This 1997 book was written by a professor based in Bulgaria. It seeks to answer the question of why the Ottoman rule rose and fell in the Arabian Gulf. “The Ottoman Gulf – The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar”, published by Columbia University Press, is a unique contribution in that its sources are […]
There was a time when basic science research projects took years to prepare for, even more years to undertake, and with high risks of injury of death. “Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition of 1761-1767” by Thorkild Hansen (1962 Danish, 1964 English) documents one such journey, apparently Europe’s first to the south of Arabia. The journey […]
Tags: #Academia #Arabia Felix #Arabian Gulf #Danish #Middle East
I discovered “God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Middle Period 1200-1550” (2006) by Ahmet Karamustafa largely by accident (it was a footnote in another book I had read). The title got me, but it sat on the shelf for a while until I got to it. The book itself is quite short, the […]
I have covered many critical assessments of development on this blog. However, comparatively few have covered the Middle East and North Africa region. Was pleased to come across “Arab Development Denied: Dynamics of Accumulation by Wars of Encroachment” by Ali Kadri (2015). The region has had diverse historical and contemporary experiences and I found several […]
Tags: #Ali Kadri #Arab Development Denied #Arab World #Middle East #North Africa
New OPEN ACCESS book Sustainable Qatar: Social, Political and Environmental Perspectives Available here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-7398-7 Abstract: This open access book provides a topical overview of the key sustainability issues in Qatar, focusing on environmental sustainability from a socio-political perspective. The transition to a sustainable Qatar requires engagement with diverse areas of social-political, human, and environmental development. On the […]
Tags: #Middle East #Qatar #Sustainability #Sustainable Qatar #Transition
What do some non-democratic governments have stronger social protection systems than others? That is the main questions attempted in the book “Social Dictatorships: The Political Economy of the Welfare State in the Middle East and North Africa” (2020) by Ferdinand Eibl (published by Oxford University Press). This book is largely an elaboration of a 2016 […]
Tags: #Authoritarian welfare states #Middle East #North Africa #Social Dictatorships #Welfare States
Cochrane, L. and Amery, H. (2017) Gulf Cooperation Council Countries and the Global Land Grab. Arab World Geographer 20(1): 17-41. Abstract: A rapid increase in large-scale land acquisitions associated with the food-commodity price spike in 2008 resulted in a flurry of journalistic, non-governmental organization, and academic publications. One of the primary narratives that emerged was that oil-rich […]
Tags: #Global land rush #Gulf cooperation council #Land Grab #Land grabbing #Middle East
The CEU Center for Religious Studies and the Institute for Advanced Study at CEU announce the launch of “Striking from the Margins: Religion, State and Disintegration in the Middle East,” a two-year research project commencing in September 2016 with a major grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The research program will host host […]
The Public History program and the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at NC State University are looking for a Doctoral Candidate in the Public History of the Middle East to start in fall 2017 for a period of three years. Acceptance into the program includes a competitive stipend, full tuition waiver, and health coverage. […]
Tags: #Anthropology #Culture #Ethnography #History #Middle East
The Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar invites proposals from scholars and researchers interested in conducting original research on the topic of “Mobility, Displacement and Forced Migration in the Middle East.” CIRS will award research grants to support fieldwork, original empirical research, and analysis on […]
Tags: #Displacement #Forced Migration #Middle East #Migration #Mobility