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Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula Roundtable: Capital and Labor in the Gulf States: Bringing the Region Back In
[This is one of seven contributions in Jadaliyya's electronic roundtable on the symbolic and material practices of knowledge production on the Arabian Peninsula. Moderated by Rosie Bsheer and John Warner, it features Toby Jones, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Adam Hanieh, Neha Vora, Nathalie Peutz, John Willis, and Ahmed Kanna.] (1) Historically, what have the dominant analytical approaches to the study of the Arabian Peninsula been? How have the difficulties of carrying out research in the Arabian Peninsula shaped the ways in which knowledge is produced for the particular country/ies in which you have worked, and in the field more generally? My work has focused on the political ...
Keep Reading »The Infrastructure of Israeli Settler Colonialism (Part 1): The Jordan Valley
![[Palestinian woman (Nadya al-Kurd) pointing to section of her house squatted by Israel settlers. Image by Suemyra Shah]](/content_images/3/sm_ISCAghwaar.png "[Palestinian woman (Nadya al-Kurd) pointing to section of her house squatted by Israel settlers. Image by Suemyra Shah]")
Since its establishment, Israel has distinguished the persons under its civil and military jurisdiction based on religion. Throughout Israel Proper and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), comprised of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, Israel applies a different set of laws to its Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants respectively. By bifurcating Jewish nationality from Israeli citizenship, the State is able to afford demonstrable and significant privilege to Jewish persons even beyond Israel's undeclared borders (hence the reference to Israel Proper) at the expense of the political and socio-economic wellbeing of its non-Jewish citizens. ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Jeannie Sowers, Environmental Politics in Egypt: Activists, Experts, and the State
Jeannie Sowers, Environmental Politics in Egypt: Activists, Experts, and the State. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Jeannie Sowers (JS): In Egypt, as elsewhere, environmental issues are often viewed as secondary to issues of “high politics,” such as national elections and debates among political elites. Yet so many of the core concerns of politics—power, resources, justice—are most clearly seen in who has access to land, health, water, and other essential services and goods. “Environmental” concerns, broadly conceived, are thus central to political debates and substantive outcomes concerning representation, ...
Keep Reading »Ramallah’s Bubbles
![[Downtown Ramallah. Image by the author.]](/content_images/3/sm_bubbletalk.jpg.png "[Downtown Ramallah. Image by the author.]")
Recently there has been a proliferation of talk about Ramallah’s “bubble.” Based on the seeming contradiction between the quality of life there versus elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, popular accounts are rife with descriptions of bubbles emerging and bursting. The bubble language is pervasive but is not coherent. Some argue that the bubble is economic, poised to pop and thereby destroy Ramallah’s boomtown economy. Others contend that the bubble is an artificial force that encourages inorganic businesses that can’t survive the occupation. And others maintain that the bubble is based in government debt, or that the bubble is a “problem” that the private sector will ...
Keep Reading »كتاب: أمراء وسماسرة وبيروقراطيون: النفط والدولة في السعودية
[“كتب” هي سلسلة تستضيف “جدلية” فيها المؤلفين والمؤلفات في حوار حول أعمالهم الجديدة ونرفقه بفصل من الكتاب.] "أمراء، وسماسرة، وبيروقراطيون: النفط والدولة في المملكة العربية السعودية". تأليف ستيفان هيرتوغ مطبعة جامعة كورنل، 2011. صدر بالإنجليزية. جدلية: ما الذي دفعك لكتابة هذا الكتاب؟ ستيفان هيرتوغ: كانت الفكرة الأصلية وراء هذا البحث هي تحليل كيف أن الاصلاحات الاقتصادية الليبرالية تغير الهياكل الاقتصادية والسياسية في دولة غنية بالنفط ( ريعية) مثل المملكة العربية السعودية. كانت هذه هي الخطة قبل أن أبدأ في بحثي الميداني، ولكن ما اكتسبته من خبرة غير الكثير من توجهاتي حيال الموضوع. فعوضاً عن التغيير، وجدت استمرارية تاريخية تضرب ...
