| Abstract: | The relationship between knowledge and power is examined in this article in terms of the social science literature base on
Arab countries. It is argued that knowledge imposes normative constraints on the exercise of power, and the exercise of power
is dependent on the lack of knowledge. This is examined in terms of the knowledge base on Iraq and Palestine, the two countries
in the Arab world most decimated in the post-World War II era by the exercise of external power politics. The study is organized
in three phases: (1) delimiting the population of scholarly literature in the social sciences on the Middle East by country;
(2) drawing representative samples of scholarly literature on Iraq and Palestine from this population; and (3) content analysis
of the samples.
Jacqueline S. Ismael is a professor of social work at The University of Calgary. She has published a number of articles and
monographs on social change in the Middle East, as well as several works on Canadian social policy. She is co-author with
Tareq Y. Ismael ofThe People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen: The Politics of Socialist Transformation (1986),Government and Politics in Islam (1986),Politics and Government in the Middle East andNorth Africa (1991), andThe Gulf War and the New World Order (1994). Her most recent work isKuwait: Dependency and Class in a Rentier State (1993). Tareq Y. Ismael is a professor of political science at The University of Calgary. He has written extensively on Middle
East politics, the international relations of the Middle East, and ideology in the Arab world. His recent publications includeInternational Relations of the Contemporary Middle East (1986),Middle East Studies: International Perspectives on the State of the Art (1990),The Communist Movement in Egypt (1990),Politics and Government in the Middle East and North Africa (1991), andThe Gulf War and the New World Order (1994). |
