‘Conducting Fieldwork in the Middle East’: Report of a Workshop held at the University of Edinburgh on 12 February 2007

The workshop explored the practice of fieldwork in the Middle East. It considered the methods and techniques used by scholars, obstacles and opportunities encountered in the field, and the way that these influenced the research product. It also asked to what extent, if any, these features of conducting fieldwork were particular to the Middle East. The workshop examined these issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, political science, history and literature. It brought together selected scholars who had conducted fieldwork in a range of countries across the Middle East. The resulting discussion considered both practical issues such as negotiating access to sources, developing networks of contacts, and the effect of censorship; as well as theoretical questions such as the positionality of the researcher; the relationship between ‘the field’ and theory; and the ways in which the Middle East as a region challenged the assumptions of some academic disciplines.     

试析安倍第二次内阁期间日本与中东关系

安倍第二次执政以后,高度重视与中东的关系,经常出访中东地区。频繁地访问中东,说明了日本对中东地区的高度重视、日本与中东关系的密切和深厚。安倍第二次内阁期间,日本与中东关系的主要内容包括:关注中东和平问题解决、政治与安全保障问题、能源合作、地区与全球等领域的协调与合作。日本深化与中东关系的动因有:确保能源安全、规避地缘政治风险、彰显日本大国影响力、展示文化教育等软实力、奉行平衡外交、居间调停等。鉴于日本自身与地区和国际形势等多种复杂因素,今后继续深化与中东的关系,日本还面临着不少困难与挑战。     

Eastern Mediterranean Gas Discoveries: Local and Global Impact

The ongoing discoveries of natural-gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean region significantly affect international relations. Since their viability has been increasingly confirmed, they have attracted public attention in the international energy market. Focusing on current gas production and trading in the Middle East, this paper studies the anticipated impact of gas production in the sea on geopolitical relations in the Middle East and investigates how these results may change the geoeconomic strategies of global energy-market players as well as nearby countries. In addition, our analyses provide comprehensive insights into the evolution of gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean.     

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE MIDDLE EAST

The First World War in the Middle East swept away five hundred years of Ottoman dominion. It ushered in new ideologies and radicalized old ones – from Arab nationalism and revolutionary socialism to impassioned forms of atavistic Islamism. It created heroic icons, like the enigmatic Lawrence or the modernizing Atatürk, and it completely re-drew the map of the region, forging a host of new nation states, For many, the self-serving intervention of these powers in the region between 1914 and 1919 is the major reason for the conflicts that have raged there on and off ever since. Yet many of the most common assertions about the First World War in the Middle East and its aftermath are devoid of context. This article argues that, far from being a mere sideshow to the war in Europe, the Middle Eastern conflict was in fact the centre of gravity in a war for imperial interests. Moreover, contrary to another persistent myth of the First World War in the Middle East, local leaders and their forces were not simply the puppets of the Great Powers. The way in which these local forces embraced, resisted, succumbed to, disrupted, or on occasion overturned the plans of the imperialist powers for their own interests in fact played an important role in shaping the immediate aftermath of the conflict – and in laying the foundations for the troubled Middle East.     

British intelligence and the role of Jewish informers in Palestine

The ‘Holiday of Holidays’ is a unique event of coexistence in the Israeli landscape as well as in the entire Middle East. The festival unites the three religions: the Christian Christmas, the Jewish Hanukkah and the Muslim Ramadan. It has been taking place for the past 15 years in November–December in the Wadi Nisnas neighbourhood of Haifa, Israel. This is a colourful celebration of art, music, fragrances, tastes and magnificent holiday lighting that creates syncretism between old and new, languages and religious symbols. The organizers choose universal elements: food, commerce and art, which are disengaged from conflictual contexts. Beyond the commercial-tourist aspect, this festival creates ‘another place’ with encounters between hostile groups.     

Empire,State and the Bedouin of the Middle East,Past and Present: A Comparative Study of Land and Settlement Policies

The Bedouin of the Middle East have been one of the region's most marginalized groups in modern times. This study assesses the interplay between state policies and the Bedouin in the last 150 years, from a comparative standpoint. We examine the development of land laws in the Middle East as they have affected the Bedouin, from the enactment of the Ottoman land laws of 1858 up to the present. Moreover we explore whether the land laws and the fate of the Bedouin are associated with the characteristics of the regime in each country. We find that the imposition of land laws and policies directed at nomadic and sedentarizing Bedouins has depended on disparate factors such as the origins of the leadership of countries (i.e. Bedouin or non-Bedouin) and the social and economic models embraced. Regimes with origins in the tribal-Bedouin fabric of the Middle East have pursued land policies that were favorable to the Bedouin, whereas regimes drawing their strength from urban elites and with socialist outlooks encouraged very different policies. We also consider whether the case of the Bedouin in Israel is unique or reflects a larger regional context.     

