From the Editors:
We are proud to present a collection of articles, essays, and reviews that provide new perspectives on vital questions of capitalism, nationalism, and environment. This issue’s peer-reviewed articles section features two such interventions. Malak Labib provides a rigorous and nuanced history of management expertise and shop-floor politics during Egypt’s mid-twentieth-century transformations. Analyzing this critical but underexplored sphere of interaction between Western consultants and Egyptian technocrats in the development era enables Labib to reconsider the periodization of Egyptian political economic history. Christopher Cooper-Davies unearths the distinctive intellectual production of the Iraqi nationalist ‘Ali al-Sharqi. Long dismissed as a contentious sectarian, Cooper-Davies reveals how ‘Ali al-Sharqi advocated an inclusive furati (Euphrates) nationalism, an Iraqi identity grounded in the landscape of the Euphrates Valley. This issue features Arab Studies Journal’s second essays section. Inaugurated in Fall 2021, the essay section provides scholars and activists a space to concisely analyze fast-moving processes. This collection, titled “Critical Environmental Perspectives in Middle East Studies,” explores how climate and environmental crises shape the conditions of possibility for research and analysis on and in the Middle East and North Africa. Gabi Kirk and Owain Lawson, founding members of the Jadaliyya environment page editorial collective, commissioned and edited these four contributions. They provide an introduction to... [read more] |
(VOL. XXX, NO. 2): Fall 2022 Table of Contents ARTICLES Consultants, Technocrats, and “Model Workers”: The Rise of Scientific Management in Egypt (1945–1968) Malak Labib ‘Ali al-Sharqi, Hizb al-Nahda, and the Difficulties of Being al-Furati in Mandatory Iraq Chris Cooper-Davies ESSAYS: CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL PERSPECTIVES IN MIDDLE EAST STUDIES Introduction: Environmental Crisis as Event and Structure Gabi Kirk and Owain Lawson Rethinking Climate Refugees and the Syrian Refugee Crisis: An Agrarian Perspective of Displacement China Sajadian Selective Crisis: Water Shortages in Cairo’s Elite and Informal Neighborhoods Noura Wahby Confronting the Twin Crises of Climate Change and Occupation in Palestine Gabi Kirk The Compounding Crises of Agriculture and Colonialism in French Mandate Syria Elizabeth Williams REVIEWS Specters of World Literature: Orientalism, Modernity, and the Novel in the Middle East By Karim Mattar Reviewed by Ziad Dallal Empires of Antiquities: Modernity and the Rediscovery of the Ancient Near East, 1914–1950 By Billie Melman Reviewed by Sarah Griswold Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey By Salih Can Açiksöz Reviewed by Soha Bayoumi The Remaking of Republican Turkey: Memory and Modernity since the Fall of the Ottoman Empire By Nicholas L. Danforth Reviewed by Perin Gürel and Gavin Moulton Between Empire and Nation: Muslim Reform in the Balkans By Milena B. Methodieva Reviewed by Dženita Karić The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity By Darryl Li Reviewed by Flagg Miller |