Keep Reading »Doha as Host and Site for the UNFCCC Negotiations
![[Climate Change March in Doha, 1 December 2012. Image from Flickr/theverb.org]](/content_images/3/sm_8233995651_6169b3c79e_z.jpg "[Climate Change March in Doha, 1 December 2012. Image from Flickr/theverb.org]")
From 26 November to 7 December 2012, Qatar is hosting the eighteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and, simultaneously, the eighth Meeting of the Parties (MoP) to the Kyoto Protocol. The main issue on the Doha agenda: adopting meaningful global emissions reduction commitments for a second implementation period (2012-2015) under the Kyoto Protocol (that is otherwise set to expire at the end of this year) and thus setting the stage for a new climate change regime starting in 2015. Developing countries are also pushing for the effective implementation of the 2007 Bali Action Plan–a set of agreements on ...
Keep Reading »Arabian Peninsula Media Roundup (November 6)
![[Demonstrations have been outlawed in Bahrain as violence mounts at public protests. 15 June 2012. Photo by Zeep van der Kist]](/content_images/3/sm_MolotovinBahrain.jpg "[Demonstrations have been outlawed in Bahrain as violence mounts at public protests. 15 June 2012. Photo by Zeep van der Kist]")
[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on the Arabian Peninsula and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Arabian Peninsula Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to ap@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every week.] Regional and International Relations Syria opposition groups hold crucial Qatar meeting A news report on the Syrian opposition meeting in Doha, on BBC. West backs Qatari plan to unify Syrian opposition Julian Borger and Matthew Weaver writes on Western governments’ support of the Doha Initiative, in The ...
Keep Reading »Arabian Peninsula Media Roundup (October 23)
![[Kuwaiti members of parliament and their supporters protest on 20 May 2011. Image from Flickr/Kuwait-Ra'ed Qutena.]](/content_images/3/sm_5742410385_f384514ef0_z.jpg "[Kuwaiti members of parliament and their supporters protest on 20 May 2011. Image from Flickr/Kuwait-Ra'ed Qutena.]")
[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on the Arabian Peninsula and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Arabian Peninsula Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to ap@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every week.] Regional and International Relations Breaking News … KSA accuses Hakim of Smuggling Explosives into Qatif City A news report on Saudi Arabia’s accusation of the Head of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, Ammar al-Hakim, of smuggling explosives to Qatif, on IraqiNews. United Arab Emirates and Britain: Best of Friends ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Steffen Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and the State in Saudi Arabia
Steffen Hertog, Princes, Brokers, and Bureaucrats: Oil and the State in Saudi Arabia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Steffen Hertog (SH): The original idea behind the research project was to analyze how liberalizing economic reforms were changing the social and political structures of an oil-rich (or “rentier”) state like Saudi Arabia. That was the plan before I did my fieldwork, but my experience there pretty much turned the whole thing on its head. Instead of change, I found deep historical continuities in the way politics and state-business relations function in Saudi Arabia, and I also found that several of ...
Keep Reading »Shock-and-Awe Nation Building: Iraq's Neo-Liberal Reconstruction
![[View of Sadr City in the days preceding the December 2005 Iraqi legislative election. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_SadrCity.jpg "[View of Sadr City in the days preceding the December 2005 Iraqi legislative election. Image from Wikimedia Commons.]")
The Iraqi government’s contractual delivery of Iraqi oil fields to foreign multinationals is perhaps the most consequential long-term economic consequence of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Contracts have been signed, production rights to massive oil fields sold, and a steady stream of propaganda disseminated about Iraqi oil production eventually rivaling that of Saudi Arabia and Iran. The celebratory narrative of Iraq’s expanding oil production has been marketed as an essential component of Iraq’s re-integration into a world economic system that will, we are told, become increasingly dependent on Iraqi oil, much of it waiting to be tapped. The ...
Keep Reading »Beautiful Water Day
![[Slide from video posted below. Image by Adalah.]](/content_images/3/sm_Adalah.jpg "[Slide from video posted below. Image by Adalah.]")
