Layla AbdelRahim is a comparatist

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

and anarchoprimitivist author, whose works on narratives of

civilization A civilization (also spelled civilisation in British English) is any complex society characterized by the development of state (polity), the state, social stratification, urban area, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyon ...

and

wilderness Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plurale tantum, plural) are Earth, Earth's natural environments that have not been significantly modified by human impact on the environment, human activity, or any urbanization, nonurbanized land not u ...

have contributed to the fields of

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

literary Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, ...

and

cultural studies Cultural studies is an academic field that explores the dynamics of contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers investigate how cultural practices rel ...

comparative literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

animal studies Animal studies is a recently recognised field in which animals are studied in a variety of cross-disciplinary ways. Scholars who engage in animal studies may be formally trained in a number of diverse fields, including art history, anthropology ...

, ecophilosophy,

sociology Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...

, anarcho-primitivist thought,

anarchism Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...

epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...

, and critique of

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

, and

education Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...

. She attributes the collapse in the diversity of bio-systems and

environmental degradation Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

monoculturalism Monoculturalism is the policy or process of supporting, advocating, or allowing the expression of the culture of a single social or ethnic group. It generally stems from beliefs within the dominant group that their cultural practices are superior t ...

and the civilized ontology that explains existence in terms of

anthropocentric Anthropocentrism ( ) is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity on the planet. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. From a ...

utilitarian functions. Her books ''Children's Literature, Domestication, and Social Foundation: Narratives of Civilization and Wilderness'' (

Routledge Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...

2015) and ''Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams: Civilization and the Birth of Education'' ( Fernwood 2013) make a contribution to children's literary theory and a critique of education as rooted in the civilized need for the domestication of children.

Education

AbdelRahim received her A.B. from

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh language, Welsh: ) is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as a ...

and, upon graduation in 1993, received the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to pursue an anthropological project in Europe. She did graduate work in 1993–94 at the

School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (, EHESS) is a graduate ''grande école'' and '' grand établissement'' in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. The school awards Master and PhD degrees alone and conjo ...

(

École des hautes études en sciences sociales The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (, EHESS) is a graduate ''grande école'' and '' grand établissement'' in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. The school awards Master and PhD degrees alone and conj ...

) or l'EHESS and master studies in social sciences at

Stockholm University Stockholm University (SU) () is a public university, public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, social ...

where she later worked as

Visiting Researcher In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting scientist, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic fo ...

at the department of

social anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...

. She completed her Ph.D. at the

Université de Montréal The Université de Montréal (; UdeM; ) is a French-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university's main campus is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce on M ...

, Department of Comparative Literature. Her dissertation entitled ''Order and the Literary Rendering of Chaos: Children's Literature as Knowledge, Culture, and Social Foundation'', examines the effect of ontological premises on human self-knowledge (

) and the repercussions of such knowledge on the anthropogenic destruction of the world's life systems and diversity.

Thought

AbdelRahim traces the root of all oppression to the ontological premises of

domestication Domestication is a multi-generational Mutualism (biology), mutualistic relationship in which an animal species, such as humans or leafcutter ants, takes over control and care of another species, such as sheep or fungi, to obtain from them a st ...

that define the raison d'être of living and non-living beings in terms of consumption and co-existence in a hierarchy of food chain. Drawing on paleontological studies,

ethology Ethology is a branch of zoology that studies the behavior, behaviour of non-human animals. It has its scientific roots in the work of Charles Darwin and of American and German ornithology, ornithologists of the late 19th and early 20th cen ...

, and

biological anthropology Biological anthropology, also known as physical anthropology, is a natural science discipline concerned with the biological and behavioral aspects of human beings, their extinct hominin ancestors, and related non-human primates, particularly fro ...

, she challenges the precepts in the narrative of

that constructs the human as predator and consumer. This critique extends to civilized economic and socio-political cultures and their effect on the environment as well as on systems of

and

parenting Parenting or child rearing promotes and supports the physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and educational development from infancy to adulthood. Parenting refers to the intricacies of raising a child and not exclusively for a biologica ...

. Her examination of civilized and wild narratives is relevant to a variety of domains and disciplines, such as

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...

evolutionary theory Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certai ...

environmental economics Environmental economics is a sub-field of economics concerned with environmental issues. It has become a widely studied subject due to growing environmental concerns in the twenty-first century. Environmental economics "undertakes theoretical ...

literary theory Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, m ...

Media appearances

AbdelRahim is featured in ''anOther Story of Progress'', a documentary film by Thomas Toivonen, as one of the world's leading contemporary

anarcho-primitivist Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of civilization that advocates a return to non-civilized ways of life through deindustrialization, abolition of the division of labor or specialization, abandonment of large-scale organization and all ...

philosophers.

Selected works

Books

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Articles

* * * * * *

References

External links

Layla AbdelRahim's website
* {{DEFAULTSORT:AbdelRahim, Layla Living people 21st-century Canadian non-fiction writers 21st-century Canadian women writers 21st-century Russian women writers Anarchist theorists Anarchist writers Anarcho-primitivists Bryn Mawr College alumni Canadian women anthropologists Canadian women non-fiction writers Deep ecologists Philosophers of technology Russian people of Sudanese descent Russian women anthropologists School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences alumni Stockholm University alumni Université de Montréal alumni Watson Fellows Writers from Montreal 20th-century births Russian anarchists Sudanese anarchists 21st-century anarchists Year of birth missing (living people)