Posted by 
By Barry Rubin
Barry Rubin (ed.)
The heart East is still a space of surpassing curiosity and value in worldwide affairs this present day, leading to a relentless move of media recognition and in-depth educational scrutiny. regrettably, this has bring about many misperceptions in regards to the zone, its humans, and their methods of lifestyles. This designated two-volume set is helping make clear the region's complicated heritage and ongoing problems--and to right a few of the misperceptions--by exploring seven parts of overarching importance. instead of specialise in particular conflicts, this paintings bargains in particular with the wider problems with tradition, faith, ladies, economics, governance, and media, in addition to the position that the region's smooth heritage has performed in shaping the methods of existence, values, and worldviews of its peoples.
Read Online or Download The Middle East: A Guide to Politics, Economics, Society, and Culture PDF
Similar middle east books
City of Oranges: Arabs and Jews in Jaffa
Jaffa - famed for its orange groves - used to be for hundreds of years a urban of investors, retailers, academics and directors, domestic to Muslims, Christians and Jews alike. that's, till the founding of the kingdom of Israel, which used to be concurrently a second of jubilation for the Jews and a catastrophe - the Naqba - for the 100,000 Arabs who fled Jaffa in 1948.
Post-Colonial Syria and Lebanon: The Decline of Arab Nationalism and the Triumph of the State
The complicated courting among Syria and Lebanon is the political fulcrum of the center East, and has ruled headlines because the withdrawal of French colonial forces from the Levant in 1943. one of many nice paradoxes of this dating is how such very assorted political structures emerged in what many Syrian and Lebanese humans see as one society.
A History of the Arabian Peninsula
The significance of this assortment lies in its origins: for the 1st time, major Saudi Arabian historians have created a historical past of the Arabian Peninsula which analyzes that background from an inner Arabian viewpoint. The ebook explores the unique Bedouin cost of the area, the improvement of the main city parts of Arabia in the course of the Umayyad interval, the socio-political and fiscal advancements within the Hijad and Najd as much as the eighteenth century into the trendy period and the increase and improvement of the Saudi country.
Commanding Syria: Bashar al-Asad and the First Years in Power
This is often the 1st significant paintings on Bashar al-Asad. It assesses the sturdiness of his father, Hafiz's legacy together with the continual impression of the outdated power-brokers, the effectiveness of Bashar's makes an attempt to maneuver clear of his father's shadow, and the customers for reform. especially, it evaluates Bashar's carrying on with carry on energy following Syria's humiliating retreat from Lebanon in Spring 2005 and the competitive American force to impose democracy within the center East.
Extra info for The Middle East: A Guide to Politics, Economics, Society, and Culture
Example text
This has allowed the Saudi kings to set themselves up as the highest authority, subject only to Islamic law and thus beyond the demands of the citizens. In order 1 6 P o l i t ic s o f G ov e r n i n g i n t h e M i d d l e Ea s t to retain Islam as the key legitimating factor for their absolutist rule, the monarchy has also created a series of institutions to underline its claim to religious-political authority. A religious police force (the mutawwa’in), part of the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a government agency, enforces the social laws of shariah.
In addition, the radical-nationalists publicly committed to providing employment for university graduates, as well as price controls and subsidies for staple items (such as basic foodstuffs). Land Reform The other major development fostered by Arab socialism was land reform. Agriculture had long been a mainstay of most of the Arab states. Indeed, the Fertile Crescent (stretching from Egypt to Iraq and back through Syria and Lebanon) was so named because of its rich land and agricultural capacity.
There was much corruption and misrule in these systems. Political power and control over the economy were shared by the royal houses (particularly in Egypt, Iraq, and Libya) and the notables 18 T h e Ri s e o f t h e Ra d ica l- Nat i o n a l i s t R e gim e s 1 9 who lived in the urban areas—the landowning elites who owned much of the production of agricultural goods. These elites were subject to the interventions of the British and French, but otherwise they dominated the political processes in their countries.