AnthroAlert: An Anthropology Podcast
Education
# AnthroAlert
## Episode 13: Druze Identity
Originally aired 18 August 2017 on bullsradio.org
In this episode, our guest, Chad Radwan, will present on how expanded educational resources focused on Druze history might strengthen collective notions of community and Druze particularism.
Chad Radwan is a recent graduate of the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. As well, he earned his Bachelor’s degree in anthropology at USF in 2006 and his Master’s degree in applied anthropology in 2009. His thesis is titled Assessing Druze Identity and Strategies for Preserving Druze Heritage in North America, and he worked to apply his findings through the oldest Arab-American mutual aid Society. For his dissertation research, Chad traveled to Lebanon in 2014 where he studied how educational resources focused on doctrine and history might strengthen the ethnoreligious Druze community. His dissertation is titled The Sweet Burden: Constructing and Contesting Druze Heritage and Identity in Lebanon and he has presented on his research at a number of Druze conventions, both domestically and internationally, and at academic conferences. Chad’s upcoming article, Economic Adversities and Cultural Coping Strategies: Impacts on Identity Boundaries among Druzes in Lebanon, will be published in the early 2018 issue of Economic Anthropology and he is currently writing an article focusing on the social obligations and financial pressures that shape modern weddings among young Druze. Chad has worked on a variety of research projects in Public Health and in the Information Management Systems Engineering and helped to create and disseminate the largest single health assessment of an older adult population. This research resulted in a paper titled, Villages of Opportunity: Increasing Health and Quality of Life in Older Adults, coauthored with the Dean of the College of Public Health at USF, Donna Petersen, which was awarded the American Public Health Association’s prestigious Erickson Foundation Research Award.
The Druze are a ethnoreligious community that mainly preside in Lebanon, Syria, Israel and Northern Jordan. They practice a strict form of endogamy and neither proselytize nor recognize a method of conversion. Their inner-teachings of their faith are require a knowledge that is passed down among male and female sheikhs, who represent a fraction of the worldwide Druze community, living relatively modest lives ideally devoted to the attainment of spiritual knowledge. Among a number of other factors, the majority of Druze individuals in the countries of origin and in the diaspora have a pronounced gap in their knowledge of their history and the basics of their doctrine. I conducted research to understand how expanded educational resources focused on Druze history and the elementary tenets of the faith might strengthen collective notions of community and Druze particularism. The research identified a number of gaps where formal resources are lacking and how existing seminars, study groups, community events, etc. might be increased, improved, or made more accessible. As well, having conducted 91 qualitative interviews, research informants discussed how a collective belief in reincarnation, shared political interests, and their minority status, shaped their Druze identity and sense of community in Lebanese society, which is often divided along sectarian and confessional lines.
## Podcast link
https://anthroalert.tumblr.com/post/168640542395/anthroalert-episode-13-druze-identity
## Video link
https://youtu.be/VCpCJi6Gj-Q
## Album art photo credit:
Oliver Thompson
https://flic.kr/p/9zVPYB
CC License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
The market at the Druze village Daliyat al-Karmil. by Shiran Pasternak
https://flic.kr/p/ccCwFw
CC License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
## Intro music credit:
Urbana-Metronica (wooh-yeah mix) by spinningmerkaba
http://ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/33345
CC License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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