The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and its Social Reproduction

Abstract

Far from being immutable, humanity is in fact involved in an interminable process of evolution, disintegration and reconstruction; far from being a unity, it is in fact infinite in its variety, with regard to both time and place. Nor do I mean simply that external forms of life vary. … Rather I mean that the fundamental substance of [men's] way of conceiving the world and conducting themselves in it is in a constant state of flux, which itself varies from place to place (Durkheim 1977: 324). © 1978, Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History. All rights reserved.