The Quiet Revolution

A probing study of the veil's recent return—from one of the world's foremost authorities on Muslim women—that reaches surprising conclusions about contemporary Islam's place in the West todayIn Cairo in the 1940s, Leila Ahmed was raised by a generation of women who never dressed in the veils and headscarves their mothers and grandmothers had worn. To them, these coverings seemed irrelevant to both modern life and Islamic piety. Today, however, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world again wear the veil. Why, Ahmed asks, did this change take root so swiftly, and what does this shift mean for women, Islam, and the West?When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil's return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations. Ahmed observed that Islamism, with its commitments to activism in the service of the poor and in pursuit of social justice, is the strain of Islam most easily and naturally merging with western democracies' own tradition of activism in the cause of justice and social change. It is often Islamists, even more than secular Muslims, who are at the forefront of such contemporary activist struggles as civil rights and women's rights. Ahmed's surprising conclusions represent a near reversal of her thinking on this topic.Richly insightful, intricately drawn, and passionately argued, this absorbing story of the veil's resurgence, from Egypt through Saudi Arabia and into the West, suggests a dramatically new portrait of contemporary Islam.

The Catholic Origins of Quebec's Quiet Revolution challenges a versionof history central to modern Quebec's understanding of itself: that theQuiet Revolution began in the 1960s as a secular vision of state andsociety which rapidly displaced an obsolete, clericalized Catholicism.Michael Gauvreau argues that organizations such as Catholic youthmovements played a central role in formulating the Personalist Catholicideology that underlay the Quiet Revolution and that ordinaryQuebecers experienced the Quiet Revolution primarily through a seriesof transformations in the expression of their Catholic identity. In sodoing Gauvreau offers a new understanding of Catholicism's place intwentieth-century Quebec.

This book contends that beneath the frenzied activism of the sixties and the seeming quiescence of the seventies, a "silent revolution" has been occurring that is gradually but fundamentally changing political life throughout the Western world. Ronald Inglehart focuses on two aspects of this revolution: a shift from an overwhelming emphasis on material values and physical security toward greater concern with the quality of life; and an increase in the political skills of Western publics that enables them to play a greater role in making important political decisions. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Although little noticed, the face of central banking has changed significantly over the past ten to fifteen years, says the author of this enlightening book. Alan S. Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve System and member of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, shows that the changes, though quiet, have been sufficiently profound to constitute a revolution in central banking. Blinder considers three of the most significant aspects of the revolution. The first is the shift toward transparency: whereas central bankers once believed in secrecy and even mystery, greater openness is now considered a virtue. The second is the transition from monetary policy decisions made by single individuals to decisions made by committees. The third change is a profoundly different attitude toward the markets, from that of stern schoolmarm to one of listener. With keenness and balance, the author examines the origins of these changes and their pros and cons.

As if by unseen signal toward the end of the 1980s, many Latin American governments suddenly transferred money and decision-making power to local municipalities. At the same time, national authorities allowed local governments to choose their leaders in free and open elections. The resulting revolution has been profound in its reach and stunning in the silent shift of power from central to local authorities. The Quiet Revolution traces the growth and effects of decentralization and democratization in Latin America throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Based on first-hand accounts from mayors, local officials, and neighborhood leaders, Tim Campbell focuses on those cities and towns that made the most of their new intergovernmental arrangements. He further argues that the reforms, which are vital to long-term sustainable growth in the region, are in danger of being smothered by current policy responses from national and international institutions. Campbell's research, conducted over a ten-year span, counters conventional wisdom about the role of development banks in the process of state reform and offers timely insights into similar events taking place in other parts of the world.

The Other Quiet Revolution traces the under-examined cultural transformation woven through key developments in the formation of Canadian nationhood, from the 1946 Citizenship Act and the 1956 Suez crisis to the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1963-70) and the adoption of the federal multiculturalism policy in 1971. Jos� Igartua analyzes editorial opinion, political rhetoric, history textbooks, and public opinion polls to show how Canada's self-conception as a British country dissolved as struggles with bilingualism and biculturalism, as well as Quebec's constitutional demands, helped to fashion new representations of national identity in English-speaking Canada based on the civic principle of equality.

In The Quiet Revolution, leading political commentator Colin James analyses New Zealand's market-based reforms of the 1980s as they are happening. Writing a first draft of history, he examines how the 'quiet revolution' is seen alternately as a betrayal, a dangerous experiment and a liberation. Combining economic and political analysis, he describes the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring that formed the backdrop to the reforms and the effects of the reform programme itself. He also sees a groundswell of optimism that, he argues, could forge a new and very different society in New Zealand.