The Demise of the Kurdish Emirates: The Impact of Ottoman Reforms and International Relations on Kurdistan during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

Since the West's very early flirtations with the modern Near East, and especially in the past 100 years of East–West relations, there has been considerable difficulty in understanding and defining the Middle East, the Arab world, pan-Arabism, Arab nationalism, and Middle Eastern identities in general. The Western impulse of conflating national identity with language, state, and ethnicity – often subsuming Arabic language into Arab ethnicity – has contributed to this misunderstanding and misreading of the region. For, while the Middle East can be accurately referred to by way of the generic ‘Arab world’ label, the appellation itself is a misleading oversimplification that conceals an inherent diversity and multiplicity of Middle Eastern cultures, ethnicities, languages, and nationalities. And while there is certainly a dominant Arab ethnos, there are also significant numbers of Middle Eastern peoples and nationalities with historical memories and ethno-cultural bonds that challenge the dominant Arabist paradigm. This article proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern history and attempts to bring back to the foreground of Middle East Studies the issue of language as a key factor in shaping (and misshaping) the region, with the hope of rediscovering a broader, more honest, and less ideologically tainted discussion on the Middle East and Middle Eastern identities.     

Australia and the Developing World under the Abbott Coalition Government

The Abbott Coalition government, elected to office in Australia in September 2013, has not had a major focus on the developing world. Nevertheless, in terms of substance this government has been engaged with a number of issues that relate to, or have implications for, the developing world. At a general level these issues concern development cooperation, refugees and asylum seekers, and climate change. At a regional level Australia has had particular concerns relating to Indonesia and the Pacific island countries; there has also been some focus on India and Indian Ocean regionalism. Beyond Australia’s immediate region there has been engagement in some issues relating to Southwest Asia and the Middle East, and Africa. The government’s approach to issues concerning the developing world reflects its pragmatism based on a perception of Australian interests and an identification with the countries of the developed world as led by the United States.     

Governance and Conflict

Within a global gendered economy based on an international division of labor, Filipina migrants have become nannies, maids, and caregivers in affluent homes in numerous Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Filipina migrants who seek employment as domestic workers abroad have been described as “classical” transmigrants who keep in touch with family members back home and commute between their countries of origin and their destinations. In this article — based on ethnographic research in Israel, Palestine, and the Philippines between 2003 and 2008—the author argues that Filipina migrants are transnational in a much broader sense than commonly discussed in studies on migration: engaged in border-cross-ing journeys through a number of nation states, many Filipina migrants move on and on rather than back and forth. They do so within a global hierarchy of desirable destination countries, ranked according to the differences between nation-states with regard to salaries and the legal entitlements migrants can claim, the costs and risks migrants have to take in order to enter, and these countries’ overall subjective and imaginative attractiveness. By migrating on, Filipina domestic workers acquire an intimate picture of the Middle East “backstage.” Some even become self-pro-claimed Middle Eastern experts or politically active Christian Zionists or sentimental Orientalists, who, in spite of their Christianity, miss fasting on Yom Kippur or during Ramadan as they continue their journeys toward Western Europe and North America, where they have hopes of living and perhaps gaining citizenship.     

The British Empire in India,the Gulf pearl and the making of the Middle East

Abstract

Genealogies of the term ‘Middle East’ conventionally focus on a juncture around the 1890s, when it gained new geopolitical currency, promoted by various European and American officials with reference to a space centred around the Arabo-Persian Gulf. This article argues instead that the ‘Middle East’ label should be seen as the culmination of a longer process, led less from London than from India. Over the previous century, this consolidation of ‘British’ India as a distinct regional actor was accompanied by the conceptualisation of its borderlands, including that Gulf-centred space. This space become a theatre for economic and political monitoring strategised from India, seeking to transform what was represented as a pirate-infested margin into a pacified buffer zone. Control and exploitation of pearl fisheries, the main economic activity for Gulf populations, was central to these efforts. Imperial strategy around the Gulf pearl was a key tool in founding an informal Indian empire in the Gulf and its hinterlands, in that very space to which the name ‘Middle East’ would subsequently be given.     

On the borders of the Turkish and Iranian nation-states: the story of Ferzende and Besra

Following the First World War, empires were replaced with nation-states for good and the map of the Middle East was redrawn. Traced back to the final decades of the nineteenth century, Kurdish nationalism did not result in a nation-state in the modern Middle East. Therefore, the Kurds inhabiting the borderlands of the four nation-states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria came to be perceived as ‘trouble’ by these nation-states. Through the use of a wide array of published and unpublished Kurdish, Turkish, Persian and French archival documents, memoirs and oral and written literary pieces, this article unearths the role of a Kurdish tribal chief by the name of Ferzende in Mount Ararat Revolt in the late 1920s and early 1930s against the Turkish and Iranian nation-states. An exceptional contribution of this study is its exploration of the petition submitted to the Iranian Parliament by Ferzende's wife Besra. This study thus is a fresh contribution to the study of social history of the Middle East from the margins.     

