Comprising both extremely rich and very poor countries the Arab region is of unique variety. This book explores the relations between rich and poor Arab countries, presenting papers on Arab integration efforts, the impact of oil prices on the South and least developed Arab countries in particular, the co-operation of poor Arabs with the EEC, basic needs, agricultural policies, intra-Arab migration, differences in ideologies and health systems, Islamic banking, and the unsuitability of IMF policies for poor Arab countries.
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.
Explaining—and solving—the oil curse in the developing world Countries that are rich in petroleum have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil. What explains this oil curse? And can it be fixed? In this groundbreaking analysis, Michael L. Ross looks at how developing nations are shaped by their mineral wealth—and how they can turn oil from a curse into a blessing. Ross traces the oil curse to the upheaval of the 1970s, when oil prices soared and governments across the developing world seized control of their countries' oil industries. Before nationalization, the oil-rich countries looked much like the rest of the world; today, they are 50 percent more likely to be ruled by autocrats—and twice as likely to descend into civil war—than countries without oil. The Oil Curse shows why oil wealth typically creates less economic growth than it should; why it produces jobs for men but not women; and why it creates more problems in poor states than in rich ones. It also warns that the global thirst for petroleum is causing companies to drill in increasingly poor nations, which could further spread the oil curse. This landmark book explains why good geology often leads to bad governance, and how this can be changed.
countries face similar challenges to create jobs and foster more inclusive growth. The current environment of likely durable low oil prices has exacerbated these challenges. The non-oil private sector remains relatively small and, consequently, has been only a limited source of growth and employment. Because oil is an exhaustible resource, new sectors need to be developed so they can take over as the oil and gas industry dwindles. Over-reliance on oil also exacerbates macroeconomic volatility. Greater economic diversification would unlock job-creating growth, increase resilience to oil price volatility and improve prospects for future generations. Macro-economic stability and supportive regulatory and institutional frameworks are key prerequisites for economic diversification...
During the last two decades, the number of anthropologists conducting research in the Middle East has increased considerably. Together they have produced an abundance of valuable studies, often based on prolonged periods of ethnographic fieldwork. "Cultural Anthropology of the Middle East. A Bibliography" offers a comprehensive survey of their results. The first volume, published in 1992, covered publications which appeared between 1965 and 1987. The second volume brings the bibliography further up to date, listing publications between 1988 and 1992, and adds some 260 titles which were published up through 1987. As in the first volume, the majority of the titles are annotated.
With global concerns over rising oil prices, this book examines the major issues facing the economies of the Arab Gulf today, covering all six of the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (AGCC) states: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Providing a detailed account of the central features of the economies of the Arab Gulf, this book draws out the critical trends that will shape the region in future years. It includes an in-depth analysis of topical issues such as the AGCC monetary union, intra-AGCC national labour movement, Islamic banking and programme.
This study aims to sensitize those concerned with Africa's development to the scope and limits of peasant livelihood securing activities. It combines results of research in the fields of peasant actions, food security, gender relations, and labour migration to a livelihood approach. Analyzing peasant life in western Sudan leads to the demand to keep options open. A review of the development programmes which affected the Sudanese rural population between independence and 1994 discloses that peasants' efforts have largely been obstructed.
Analysis of North African revolt against authoritarianism, known as the ‘Arab Spring’, embraced reductionist explanations such as the social media, youth unemployment and citizens’ agitations to regain dignity in societies humiliated by oppressive regimes. This book illustrates that reductionist approaches can only elucidate some symptoms of a social problem while leaving unexplained the economic and political structures which contributed to it. One outcome of quiescence, resource-based ethnic and sectarian conflicts and faulty development paradigm is deepened inequality and a wedge between winners and losers or affluence, wealth and power vis-à-vis poverty and hunger among humiliated jobless and hope-less masses. The book blends theories of development and transition to explain the complex factors which contributed to North Africans’ revolt against authoritarianism and its long-term consequences for political development in the Arab World. This timely book is of great interest to researchers and students in Development Studies, Economics and Middle Eastern Studies as well as policy makers and democracy, human rights and social justice activists in the Arab world.
In the extension of digital media from optional means to central site of activity, the domains of language, art, learning, play, film, and politics have been subject to radical reconfigurations as mediating structures. This book examines how this changed relationship has in each case shaped a new form of discourse between self and culture and illustrates explicitly the character of mediated agency beyond the formal separateness from lived experience that was once conveniently termed the virtual and which has come to influence common assumptions about creative expression itself.
