Geography Archives: Middle East

Some of you may have been present at our meeting in this building in May this year, when I recalled what I had said to Lucien Goldman in Paris a few months before the historic French May 1968.  In contrast to the then prevailing perspective of “organized capitalism,” which was supposed to have successfully left […]

  miriam cooke.   Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official.   Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.  vii + 208 pp. Illustrations. $74.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8223-4016-4; $21.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-4035-5. To live and do research in Syria is to confront contradictions at almost every turn.  In a repressive state, artists not only create works that are […]

The libertarian moment in U.S. bourgeois politics is quickly passing today.  It was burning bright in the spring, when Ron Paul banners were hung from every overpass.  Soon his books will be remaindered.  Libertarians have nothing to say that will get a hearing in a period of crisis.  Libertarianism can rationalize the economic success or […]

Esra Özyürek, ed.  The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey.   Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006.  x + 225 pp. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8156-3131-6. The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey, edited by Esra Özyürek, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California San Diego, has its origins in a […]

  The recent incidents in Acre appeared to be spontaneous acts of racism and a threat to the “coexistence” between Arabs and Jews in the city.  But that is only if we take seriously the idealist notion of “coexistence” that some said prevailed in Acre.  If not, we are left with a reality where two […]

  Beth Baron.  Egypt As a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics.   Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.  292 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-520-23857-2. In Egypt as a Woman Beth Baron explores the connections between Egyptian nationalism, gendered images and discourses of the nation, and the politics of elite Egyptian women from the late nineteenth […]

  المظاهرات في شوارع دمشق 30 October 2008 — Thousands of Syrians marched through Damascus, the capital of Syria, to denounce the US air raid that targeted Abu Kamal near the Syrian border with Iraq.  The demonstrators chanted slogans against the US aggression on Syria. Cf. “What Next for US-Syria Relations?” (Inside Story, Al Jazeera, […]

  Karin Hunn.   “Nächstes Jahr kehren wir zurück. . .”: Die Geschichte der türkischen “Gastarbeiter” in der Bundesrepublik.  Moderne Zeit: Neue Forschungen zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts.  Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005. 598 pp. Tables, bibliography.  EUR 46.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-89244-945-4. Karin Hunn’s meticulously researched, highly informative, and well-structured study is a […]

In a conflict that has produced more than its share of suffering and tragedy, the name of Kafr Qassem lives on in infamy more than half a century after Israeli police gunned down 47 Palestinian civilians, including women and children, in the village. This week Kafr Qassem’s inhabitants, joined by a handful of Israeli Jewish […]

Today’s food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab.  On the one hand, “food insecure” governments that rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production.  On the other hand, food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits […]

  William Minter, Gail Hovey, and Charles Cobb, Jr., eds.  No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000.   Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008. xvii + 248 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, index.  $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-59221-575-1. This is a remarkable and often insightful collection of essays and reflections, many of […]

  Less than a minute in, Nawal El Saadawi, the ideological godmother of Muslim feminists, flouts author interview protocol rather fabulously, by pretending she’s not really doing one.  I’m at a sunny breakfast table in Edinburgh on the last day of her UK book tour, to discuss the republication of her seminal 1970s books, but […]

  Sandra M. Sufian.   Healing the Land and the Nation: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine, 1920-1947.   Chicago  University of Chicago Press, 2007.   xviii + 385 pp.  $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-226-77935-5. In this meticulously researched book, Sandra M. Sufian, an assistant professor of medical humanities and history at the University of Illinois […]

  We are witnessing an insidious new wave of demonization of Arabs and Muslims.  The presidential race has surfaced deep prejudices that will be here long after we have elected a new leader.  Look closely, and you’ll find many right-wing Christian and Jewish groups that deny the fundamental rights of Palestinians, deliberately fueling fear of […]

Labor unions around the world have reacted to the financial crisis and the economic recession with words and actions reflecting their national experience, their political ideology, and their leaderships. Unions and workers have already seen the financial crisis and the growing recession result in the closing of plants and offices, in shorter workweeks, pay cuts, […]

  We have nothing against voting.  We plan to vote in the upcoming election.  Some of our best friends are voters. But we also believe that we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that the most important political moment in our lives comes in the voting booth.  Instead, people should take politics seriously, which means […]

Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir, This Regime Which Is Not One: Occupation and Democracy between the Sea and the River (1967 – ), Resling, 2008. Listen to the Alternative Information Center’s interview with Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir about their book This Regime Which Is Not One. First, an anecdote.  A couple of weeks ago […]

The next three months are unlikely to see much movement on any of the crucial issues that have been simmering just below the boiling point in the Middle East.  On October 13 Kadima leader Tzipi Livni and Labor Party leader Ehud Barak signed a draft agreement to form a new Israeli government under her leadership.  […]

Of all the people I interviewed for my book, Inside the Red Zone, the words of one have never left me. In a little farming village 50 miles north of Baghdad, I spoke with a local sheik who described his arrest and detention by the U.S. Army.  For two weeks, he and a dozen other […]

The financial crisis does not skip over Israel.  The country that has been integrating itself in global capitalist markets in the last decades is once again seeing the ugliest side of capitalism, as the stock markets have dropped over a stunning 10 percent since the beginning of the month and the GDP growth forecast for […]