Nearly 70,000 Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel live in thirty-six unrecognized villages in the Naqab. The State of Israel deliberately limits access to water in these villages, as well as all other basic services, as a means of forcing the Bedouin to give up their just land claims and move to government-planned townships, the poorest in Israel. As the Bedouin community struggles to remain on their ancestral land, most villagers obtain water via improvised, plastic hose hook-ups or unhygienic metal containers, which transport the water from a single water point located far from their homes, causing health risks and daily hardships. The health ramifications ...
Keep Reading »The Fire Next Time Is Now: An Interview with Angus Wright
![[Angus Wright. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_anguswright.jpg "[Angus Wright. Image from unknown archive.]")
Angus Wright has a way of saying things we may not want to hear in a way that is hard to ignore. An example: During a meeting of environmentalists about shaping the public conversation on our most pressing ecological crises, folks were wrestling with how to present an honest analysis in accessible language—how to talk about the bad news and the need for radical responses without turning people off. During the discussion about the effects of climate change, Wright offered a simple suggestion for a slogan: “No more water, the fire next time.” Those words from a black spiritual, made famous by James Baldwin’s borrowing for his 1963 book The Fire Next Time, are usually ...
Keep Reading »البنية التحتية للاستعمار الاستيطاني الإسرائيلي (الجزء الأول): وادي الأردن:
منذ تأسيسها، دأبت السلطات القضائية الإسرائيلية بفرعيها المدني والعسكري على التمييز بين الأشخاص بناء على الدِّين. فعلى امتداد إسرائيل في أراضي 48 والأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة التي تتضمن الضفة الغربية بما فيها القدس الشرقية وقطاع غزة تطبق إسرائيل مجموعة من القوانين على سكانها اليهود تختلف عن تلك المطبقة على غير اليهود. تستطيع الدولة تحمّل تلك الامتيازات الضخمة والواضحة للأشخاص اليهود حتى فيما هو أبعد من حدودها المعلنة (لهذا السبب تمت الإشارة إلى إسرائيل في أراضي 48) وذلك على حساب الصالح السياسي ...
Keep Reading »Assarag: Habitat and the Imazighen of Morocco
(If the photo slide show does not appear above, please click here.) [The photos and text presented here are the result of my work in five Amazigh (also known as Berber) communities or distinct architectural ensembles in the south of Morocco.] My work in Morocco began in May 2002 when I was invited by a former high school friend of Moroccan descent to photograph his father's native village, Timkatti. This place of mud and stone is located in the Ida Ou Tannane region about forty miles north of Agadir. ...
Keep Reading »عقوبات الغرب على إيران
منذ عقود يُبرِّر الغرب عقوباته المفروضة على إيران بفكرة سردية تفترض أن العقوبات ستجبر الحُكام المتسلطين في إيران على العودة إلى رشدهم وستضع حداً لانتهاكاتهم، سواء خارج البلاد أو داخلها. ويرى الغرب أن تلك العقوبات "الجراحية" تضيّق حبل المشنقة حول عنق الطغاة بدقة متناهية، بشكل سيجعلهم يراجعون بتعقل سياستهم الخارجية ويرفعون أيديهم الملطخة بالدماء عن عنق شعبهم المغلوب على أمره. ويبدو للغرب جمال هذه الفكرة من حيث أنها قد تضرب عصفورين بحجر: فالعقوبات تضيّق، من جهة، الخناق على مرتكبي الانتهاكات ...
Keep Reading »The Complexities of the Keystone XL Oil Pipeline
The Keystone XL oil pipeline is a proposed project to install a 1,700-mile tunnel of oil stretching from the oil sands of Northern Alberta, Canada south to the Gulf Coast of Texas. This project has presented massive conflicts of interest throughout its volatile shelf-life. Politically, it represents the crux of energy security in the United States and promotes the expansion of oil drilling throughout the country. The pipeline will strengthen the partnership between the US and Canada, an alliance ...
