In the same year that Kamrava published his book on Qatar, Matthew Gray published Qatar: Politics and the Challenges of Development (2013). Kamrava’s book has about three times as many citations and seems to have become the go-to book on political issues in Qatar for the time period. Kamrava took a position at Georgetown University in […]
FIFA 2022: Qatar, The Legacy edited by Qoronfleh and Essa (2021) contains 24 chapters on a wide range of topics related to FIFA 2022 in Qatar. While chapters of this book look at FIFA in Qatar, there is much beyond the title. There are unique chapters on the role of sport on society in Qatar, gender and sport, sports infrastructure, crowd management, […]
In their books on the history of Qatar, Fromherz and Harkness do not include Arabic, Turkish, or Farsi sources, interestingly they also do not include English books that have been translated, such as Al-Ejli’s book, or original English books, as in Jassim the Leader, Founder of Qatar (2012) by Mohamed A. J. alThani (the author […]
In searching for alternative voices telling the history of Qatar, I found a copy of “Sheikh Jassim al-Thani: Founder of Qatar – A Historical Study of a Nineteenth Century Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula” (2015). The book was written in Arabic by Dr Omar al-Ejli, then translated into English by Abdul Salam Idrisi. The book […]
Lauren Carruth provides a useful introduction to Ethiopia’s Somali region, to the practices of global health, to ‘humanitarianism’, and to anthropology / ethnography with her 2021 publication: Love and Liberation: Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia’s Somali Region (Cornell University Press). The book helpfully deconstructs international / Euro-Western conceptualizations of humanitarianism and re-orients that within the Somali context (linguistic, socio-cultural, […]
Levine’s Wax & Gold (1965) is one the ‘classics’ of Ethiopian studies in the socio-anthropological realm. Much ink has been spilled about his work (including the author himself added a Preface to the 1972 to explain his change of views), much work has also been inspired that draws on the wax and gold concept that Levine describes […]
New open access publication: Whose voice matters in the teaching and learning of IPE? Implications for policy and policy making Abstract: Critical decolonial assessments of International Political Economy (IPE) curricula have found a continued dominance of Euro-Western perspectives. However, these critical assessments have often been of specific programs or courses. In this article, we open the canvas wider […]
Edited books are challenging to summarize, this post surveys some of the chapters and key points that stood out to me in this new collection, Contemporary Qatar (2021), edited by Zweiri and Al Qawasmi. Ch 1 outlines the challenges experienced by the new state, often driven by external actors but which slowed the process of state building, which […]
QUOTES: “As every farmer will emphasize, there is no average household, average yield, average rainfall or average food security situation. Averages are imposed; they provide illumination but are not lived realities. Instead of focusing on averages, greater attention should be placed on the diversity of ways in which households encounter food insecurity” (p. 25-26) “One […]
“The greatest political paradox of our time is this: there are more elections than ever before, and yet the world is becoming less democratic” (p. 1). This paradox is explained in How to Rig an Election (2018) by Cheeseman and Klaas (published by Yale). In sum: “How is it possible that the flourishing of elections […]