Noble Robbers,avengers and entrepreneurs: Eric Hobsbawm and Banditry in Iran,the Middle East and North Africa

Banditry has been endemic across the Middle East and North Africa. Yet the Middle Eastern experience of banditry has thus far failed to receive sustained academic attention. In particular, the debates stimulated by Eric Hobsbawm's thesis of social banditry have elicited only a few responses from scholars of the Middle East and North Africa, and these largely negative. This article asks to what extent the recent work done in the field of ‘Bandit studies’ helps to elucidate the experience of the Middle East and North Africa. Why has there been such a lack of interest in banditry when the phenomenon itself, and rural crime in general, was so widespread? Why are so few individual bandits celebrated or reviled? What do we mean by banditry in the Middle Eastern context, who became a bandit, why and in what circumstances, what did bandits do and how was this perceived by elites and subalterns, what were the connections between bandits and peasants and between bandits and the worlds of power and, perhaps most importantly, who has written about bandits and what sources have they used?     

‘With the Islamists?—Sometimes. With the State?—Never!’ Cooperation between the Left and Islamists in Egypt

Recent forms of cooperation between unexpected bedfellows who have been traditional enemies of the past are making their way into the political opposition scene in different countries of the Middle East. Egypt offers an interesting example of a rising coalition between members and groups who have traditionally been arch enemies in the past, namely; factions of the Left, Islamist groups, nationalists, and an array of loosely organized opposition groups. The paper attempts to document and analyse the development of this coalition within a framework of New Social Movements and transnational civil society.     

DPRK Troop Dispatches and Military Support in the Middle East: Change from Military Support to Arms Trade in the 1970s

The DPRK now trades in arms with the Middle East. However, in the October War (1973) the DPRK first began military cooperation with the Middle East by sending troops and providing unrequited military support. This switch was made to win support within the UN from these Middle Eastern countries, and so to counteract the US presence in the UN. Failing this, the DPRK withdrew from the UN in 1976. The DPRK then turned to arms trading both to build up its foreign currency reserves and to help liberate developing countries from US control.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: The “Center of the Universe”: The Geopolitics of Iran , by Graham E. Fuller. American Presidents and the Middle East , by George Lemczowski. Cauldron: America in the Middle East , by Barry Rubin. Twin Pillars in Desert Storm: America's Flawed Vision in the Middle East from Nixon to Bush , by Howard Teicher and Gayle Radley Teicher. Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel , by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. The New Palestinians: be Emerging Generation of Leaders , by John Wallach and Janet Wallach. Privatization and Liberalization in the Middle East , edited by Iliya Harik and Denis J. Sullivan. Imaghing the Middle East , by Thierry Hentsch.     

A Century in Thirty Years: Sheikh Zayed and The United Arab Emirates

Following are excerpts from an April 20, 1999, conference convened by the Middle East Policy Council. The papers these presentations are drawn from will be published as a book, forthcoming in 1999.     

IS THIS RUSSIA’S MOMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, formerly British permanent representative to the UN, who has had long experience of dealing with Russia in the context of diplomacy, considers whether the current moment of Russian dominance in Syria and the Middle East, combined with the recent general disengagement of the western powers in the region, could be considered as marking the beginning of a general period of Russian hegemony in the Middle East. The article takes into account the global geopolitical situation, the recent history of Russia and the Middle East, the consequences of western intervention in Iraq, and the motivations of the Russian government particularly in view of its recent engagement in Ukraine.     

Evaluating The Bush Menu for Change in the Middle East

These contributions were presented at a roundtable of the Conference Group on the Middle East, "Evaluating the Bush Menu for Change in the Middle East," at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, September 5, 2004.     

Revelation or revolution: a Gramscian approach to the rise of political Islam

This article seeks to conceptualise the contemporary phenomenon of ‘political Islam’, or Islamic fundamentalism as it is usually classified in the West. This paper takes the view that those movements that utilise the ideology of political Islam are not primarily religious groups concerned with issues of doctrine and faith, but political organisations utilising Islam as a ‘revolutionary’ ideology to attack, criticise, and de‐legitimise the ruling elites and the power structure on which their authority and legitimacy is based. Since the one‐party authoritarian state is the norm in most of the Middle East, only Islam has been able to provide the marginalised, alienated, and disgruntled masses with an oppositional force capable of articulating their specific grievances and general displeasure with these regimes. A Gramscian framework helps to demonstrate that these organisations classified as ‘political Islam’, and promulgated by the core Islamic scholars of the twentieth century, are authentic counter‐hegemonic movements focussed on the overthrow of these despotic regimes and the acquisition of political, economic, and social power.     

Political Succession in the Middle East

The following briefs were presented in a workshop on "Political Succession in the Middle East" at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 1, 2001, in San Francisco. Louis J. Cantori, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Augustus Richard Norton, Boston University, were the conveners of the Conference Group on the Middle East, which issued this report.