The sociology of the Middle East has been an expanding field of inquiry since the aftermath of World War II when the Middle East became central in key sociological debates on modernization theory and their critical responses. The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East connects this historical trajectory with the emergence of the sociology of Islam, inspired by Max Weber. It explores how within the global community, the Middle East has become a terrain of heightened co...

Addressing the rupture between religious and social sciences in Arab universities, this book provides a critical assessment of the curricula of Shariah and Islamic Studies departments across the Arab World, arguing for increased interdisciplinary dialogue.Based on over 250 interviews with university students and teachers, this study is the sum of five years of field research observing the curricula and teaching styles of colleges in the Shariah sciences. The author provides critica...

Over recent decades we have witnessed the globalization of research. However, this has yet to translate into a worldwide scientific network, across which competencies and resources can flow freely. Arab countries have strived to join this globalized world and become a ‘knowledge economy,’ yet little time has been invested in the region’s fragmented scientific institutions; institutions that should provide opportunities for individuals to step out on the global stage.Knowledge Produ...

Sociologies in Dialogue brings together expert contributions from international scholars, who reflect on the importance of collaboration between diverse sociological perspectives to enhance our understanding of the role of sociology as an academic discipline, and as a vehicle for social change.By exploring the distinctive practices and research of a range of sociologists, the book shows how an open dialogue between sociologists is critical to addressing major sociological ...

Global, local, glocal – reflecting on the area of world social science seems to be above all a matter of space. In these spatial dichotomies the global has no location and locations seem beyond this world. Discourses about world social science thought not only distinguish social thought along spaces where they are created. Space has become an attribute of thinking when social scientists reflect on the world of social thought: Southern, Western and Northern knowledge, the location in which ...

The Persian Gulf state of Qatar has fewer than 2 million inhabitants, virtually no potable water, and has been an independent nation only since 1971. Yet its enormous oil and gas wealth has permitted the ruling al Thani family to exert a disproportionately large influence on regional and even international politics. Qatar is, as Mehran Kamrava explains in this knowledgeable and incisive account of the emirate, a "tiny giant": although severely lacking in most measures of s...

Did digital media really "cause" the Arab Spring, or is it an important factor of the story behind what might become democracy's fourth wave? An unlikely network of citizens used digital media to start a cascade of social protest that ultimately toppled four of the world's most entrenched dictators. Howard and Hussain find that the complex causal recipe includes several economic, political and cultural factors, but that digital media is consistently one of the most important sufficient and...

The extensive changes to Emirati women's traditional rights and roles have been one of the most visible transformations taking place in the United Arab Emirates throughout its almost forty years of modern history. This book offers an interpretation of why and how these modifications came about. Its aim is to analyse the promotion of educational, employment and political rights for women as strategic state actions set within a context of broader nation-building goals. The author discovers t...

In the West, news about the Middle East is dominated by an endless stream of reports and commentary about civil war, sectarian violence, religious extremism, and economic stagnation. But do they tell the full story? For instance, who knew that university enrolment in the war-torn Palestinian territories exceeds that of Hong Kong, or that more than a third of Lebanese entrepreneurs are women?Change is on its way in the Middle East, argues Bessma Momani, and its cause is demographic....

At the start of the twenty-first century, Cairo's cityscape has acquired a spectacular global touch. Its luxurious five-star hotels, high-rise office buildings, immaculately clean malls, and swanky coffee shops serving café latte and caesar salad, along with the budding gated communities in the city's desert expanses, exemplify three decades of economic liberalization. In the surrounding social landscape, the gradual abrogation of the Nasser-era structures that provided many with low-cost ...

What happens when the market tries to help the poor? In many parts of the world today, neoliberal development programs are offering ordinary people the tools of free enterprise as the means to well-being and empowerment. Schemes to transform the poor into small-scale entrepreneurs promise them the benefits of the market and access to the rewards of globalization. Markets of Dispossession is a theoretically sophisticated and sobering account of the consequences of these initiatives...

Wired Citizenship examines the evolving patterns of youth learning and activism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In today’s digital age, in which formal schooling often competes with the peer-driven outlets provided by social media, youth all over the globe have forged new models of civic engagement, rewriting the script of what it means to live in a democratic society. As a result, state-society relationships have shifted—never more clearly than in the MENA region, whe...