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Kuwait, unlike most of its neighbours, has a well-established national identity and a long history as a nation, dating back to the eighteenth century. In this book, first published in 1992, Dr. Jill Crystal focuses on two recurring themes in Kuwaiti history: one, the preservation of a sense of community in the face of radical economic, social and political transformations; the second, internal rivalry over the conventions governing relations among members of the community. Crystal skilfully weaves these themes into a broad profile of Kuwait, analysing the nation’s transformation from a pre-oil to an oil economy; its social structure and composition, including the country’s tribal roots and key divisions involving class, gender and immigrant labour; political tensions resulting from the nation’s sudden wealth and the accompanying changes in social structure; and its relations with other countries in the Gulf and the Middle East.
This book asks why in recent years the social and economic upheavals in Kuwait and Qatar have been accompanied by a remarkable political continuity.
The tiny country of Kuwait grabbed the world's attention during the Gulf War, during which its natural petroleum resource became the envy of its neighboring country of Iraq. But Kuwait's history goes back long before any oil was discovered, back to Mesopotamian settlements as early as 3000 BCE. Ideal for high school students as well as general readers, History of Kuwait offers a comprehensive look at how such a small country could, essentially, rule the world with just one natural resource. From sheikhdom to British protectorate to independence to invasion, Kuwait's history is long and rich with culture. Michael S. Casey demonstrates how this Middle Eastern gem has grown throughout the centuries.
Oman's 1970 coup launched a new political and economic structure that was created by and for Sultan Qaboos. The initially haphazard construction matured into a durable structure that continues under Sultan Haitham. This work details the early construction of the Qabusid state in the 1970s-1980s, emphasizing the interplay between personalities and the process of institutionalization. The narrative continues to the present demonstrating the resilience of the Qaboosid system.
This book investigates how ecology and politics meet in the Middle East and how those interactions connect to the global political economy. Through region-wide analyses and case studies from the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf of Aden, the Levant and North Africa, the volume highlights the intimate connections of environmental activism, energy infrastructure and illicit commodity trading with the political economies of Central Asia, the Horn of Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The book's nine chapters analyze how the exploitation and representation of the environment have shaped the history of the region--and determined its place in global politics. It argues that how the ecological is unders...
In Border and Rule, one of North America’s foremost thinkers and immigrant rights organizers delivers an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation. Harsha Walia disrupts easy explanations for the migrant and refugee crises, instead showing them to be the inevitable outcomes of the conquest, capitalist globalization, and climate change that are generating mass dispossession worldwide. Border and Rule explores a number of seemingly disparate global geographies with shared logics of border rule that displace, immobilize, criminalize, exploit, and expel migrants and refugees. With her keen ability to connect the dots, Walia demons...
A comprehensive examination of the nature of power in the Gulf, comparing and contrasting its origins, exercise and opposition in six Arab countries.
The latest edition of this renowned textbook explores the states and regimes of the Middle East and North Africa. Presenting heavily revised, fully updated chapters contributed by the world’s leading experts, it analyzes the historical trajectory, political institutions, economic development, and foreign policies of the region’s nearly two dozen countries. The volume can be used in conjunction with its sister volume, The Societies of the Middle East and North Africa, for a comprehensive overview of the region. Chapters are organized and structured identically, giving insightful windows into the nuances of each country’s domestic politics and foreign relations. Data tables and extensive...
After the discovery of oil in the 1930s, the Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Bahrain—went from being among the world’s poorest and most isolated places to some of its most ostentatiously wealthy. To maintain support, the ruling sheikhs provide their subjects with boundless cheap energy, unwittingly leading to some of the highest consumption rates on earth. Today, as summertime temperatures set new records, the Gulf’s rulers find themselves caught in a dilemma: can they curb their profligacy without jeopardizing the survival of some of the world’s last absolute monarchies? In Energy Kingdoms, Jim Krane takes readers inside these monar...
"The volume edited by Mark Tessler addresses a set of critical issues confronting all social scientists whose field of inquiry is extra-American.... Tessler and his contributors succeed admirably in their goal." --American Historical Review How should scholars construct knowledge about politics, economics, and international relations in major world regions? According to the contributors to this lively volume, the conflicting approaches of regional specialists and discipline-oriented social scientists must be combined to provide a firm foundation for studying the contemporary politics of the Middle East. Contributors are Lisa Anderson, Anne Banda, Laurie A. Brand, Laura Zittrain Eisenberg, John P. Entelis, Clement M. Henry, Magda Kandil, Baghat Korany, Jodi Nachtwey, Augustus Richard Norton, and Mark Tessler.