The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is an economically diverse region. Despite undertaking economic reforms in many countries, and having considerable success in avoiding crises and achieving macroeconomic stability, the region’s economic performance in the past 30 years has been below potential. This paper takes stock of the region’s relatively weak performance, explores the reasons for this out come, and proposes an agenda for urgent reforms.
This book uncovers the rich, fascinating and complex world of Ottoman manufacturing and manufacturers in the age of the European industrial revolution. Using a wealth of sources from Ottoman, European and American archives, Professor Donald Quataert explores the technological methods of producing cotton cloth, wool cloth, yarn and silk, how these changed throughout the nineteenth century, the organisation of home and workshop production and trends in the domestic and international markets. By focusing on textile manufacturing in homes and small workshops, the author reveals a dynamism that refutes traditional notions of a declining economy in the face of European expansion. He shows how manufacturers adopted a variety of strategies, such as reduced wages and low technology inputs, to confront European competitors, protect their livelihoods and retain domestic and international customers.
This book surveys major economic issues in the development of countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region since World War II. It presents a framework of analysis highlighting underlying continuities in the region's approach to issues of growth, management of oil and natural resources, post-conflict environments, progress in trade liberalization and regional integration, the use of industrial policy, labor market adjustment and unemployment, educational attainment and poverty incidence. At the same time, this book focuses on emerging differences across countries in the region in the prevailing approach to addressing such challenges most notably between the economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council and other MENA countries.This book also incorporates a discussion of tools and methods used by development practitioners and briefly examines issues of aid effectiveness. The approach used is intended to appeal to a wide audience including students of economic development, political scientists and development practitioners.
Introduction. Townspeople, company people, and textiles : a woven history -- Pt. I. Gendered experiences -- 1. Competing masculinities : docile workers, aggressive afandiyya, and the mechanization of the modern subject -- 2. Urbanizing masculinity : workers, weavers, and futuwwat in violent alliances and fluid identities -- 3. Mechanizing women : industrial workers or women adrift? -- 4. Ladies in urban times : work, property, and gender in the modernity of the poor -- Pt. II. Industrial sexuality -- 5. Sexually speaking : unveiling the harassment of women, child molestation, homosexuality, and hetero-intimacy in industrial-urban space -- 6. Striking and sex-working : living with tuberculosis, syphilis, and other monsters -- Conclusion. The anxiety of transition
An examination of the problems of economic growth and structural change in oil-exploring economies which focuses on the experience of Iran. The author argues that oil income can make a substantial contribution to industrial growth, subject to the adoption of appropriate policy measures.
Ever since the First World War, socialists have considered imperialism a calamity: responsible for militarism, economic stagnation, and assaults on democracy in the metropolitan countries, an impediment to economic and cultural development in the Third World. So widespread has this view become that it is shared, in its essentials, not only by Marxists but also by an entire school of liberal development economists. Bill Warren breaks with this traditional outlook, arguing that the theory of imperialism, one of Marxism's most influential concepts, is not only contradicted by the facts, but has diluted and distorted Marxism itself. In particular, Warren disputes the claim that "monopoly capitalism" represents the ultimate stage of senile capitalism and sets out to refute the notion that imperialism is a regressive force impeding or distorting economic development in the Third World. The book argues on the contrary that direct colonialism powerfully impelled social change in Asia and Africa, laying the foundation for a vibrant indigenous capitalism. Finally, it takes issue with the conventional view that postwar economic performance in the Third World has been disastrous, presenting a powerful empirical case that the gap between rich and poor countries is actually narrowing. Closely argued, clearly written, original and iconoclastic, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism is a compelling challenge to one of the chief tenets of contemporary socialist politics.
How religious barriers stalled capitalism in the Middle East In the year 1000, the economy of the Middle East was at least as advanced as that of Europe. But by 1800, the region had fallen dramatically behind—in living standards, technology, and economic institutions. In short, the Middle East had failed to modernize economically as the West surged ahead. What caused this long divergence? And why does the Middle East remain drastically underdeveloped compared to the West? In The Long Divergence, one of the world's leading experts on Islamic economic institutions and the economy of the Middle East provides a new answer to these long-debated questions. Timur Kuran argues that what slowed the economic development of the Middle East was not colonialism or geography, still less Muslim attitudes or some incompatibility between Islam and capitalism. Rather, starting around the tenth century, Islamic legal institutions, which had benefitted the Middle Eastern economy in the early centuries of Islam, began to act as a drag on development by slowing or blocking the emergence of central features of modern economic life—including private capital accumulation, corporations, large-scale production, and impersonal exchange. By the nineteenth century, modern economic institutions began to be transplanted to the Middle East, but its economy has not caught up. And there is no quick fix today. Low trust, rampant corruption, and weak civil societies—all characteristic of the region's economies today and all legacies of its economic history—will take generations to overcome. The Long Divergence opens up a frank and honest debate on a crucial issue that even some of the most ardent secularists in the Muslim world have hesitated to discuss.
