Samir Amin.Culture and Ideology in the Contemporary Arab World. RM 6(3):9-27 Reflections are offered on culture and ideology in the contemporary Arab world in a discussion of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. The claim that capitalist culture dominates the world is challenged, and it is argued that the forms of ritualized traditi onalism frequently labeled Islamic fundamentalism are neither holdovers from precapitalist societies nor resistances to contemporary occidentalism. It is further contended that the capitalist world system is increasingly polarized, with the dominant Western countries of the core increasingly at politico-economic odds with the developing countries of the periphery. The political and cultural effects of the Arab world's peripheral position within the global capitalist economy are discussed, and it is concluded that the popular struggles currently under way in the Arab world affirm Islamic cultural identity, rather than directly challenge Western economic exploitation, because the development of capitalist modernization in the Arab world has been effectively blocked.