sciences exceeding 20%, and the arts and literature tallying the highest figure of some 22.5%. (AHDR 2003: Table 3.4, p. 78)

The Arab book, the 2003 Report concludes, is a "threatened species." The challenges faced by Arab book publishing, as set out in the report, are very real. Print runs of books are very low, ranging for the average novel between 1,000 and 3,000 copies. "A book that sells 5,000 copies is considered a bestseller." (AHDR 2003, p. 78) With fewer books being published, in low numbers, book publishing risks becoming 'economically unfeasible.' According to Fathi Khalil al-Biss, the Vice President of the Arab Publishers Union, Arab book publishing has been threatened by three factors: censorship and the practice of banning books among the 22 Arab states; low readership, blamed on economic stagnation and competition from the mass media; and the lack of adequate distribution of books across the Arab world. Al-Biss added that a lack of respect for intellectual property rights was also a deterrent. (AHDR 2003, p. 79)

Just as Colin Powell drew on the...

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