Results by title

60 books match the query 'Middle Eastern Studies' and 5 start with b

cover of Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community

Bargaining for Reality

The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community

Lawrence Rosen

University of Chicago Press, 1984

Much modern anthropology has assumed that an adequate description of any society consists of rules that inform its members' relationships and the logic that unites their cultural symbols. In this book Lawrence Rosen argues that, for the people who live in and around the Moroccan city of Sefrou, attachment to others and the terms by which they are conceived are, at their most fundamental level, subject to a constant process of negotiation.

Drawing on the philosophy of speech acts as well as interpretive theory, Rosen shows how, for the people of this Muslim community, reality consists of the network of obligations formed by individuals out of a repertoire of relational possibilities whose defining terms are comprised by a set of essentially negotiable concepts. He thus demonstrates that the bonds of family, tribe, and political alliance take shape only as the bargains struck in and through the malleable terms that describe them take shape; that statements about relationship are no more true than a price mentioned in the marketplace until properly validated; that the relations between men and women, Arabs and Berbers, Muslims and Jews test the limits of interpersonal negotiation; and that the concepts of time, character, and narrative style are consonant with a view of reality as bargained-for network of obligations.

Bargaining for Reality makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary Middle Eastern society and to the development of powerful new interpretive strategies for a wide range of social theorists.

"[Rosen's] book is extremely useful for African and Middle Eastern historians, because he challenges some of our most basic ideas about the nature and force of kinship, tribe, ethnicity, and other large- and small-scale political ties."—Allan R. Meyers, International Journal of African Historical Studies

"The book conveys a compelling image of Moroccan social experience and is peppered with vivid anecdotes and case histories."—Stephen William Foster, American Anthropologist
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cover of Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness

Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness

By Joseph J. Hobbs

University of Texas Press, 1992

Between the Nile River and the Red Sea, in the northern half of Egypt's Eastern Desert, live the Bedouins of the Ma'aza tribe. Joseph Hobbs lived with the Khushmaan Ma'aza clan for almost two years, gathering information for a study of traditional Bedouin life and culture. The resulting work, Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness, is the first modern ethnographic portrait of the Ma'aza Bedouins.

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cover of Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path through Palestine

Beyond the Wall

Writing a Path through Palestine

Bidisha

Seagull Books, 2025

Through the voices of those who live it, Beyond the Wall unveils the everyday realities of occupation, resilience, and the fight for dignity in Palestine.

Their voices come from Bethlehem and Hebron. You can hear them from Jerusalem to Nazareth, and witness their protests in Gaza and Ramallah. From the refugee camps in the West Bank, you can hear the voices of the Palestinian people call out to demand self-determination and a better quality of life. But outside of Israel and the occupied territories, these individual voices are rarely heard—until now.

In Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path through Palestine, internationally renowned feminist critic and writer Bidisha collects the testimonies of an occupied people—ordinary citizens, activists, and children—alongside those of international aid workers and foreign visitors for a revelatory look at a population on the margins.

Called “beautifully belligerent, [and] fiercely intelligent” by The Independent and a “dazzlingly creative writer” by the London Times, Bidisha amplifies the voices of the Palestinian people in this book and lends them her own considerable strength.
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cover of Bordering Blackness: Migration and Dispossession in the Afro-Mediterranean

Bordering Blackness

Migration and Dispossession in the Afro-Mediterranean

Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen

Duke University Press, 2027

Bordering Blackness is an ethnography of the EurAfrican border told through the experiences of African migrants as they travel through the Sahara Desert into Morocco and across the Mediterranean Sea. Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen sheds light on the racial and economic logics that organize the transnational border regime across various sites and actors, historicizing them within the longue durée of African captivity, commodification, and racial othering. In contrast to Euro-American theories of blackness originating in the Middle Passage and western Atlantic slavery, she traces how West and Central Africans become black through present-day desert and maritime passages, which are entangled in earlier pathways across Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds. By historicizing and spatializing blackness, Gross-Wyrtzen forwards a relational understanding of contemporary borders, not as manifestations of an unchanging colonial or racial past but as contingent, if durable, ensembles ripe for reworking and resistance.
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cover of Boundaries That Divide: How Journalists in Turkey Surrendered Their Power over Politics

Boundaries That Divide

How Journalists in Turkey Surrendered Their Power over Politics

Defne Över

Rutgers University Press, 2026

Turkey presents a striking example of the most recent wave of global authoritarian turns. The two-decade-long transition in the country’s political system also transformed its media environment. As mainstream journalists gradually yielded their places to sycophants, much more willing to praise the government in their news, the mainstream media that once oversaw—however imperfectly—political decisions started devoting its full service to cheerleading the government. Simultaneously, a new sphere of critical journalism began to emerge, with mainstream media journalists joining their fellows in the peripheries of the media. Considering the transformation of Turkey’s news media as the decay of a democratic institution, this book asks, How does the media break down under the rule of an elected government?
 
Drawing on fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the book traces the ruling AKP’s manipulation of social divides to consolidate power and journalists’ navigation of the resulting climate of fear, hope, doubt, and anger. The book shows how Turkey’s news media surrendered its power over politics as some journalists embraced disinformation as a path to heightened status, others turned to self-censorship for protection, and still others resisted capture through continuous but fragmented efforts.
 
The book portrays journalists as central actors in media decay, while also revealing that resilience to decay emerges where rising demand for “news” meets the contentious mobilization of journalists. Although focused on Turkey, the book’s insights extend far beyond, offering urgent lessons about the future of journalism in an age of populism, polarization, and institutional erosion.

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