Patrick Jagoda
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226346489
- eISBN:
- 9780226346656
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226346656.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Film theorist David Bordwell has identified around 150 films from the 1990s that foreground social networks through assemblages of characters who are linked and whose paths intersect, only ...
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Film theorist David Bordwell has identified around 150 films from the 1990s that foreground social networks through assemblages of characters who are linked and whose paths intersect, only occasionally and often accidentally, through the unfolding of complex narratives. Critics only began to recognize these films as belonging to a coherent cinematic genre around 2005, coining related category names that have included “hyperlink cinema,” “criss-crossers,” “multi-protagonist films,” “fractal films,” “database cinema,” and “network narratives.” Network films flourish in a cultural milieu characterized by an interest not only in network structure but also dynamic processes of emergence: the creation of complex higher-level phenomena from interactions among lower-level components of a system. Moving pictures use audio-visual aesthetics and formal techniques such as crosscutting to explore this paradigm. This chapter focuses on Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (2005). This film engages with a transnational historical present marked by the majority of network films, albeit more directly than most other examples of this genre. In a more singular way, the film uses its formal innovations to grapple with the specificity of discussions in sociology, economics, and politics about so-called “terrorist networks.”Less
Film theorist David Bordwell has identified around 150 films from the 1990s that foreground social networks through assemblages of characters who are linked and whose paths intersect, only occasionally and often accidentally, through the unfolding of complex narratives. Critics only began to recognize these films as belonging to a coherent cinematic genre around 2005, coining related category names that have included “hyperlink cinema,” “criss-crossers,” “multi-protagonist films,” “fractal films,” “database cinema,” and “network narratives.” Network films flourish in a cultural milieu characterized by an interest not only in network structure but also dynamic processes of emergence: the creation of complex higher-level phenomena from interactions among lower-level components of a system. Moving pictures use audio-visual aesthetics and formal techniques such as crosscutting to explore this paradigm. This chapter focuses on Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (2005). This film engages with a transnational historical present marked by the majority of network films, albeit more directly than most other examples of this genre. In a more singular way, the film uses its formal innovations to grapple with the specificity of discussions in sociology, economics, and politics about so-called “terrorist networks.”
Masooda Bano
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450440
- eISBN:
- 9780801463860
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450440.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
Islamic schools, or madrasas, have been accused of radicalizing Muslims and participating, either actively or passively, in terrorist networks since the events of 9/11. In Pakistan, the 2007 siege by ...
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Islamic schools, or madrasas, have been accused of radicalizing Muslims and participating, either actively or passively, in terrorist networks since the events of 9/11. In Pakistan, the 2007 siege by government forces of Islamabad's Red Mosque and its madrasa complex, whose imam and students staged an armed resistance against the state for its support of the “war on terror,” reinforced concerns about madrasas' role in regional and global jihad. By 2006 madrasas registered with Pakistan's five regulatory boards for religious schools enrolled over one million male and 200,000 female students. This book explores the network of Pakistani madrasas. It maps the choices and decisions confronted by students, teachers, parents, and clerics and explains why available choices make participation in jihad appear at times a viable course of action. The book shows that beliefs are rational and that religious believers look to maximize utility in ways not captured by classical rational choice. The book applies analytical tools from the New Institutional Economics to explain apparent contradictions in the madrasa system—for example, how thousands of young Pakistani women now demand the national adoption of traditional sharia law, despite its highly restrictive limits on female agency, and do so from their location in Islamic schools for girls that were founded only a generation ago.Less
Islamic schools, or madrasas, have been accused of radicalizing Muslims and participating, either actively or passively, in terrorist networks since the events of 9/11. In Pakistan, the 2007 siege by government forces of Islamabad's Red Mosque and its madrasa complex, whose imam and students staged an armed resistance against the state for its support of the “war on terror,” reinforced concerns about madrasas' role in regional and global jihad. By 2006 madrasas registered with Pakistan's five regulatory boards for religious schools enrolled over one million male and 200,000 female students. This book explores the network of Pakistani madrasas. It maps the choices and decisions confronted by students, teachers, parents, and clerics and explains why available choices make participation in jihad appear at times a viable course of action. The book shows that beliefs are rational and that religious believers look to maximize utility in ways not captured by classical rational choice. The book applies analytical tools from the New Institutional Economics to explain apparent contradictions in the madrasa system—for example, how thousands of young Pakistani women now demand the national adoption of traditional sharia law, despite its highly restrictive limits on female agency, and do so from their location in Islamic schools for girls that were founded only a generation ago.
