Shaping Lebanon's Borderlands
Shaping Lebanon's Borderlands

Author: Daniel Meier

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-12-10

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 178673057X

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Regional struggles, wars and local confrontations have marked the south of Lebanon since the end of the 1960s. They have transformed this marginalized and rural region into a battlefield and redefined the relationships between international, regional and local actors. The most recent of these actors the Palestinian refugees and their armed resistance, the Islamic Shi i movement Hizbullah, and the UN local mission (UNIFIL) have marked and shaped the place, and in turn operating in this borderland has affected their identities. Based on Daniel Meier s extensive fieldwork in the region, this book offers interviews with militants, his own observations of this conflict-ridden and dangerous region as well as incisive political analysis concerning the armed militias operating in the area. It is through this in-depth examination of the southern borderlands of Lebanon that Meier sheds new light on some of the major Middle Eastern confrontations of the last half a century."

Higher Education in the Arab World
Higher Education in the Arab World

Author: Adnan Badran

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-11-30

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 3030581535

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This book examines the unsatisfactory situation in the Arab world where there is a pressing need to address poverty, unemployment, political instability, corruption, and the existential threat of climate change. The authors analyze the relationships between universities and governments in the Arab world, and make recommendations that will help develop intellectual capacity and thereby aid the economic and social transitions so desperately needed in all Arab countries. Countries aspiring to participate fully in the global knowledge economy require dynamic university sectors operating in concert with governments that actively promote high-quality education and research and foster innovation and entrepreneurship. Successful university-government relationships can be complex and are continually evolving.

Pilgrimage in the Twenty-First Century
Pilgrimage in the Twenty-First Century

Author: Ian S. McIntosh

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2024-07-09

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1036406377

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Pilgrimage in the Twenty-First Century: A Kaleidoscopic Inquiry showcases the rich diversity of religious and secular pilgrimage on the world stage. Scholars from the Global North and South working in diverse fields in the humanities and social sciences share their research on the nature of pilgrimage—otherwise known as travel for transformation—providing insight into why it is one of the fastest growing segments of the worldwide tourism industry. Topics under scrutiny include the ancient history of pilgrimage, pilgrimage in literature, the development of new trails and the refurbishment of others, pilgrimage as an avenue for justice and peacebuilding, as an example of intangible cultural heritage, and as a unique driver of domestic economies. Each chapter in this survey—covering more than fifteen countries—makes a significant contribution to our understanding of this age-old and multi-faceted phenomenon that is central to our understanding of what it means to be human.

Lebanon Facing The Arab Uprisings
Lebanon Facing The Arab Uprisings

Author: Rosita Di Peri

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-10-25

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1352000059

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This book provides an intimate picture of Lebanon, exploring the impacts of the Arab uprisings of 2011 which are deeply affecting Lebanese politics and society. The book examines Lebanon’s current issues and its deep sectarian divisions, as well as the ways in which it still seems able to find some adaptation paths to face the many challenges left by its regional sectarian and political polarization. Authors delve into border regions, Syrian refugees, the welfare state, the Lebanese Army, popular mobilisations in 2011 and the two main communities, the Sunnis and the Shia. Built on various fieldwork researches, the volume explores each of the topics through the lenses of identification building processes, the re-ordering of social and/or political relations, and the nationhood symbols and meanings.

Bordering the Middle East
Bordering the Middle East

Author: Daniel Meier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-21

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 0429559895

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This volume focuses on the influence that borders in the Middle East can have on actors’ identity building, as well as how local, national, or transnational actors re/ define borders and boundaries. The Middle East is facing a political crisis, revealed by the Arab uprisings, that is affecting states’ borders in a paradoxical way: while local, communal, or tribal dissent tends to contest international borders, states are trying to affirm their control over national territory in building border fences. Focusing on borders in their materiality as well as their symbolic dimensions – their representations – may help with reappraising the region’s own history, the local/national specificities, as well as regional/ global constraints affecting borderlands and those who cross borders; be they workers, migrants, or jihadists. In this book, six case studies will provide insights on state- community relationships through the lens of border issues in the Levant and the Gulf. The theoretical framework provided by the border studies conceptual tools allows authors to delve into the process of bordering, de- bordering, and re- bordering which is affecting the region, raising questions on sovereignty, authority, and the political legitimacy of the regimes. This book was originally published as a special issue of Geopolitics.

Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State
Syria: Borders, Boundaries, and the State

Author: Matthieu Cimino

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-06-13

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 3030448770

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This book explores the history of Syria’s borders and boundaries, from their creation (1920) until the civil war (2011) and their contestation by the Islamic State or the Kurdish movement. The volume’s main objective is to reconsider the “artificial” character of the Syrian territory and to reveal the processes by which its borders were shaped and eventually internalized by the country’s main actors. Based on extensive archival research, the book first documents the creation and stabilization of Syrian borders before and during the mandates period (nineteenth century to 1946), studying Ottoman and French territorialization strategies but also emphasizing the key role of the borderlands in this process. In turn, it investigates the perceptual boundaries resulting from the conflict, and how they materialized in space. Lastly, it explores the geographical and political imaginaries of non-state actors (PYD, ISIS) that emerged from the war.

