Results by title

As the coronavirus ravages the globe, its aftermaths have brought gender inequalities to the forefront of many conversations. Countries in the Middle East and North Africa have been slow to prepare for, adapt to, and mitigate the COVID-19 health crisis and its impacts on governance, economics, security, and rights. Women’s physical well-being, social safety nets, and economic participation have been disproportionately affected, and with widespread shutdowns and capricious social welfare programs, women are exiting the workplace and the classroom, carrying the caregiving burden.

With feminist foregrounding, Rita Stephan's collection COVID and Gender in the Middle East gathers an impressive group of local scholars, activists, and policy experts. The book examines a range of national and localized responses to gender-specific issues around COVID’s health impact and the economic fallout and resulting social vulnerabilities, including the magnified marginalization of Syrian refugees; the inequitable treatment of migrant workers in Bahrain; and the inadequate implementation of gender-based violence legislation in Morocco. An essential global resource, this book is the first to provide empirical evidence of COVID’s gendered effects.

Struggles over critical urban technologies during and after Morocco’s French Protectorate reveal a fundamental conflict over the nature of decolonization in the country.

Concrete Futures is a history of concrete that complicates our view of the building material, revealing it as a site of contestation over resources and authority in twentieth-century Morocco. Beginning with the French protectorate period between 1912 and 1956 and continuing into the post-independence era, Daniel Williford uses debates surrounding concrete building technologies as a conduit through which to explore struggles over colonization, modernization, and decolonization. The half-finished cinder block buildings found in cities all over Morocco, he shows, are a product of the system that colonial engineers and officials developed to deal with labor disputes, contests over knowledge, and anticolonial unrest.

By exploring concrete and its uses, Williford discloses how conflicts between experts, workers, and residents over construction and urban renewal—from the introduction of reinforced concrete to strategies of slum clearance—shaped the meaning and the trajectory of decolonization in Morocco.

A history of the last century of tensions in the Middle East.

Until the First World War, the Ottoman Empire had dominated the Middle East for four centuries. Its collapse, coupled with the subsequent clash of European imperial policies, unleashed a surge of political feelings among the people of the Middle East as they vied for national self-determination. Over the century that followed, the region has become almost synonymous with unrest and conflict.
​
An accessible survey of the last century, Contested Lands tells the story of what happened in the Middle East and what it means today. T. G. Fraser analyzes the fault lines of the tension, including the damage brought by imperialism, the creation of the State of Israel, competition between secular rulers and emerging democratic and theocratic forces, and the rise of Arab Nationalism in the face of fraying regional alliances and the Islamic revival. Fraser offers a close look at how the events of the twenty-first century—the tragedy of 9/11, the Arab Spring, and Syria’s civil war—have combined with complex social and economic changes to transform the region. Untangling the history of the Middle East, this book offers a detailed and insightful picture of the region and why its heritage remains important today.

There is no single Jewish ethnicity, and no single Jewish ethnic group constitutes a clear majority of Jewish Israelis. These intra-Jewish differences permit a social hierarchy within the “in-group” – Jewish Israelis – that privileges the Ashkenazi Jews of European descent over Mizrahi/Sephardi Jews of Middle Eastern backgrounds.

The timely Contours of Israeli Politics focuses on the socio-political ramifications of this hierarchy within the upper stratum of Israeli society. Using public opinion studies and qualitative data, Hannah Ridge examines the effects of this social hierarchy to address attitudes on Israeli ethnicity and religious majoritarianism, support for Israeli democracy, and preference for an expanded territorial state and peace with its neighbors.

As various Jewish ethnic groups face greater pressure to assert their in-group membership (their Jewishness), they are more likely to protect the status privileges of that group. This can strengthen their ideas about identity, nationalism, democratic values, and conflict attitudes. Ridge’s findings reveal the ways in which Jewish ethnicity continues to influence the politics of Israel, a Jewish ethno-religious state.