Books in the Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures series

This book examines political, social, and cultural changes in Palestine and Israel from the 1993 Oslo Accords through the second Palestinian uprising and the death of Yasser Arafat. It also explains the failures of the Oslo process and considers the prospects for a just and lasting peace in the region.

Set in a Palestinian camp in Lebanon, Refugees of the Revolution is both an ethnography of everyday life and a provocative critique of nationalism, exploring how material realities and evolving solidarity networks are reconstituting identity and political belonging in exile.

Assesses the factors that contribute to regime resilience in Syria and Iran, exploring their flexibility and their constraints as they confront unprecedented challenges.

Examines how and why the Mubarak regime managed to maintain control of Egypt for 30 years despite an ongoing fiscal crisis, and considers the relationship between public finance, politics, and the possibility for social and political change.

Moving beyond conventional political and strategic analyses of the Israeli-Iranian conflict, Iranophobia shows that Israeli concerns are emblematic of contemporary domestic fears about Israeli identity and society.

The captivating story of a controversial group of Palestinians who volunteer to serve in the Israeli military.

Ethnographic study of cultural politics in the contemporary Egyptian art world, examining how art-making is a crucial aspect of the transformation from socialism to neoliberalism in postcolonial countries.

This book examines political, social, and cultural changes in Palestine and Israel from the 1993 Oslo Accords through the second Palestinian uprising and the death of Yasser Arafat. It also explains the failures of the Oslo process and considers the prospects for a just and lasting peace in the region.

Comparing Egypt and Syria, this book argues that Arab states where executive power is more centralized are better at adapting to prevent regime change than states where decentralized relationships prevails.

Examining politics in a small Afghan town that managed to remain relatively peaceful in the years following the fall of the Taliban, this book calls examines how and when violence erupts and calls into question the international community's approach to developing stability in Afghanistan.

Until the recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, the resilience of authoritarian regimes seemed a fundamental feature of regional politics. While economic, political, and internal security policies are most often considered in discussions of regime maintenance, Laurie Brand introduces a new factor, that of national narratives. Portrayals of a country's founding, identity, and bases of unity can be a powerful strategy in sustaining a ruling elite. Brand argues that such official stories, which are used to reinforce the right to rule, justify policies, or combat opponents, deserve careful exploration if we are to understand the full range of tools available to respond to crises that threaten a leadership's hold on power.Brand examines more than six decades of political, economic, and military challenges in two of North Africa's largest countries: Egypt and Algeria. Through a careful analysis of various texts-history and religion textbooks, constitutions, national charters, and presidential speeches-Official Stories demonstrates how leaderships have attempted to reconfigure narratives to confront challenges to their power. Brand's account also demonstrates how leaderships may miscalculate, thereby setting in motion opposition forces beyond their control.

Uncovers the hidden history of Syrian migrant workers in Lebanon, from independence to the present, to break new ground in Middle East Studies and challenge existing ways of thinking about migration.

This book looks anew at the vexing question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy, examining histories of Islamic politics and social movements in the Middle East since the 1970s.

Digital Militarism considers how social media has become a crucial site in which the Israeli military occupation is supported and sustained.

This book offers a nuanced understanding of the contexts, culturally conditioned rationality, local networks, and innovation in contentious action across the Middle East and North Africa to give the reader a substantive understanding of events in the Arab world before and since 2011.

Between 1949 and 1951, 123,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to the newly established Israeli state. Lacking the resources to absorb them all, the Israeli government resettled them in maabarot, or transit camps, relegating them to poverty. In the tents and shacks of the camps, their living conditions were squalid and unsanitary. Basic necessities like water were in short supply, when they were available at all. Rather than returning to a homeland as native sons, Iraqi Jews were newcomers in a foreign place.Impossible Exodus tells the story of these Iraqi Jews' first decades in Israel. Faced with ill treatment and discrimination from state officials, Iraqi Jews resisted: they joined Israeli political parties, demonstrated in the streets, and fought for the education of their children, leading a civil rights struggle whose legacy continues to influence contemporary debates in Israel. Orit Bashkin sheds light on their everyday lives and their determination in a new country, uncovering their long, painful transformation from Iraqi to Israeli. In doing so, she shares the resilience and humanity of a community whose story has yet to be told.

This book chronicles the local histories written by modern Palestinians about their villages that were destroyed in the 1948 war.

Set during the first two decades of Israeli statehood when Palestinians who managed to remain after 1948 lived under a repressive military regime, Citizen Strangers examines how Arabs and Jews navigated the opposing impulses of exclusion and inclusion in a new state forced by new international norms to grant citizenship and suffrage rights to its unwanted native minority.

Examination of U.S.-Saudi relations, the development of the oil frontier, and the enduring legacy of racial segregation at the Aramco camps.

The first major historical account of gender politics during the Nasser era, Revolutionary Womanhood analyzes feminism as a system of ideas and political practices, international in origin but local in iteration. Drawing connections between the secular nationalist projects that emerged in the 1950s and the gender politics of Islamism today, Laura Bier reveals how discussions about education, companionate marriage, and enlightened motherhood, as well as veiling, work, and other means of claiming public space created opportunities to reconsider the relationship between modernity, state feminism, and postcolonial state-building. Bier highlights attempts by political elites under Nasser to transform Egyptian women into national subjects. These attempts to fashion a "e;new"e; yet authentically Egyptian woman both enabled and constrained women's notions of gender, liberation, and agency. Ultimately, Bier challenges the common assumption that these emerging feminisms were somehow not culturally or religiously authentic, and details their lasting impact on Egyptian womanhood today.

Examines the relationship between the Israeli government and the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and theorizes that the occupation is intrinsic to the existence of the Israeli state.

This book examines how state officials and select businessmen come together informally to shape economic development in Syria.