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Poet and Businessman
A history of contemporary Kuwait as seen through the life of an individual Kuwaiti. This book reviews and analyzes the modern history of Kuwait through the life of Abd al-Aziz Sa‘ud al-Babtain, a wealthy businessman, philanthropist, and poet. He is the head of a large, influential international cultural foundation based in Kuwait City. Abd al-Aziz’s life story tightly interweaves with modern discussions on the history of the state of Kuwait. There are very few books taking a collective grip on the history of the state of Kuwait. Likewise, there are very few studies about the generation of Gulf individuals who experienced, benefitted from, and even suffered from the discovery of oil, and who has been a crucial part of socioeconomic and cultural developments in countries like Kuwait in recent history. By constructing a cohesive overview of the modern history of Kuwait enriched by the life of an individual that has lived through the better part of that particular history, this book fills a lacuna in contemporary scholarship on the Middle East, and especially the Arabian or the Persian Gulf.
The Political Economy of Violence
This study will attempt to answer the question of how can the rise in social violence since the 1980s be explained in the oil-rich nation of Venezuela? The once relatively peaceful nation of Venezuela has seen a dramatic rise in social violence over the last three decades that has placed her amongst some of the world's most dangerous countries. A review of the relevant literature will reveal that the study of a social phenomenon such as violence, in a nation such as Venezuela, is a complicated task because there are a number of different, but in many cases interlinked, variables that contribute to the formation of this social phenomenon. Therefore, the conceptual framework will consist of a ...
Culture and Counterculture in Moroccan Politics
Culture and politics in Morocco are an interactive blend of conflict and congruence. John P. Entelis argues that no single form defines Morocco's national identity and identifies four cultural patterns--monarchial, modernist, militarist, and messianic--that compete with each other yet share strong ties to an overriding cultural core of 'Muslim consensus'. This consensus explains much of the country's success in reconciling cultural differences in a relatively nonviolent manner and in creating a pluralistic, open and populist society. Entelis argues that Morocco, at a critical juncture in its postindependence history, may be able to overcome challenges from international pressures and socioeconomic problems because of its cultural harmony. Previously published in 1989 by Westview Press.
Crude Awakenings
"The real story of global oil over the past twenty-five years is not about the spillover effects of Palestinians fighting Israelis, or terrorist attacks on U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, or Iraq's stormy relationship with Kuwait. It is not even about periodic small- and large-scale U.S. attacks on Iraq. Rather, the real story is about longer-term developments that have changed the international relations of the Middle East, politics at the global level, and world oil markets. These developments have increased oil stability."--from the Introduction Thirty years after OAPEC shattered world markets for oil, the Western world remains profoundly dependent on foreign, particularly Middle E...
Historical Dictionary of Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia now has been under the spotlight of Western curiosity for more than 80 years. More than 15% of the world’s total oil reserves lie underneath Saudi Arabia and, in the early 1990s, the kingdom became the world’s largest crude oil producer. Not surprisingly, a world highly dependent on oil regards the desert kingdom as an area of intense strategic concern, as reflected in the coalition of forces assembled on Saudi soil to oust Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. Also, it played a major role in the invasion of Saddam Husayn’s Iraq in 2003 and shares concern with the West over Iran’s nuclear intentions throughout the 21st century. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Saudi Arabia contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1,000 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Saudi Arabia.
Security in the Gulf: Historical Legacies and Future Prospects
This book examines Gulf Security in a holistic way seeing past the narrow military aspect and also trying to debunk the conventional narratives propagated by regional and external actors. In particular, the emphasis is be on the historical legacy of Gulf security and the fundamental domestic and international vulnerabilities of the various states in the region. This approach proves important in light of the recent efforts by Gulf states to recast their position in the international arena trying to peddle an image of self-assertiveness and autonomy in the security sphere. These new diplomatic stances do not seem to be borne out by their current security policies that are marked by apparent continuity with past practices. In particular, the new Gulf-Asia nexus and the claims by Gulf monarchies that regional confidence building measures are appearing on the horizon are placed under critical scrutiny. This is done by a sobering examination of the balance of threat in the region, the historical amity/enmity patterns and the evolving American stance. A shorter, modified version of this book was previously published as a special issue of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.
Zanzibar Was a Country
Zanzibar Was a Country traces the history of a Swahili-speaking Arab diaspora from East Africa to Oman. In Oman today, whole communities in Muscat speak Swahili, have recent East African roots, and practice forms of sociality associated with the urban culture of the Swahili coast. These "Omani Zanzibaris" offer the most significant contemporary example in the Gulf, as well as in the wider Indian Ocean region, of an Afro-Arab community that maintains a living connection to Africa in a diasporic setting. While they come from all over East Africa, a large number are postrevolution exiles and emigrés from Zanzibar. Their stories provide a framework for the broader transregional entanglements of decolonization in Africa and the Arabian Gulf. Using both vernacular historiography and life histories of men and women from the community, Nathaniel Mathews argues that the traumatic memories of the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 are important to nation-building on both sides of the Indian Ocean.
Islam in Historical Perspective
Islam in Historical Perspective integrates history of Islamic societies with discussion of how Muslim scriptures, laws, moral values and myths have shaped lives and thought of individual Muslims and various Muslim communities from the rise of Islam until today. It provides carefully selected historical and scriptural evidence that enables readers to form a comprehensive balanced vision of Islam's evolution. Author Alexander Knysh shows Muslims have made sense of their life experiences by constantly interpreting and re-interpreting Islam's foundational ideas in accordance with ever-changing social and political conditions. In addition to the combined historical and chronological approach, the author offers in-depth discussions of intellectual dialogues and struggles within Islamic tradition. He shows Islam to be a social and political force, while addressing Muslim devotional practices, artistic creativity and structures of everyday life and provides a wealth of historical anecdotes and quotations from original sources that are designed to illustrate principal points.
America's Kingdom
Now newly updated, America's Kingdom debunks the many myths that now surround the United States's special relationship with Saudi Arabia, also known as "the deal": oil for security. Exploding the long-established myth that the Arabian American Oil Company, Aramco, made miracles happen in the desert, Robert Vitalis shows how oil led the US government to follow the company to the kingdom, and how oil and Aramco quickly became America's largest single overseas private enterprise. From the establishment in the 1930s of a Jim Crow system in the Dhahran oil camps, to the consolidation of America's Kingdom under the House of Fahd, the royal faction that still rules today, this is a meticulously researched account of Aramco as a microcosm of the colonial order.
The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World
The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World argues that the present crisis of the Arab world has its origins in the historical, legal and political development of state-citizen relations since the beginning of modern history in the Middle East and North Africa. The anthology covers three main topics. Part I focuses on the crisis of the social pact in different Arab countries as it became manifest during the Arab Uprisings. Part II concentrates on concepts of citizenship in Islamic doctrine, Islamic movements (Muslim Brotherhood and Salafism), secular political movements and Arab thinkers. Part III looks into the practices that support the claims to equal rights as well as the factors that have obstructed full citizen rights, such as patronage and clientelism. Contributors are: Ida Almestad, Claire Beaugrand, Assia Boutaleb, Michaelle Browers, Nils Butenschøn, Anthony Gorman, Raymond Hinnebusch, Engin F. Isin, Rania Maktabi, Roel Meijer, Emin Poljarevic, Ola Rifai, James Sater, Rachel Scott, Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, Robert Springborg, Stig Stenslie, Morten Valbjørn, Knut S. Vikør and Sami Zemni.