Keep Reading »WFP Concerned About Food Security in Syria
[The following statement was issued by the United Nations World Food Programme on 4 December 2012.] The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is warning that the recent escalation of violence in Syria is making it more difficult to reach the country’s hardest-hit areas and that food insecurity is on the rise due to bread shortages and higher food prices in many parts of the country. High prices are also affecting neighbouring countries hosting Syrian refugees. Road access to and from Damascus ...
Keep Reading »تحديات تنتظر "مدن الملح"
أهم عنصر للحياة هو الماء، وعند تأسيس المدن الكبيرة تاريخيّاً كانت دائماً ما تبنى بالقرب من مصادر المياه. إما على ضفاف الأنهار، أو على شواطئ البحار. لا توجد في أي من دول الخليج مصادر مياه نهرية، ولذلك فقد تكوّنت غالبية المدن على ضفاف شواطئ الخليج. اكتشاف النفط وتصديره غير المورد الأهم لبناء هذه المدن، فتحوّل أهم مقومات الحياة من الماء إلى النفط. تعتمد غالبية مدن الخليج بشكل شبه مطلق على تحلية مياه البحر كمصدرها الرئيس للمياه، وغنيٌّ عن القول؛ إن هذا المصدر يحتاج إلى جرعات مكثفة من الطاقة ...
Keep Reading »المدن الجديدة في الخليج العربي و«الخلل السكاني»
يشكل الوافدون جزءاً كبيراً من سكان الخليج، لكن قلّما يتم التطرّق إليهم في الإعلام. وقد زاد عدد الوافدين بشكل هائل في دول مجلس التعاون على مدى السنوات الأخيرة، فكانت نسبة نموهم السنوية أكثر من ضعف نسبة النمو السنوية للمواطنين، حيث ارتفعت أرقامهم من نحو عشرة ملايين في العام 2000 إلى ستة عشر مليوناً في العام 2008. أصبح الوافدون يشكلون الأغلبية من السكان في أربعة من دول المجلس (الإمارات والبحرين وقطر والكويت). في قطر، على سبيل المثال، زاد عدد الوافدين من 400 ألف إلى نحو مليون ونصف المليون نسمة بين 2000 ...
Keep Reading »The Southern Silk Road
1. Paralysis in Washington US policy on Iran is paralyzed. A report from mid-September by the Iran Project shows how the Obama agenda is poorly considered. This report, “Weighing the Costs of Military Action Against Iran,” comes with the imprimatur of Washington’s retired eminences: politicians (Republican Senator Chuck Hagel and Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton), ambassadors (Frank Wisner and Thomas Pickering), and military officers (Admiral William Fallon and General Anthony Zinni). It suggests ...
Keep Reading »Syria: Joint Rapid Food Security Needs Assessment
[The following report was issued by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in June 2012.] Syria: Joint Rapid Food Security Needs Assessment Summary of Findings Crops and livestock sectors are the most affected by the ongoing crisis in the country. Table 1 summarizes the total damages and losses in the nine governorates in the crop, irrigation and livestock subsectors. Majorly affected crops are the strategic crops, such as wheat and barley; fruit and other ...
Keep Reading »Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States
Adam Hanieh, Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. [This review was originally published in the most recent issue of Arab Studies Journal. For more information on the issue, or to subscribe to ASJ, click here.] What if capitalists in a particular country could draw on a reserve army of semi-skilled labor that includes hundreds of millions of noncitizens whom they could import, hire, fire and expel at will, without worrying about laws, regulations, and ...
Keep Reading »The Nature of Oil: Reconsidering American Power in the Middle East
Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. New York: Verso, 2011. Toby Craig Jones, Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. Robert Vitalis, American Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2006. For most of those who consider themselves politically liberal, oil—along with environmental degradation and foreign occupation—form a kind of political axis of evil on the ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Alan Mikhail, "Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt"
Alan Mikhail, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. [Winner of the 2011 Roger Owen Book Award] Jadaliyya: What made you write this book? Alan Mikhail: In the most general sense, I wrote this book because I wanted to understand the period of Ottoman rule in the Arab World. The Ottomans were in Egypt for over 350 years, so they clearly must have had a fundamental role in shaping its history, politics, culture, and economy. ...
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