Rethinking Statehood in the Middle East and North Africa
Rethinking Statehood in the Middle East and North Africa

Author: Abel Polese

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-21

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0429607660

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Alternative forms of government and statehood exist in the Middle East and North African regions. The chapters in this volume demonstrate this and explore the notion of power from a non-statist perspective, highlighting the limits of states and their governance. Using empirical evidence from Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, and Mali, the authors explore non-standard cases where power may be retained by a state but must be shared with a number of local actors, resulting in limited statehood and hybrid governance, which leads to competition and sharing of symbolic and political power within a state. This book is intended to prompt a critical reflection on the meaning of governance. It will illuminate informal structures which deserve attention when studying governance and power dynamics within a state or a region. This book was originally published as a special issue of Small Wars & Insurgencies.

Borderscaping: Imaginations and Practices of Border Making
Borderscaping: Imaginations and Practices of Border Making

Author: Chiara Brambilla

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 131717304X

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Using the borderscapes concept, this book offers an approach to border studies that expresses the multilevel complexity of borders, from the geopolitical to social practice and cultural production at and across the border. Accordingly, it encourages a productive understanding of the processual, de-territorialized and dispersed nature of borders and their ensuring regimes in the era of globalization and transnational flows as well as showcasing border research as an interdisciplinary field with its own academic standing. Contemporary bordering processes and practices are examined through the borderscapes lens to uncover important connections between borders as a ’challenge' to national (and EU) policies and borders as potential elements of political innovation through conceptual (re-)framings of social, political, economic and cultural spaces. The authors offer a nuanced and critical re-reading and understanding of the border not as an entity to be taken for granted, but as a place of investigation and as a resource in terms of the construction of novel (geo)political imaginations, social and spatial imaginaries and cultural images. In so doing, they suggest that rethinking borders means deconstructing the interweaving between political practices of inclusion-exclusion and the images created to support and communicate them on the cultural level by Western territorialist modernity. The result is a book that proposes a wandering through a constellation of bordering policies, discourses, practices and images to open new possibilities for thinking, mapping, acting and living borders under contemporary globalization.

Mediterranean in Dis/order
Mediterranean in Dis/order

Author: Rosita Di Peri

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2023-03-07

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0472903160

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Mediterranean in Dis/order reveals the connection between space and politics by examining the role that space has played in insurgencies, conflicts, uprisings, and mobilities in the Mediterranean region. With this approach, the authors are able to challenge well-established beliefs about the power structure of the state across different disciplines (including political science, history, sociology, geography, and anthropology), and its impact on the conception, production, and imagination of space in the broader Mediterranean. Further, they contribute to particular areas of studies, such as migration, political Islam, mobilization, and transition to democracy, among others. The book, infusing critical theory, unveils original and revelatory case studies in Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Morocco, and the EU Mediterranean policy, through a various set of actors and practices—from refugees and migrations policies, to Islamist or students’ movements, architectural sites, or movies. This multidisciplinary perspective on space and power provides a valuable resource for practitioners interested in how space, context, and time interact to produce institutions, political subjectivities, and asymmetries of power, particularly since the turning point of the Arab uprisings. The book also helps readers understand the conditions under which the uprisings develop, giving a clearer picture about various national, regional, and international dynamics.

Patterns in Border Security
Patterns in Border Security

Author: Christian Leuprecht

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-12

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 1000803295

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How do security communities transform into security regimes? This book compares the construction of cross-border security regimes across five regions of the world to illustrate how trust emerges from the day-to-day relations of coordination, cooperation, or collaboration. Patterns in Border Security: Regional Comparisons studies the way borderland communities develop, implement, and align border policy to enhance their sense of security. Borders have been evolving rapidly in direct response to the multifaceted challenges brought on by globalization, which has had a nuanced impact on the way borders are governed and border security is managed. Taking a methodical comparative regional approach, this book identifies and contrasts determinants of nascent, ascendant, and mature border security regimes, which the book documents in seven regional case studies from across the globe. The findings identify conditions that give rise to cross-border and trans-governmental coordination, cooperation, or collaboration. Specifically, pluralistic forms of communication and interactions, sometimes far from the actual borderline, emerge as key determinants of friendly and trustful relations among both contiguous and non-contiguous regions. This is a significant innovation in the study of borders, in particular in the way borders mediate security. For six decades international security studies had posited culture as the bedrock of security communities. By contrast, the book identifies conditions, a method, and a model for adequate and effective cross-border relations, but whose outcome is not contingent on culture. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics with a Foreword by the Secretary General of the World Customs Organization. The Open Access chapters of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781003216926, have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.