scholarly journals Subsidy reforms in the Middle East and North Africa: Strategic options and their consequences for the social contract

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Loewe ◽  
Georgeta Vidican Auktor
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
North Africa ◽  
The Social ◽  
Strategic Options

scholarly journals Saudi Arabia: A prince’s revolution

European View ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-234
Author(s):  
Jihan Chara
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Gulf Cooperation Council ◽  
Collateral Consequences ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Eu

Over the past decades, the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council have emerged as the leaders of the Middle East and North Africa region. They have also proved to be the safest Arab allies for the EU due to their stability and prosperity, despite being the only regimes in the region whose leaders are not elected by universal direct suffrage. In recent months, Saudi Arabia, in particular, has been anxious to re-establish its leadership in the region through disruptive structural changes. Even though it remains difficult to make sense of these reforms, many analysts have speculated about their purported future relevance. This article argues that the changes undermine the social contract that has prevailed in the kingdom for decades, whereby citizens enjoy material comfort in exchange for their loyalty to the regime. Thus these changes threaten to destabilise the country, with potential lasting effects on the region and collateral consequences for Europe.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-316
Author(s):  
Rabab El-Mahdi ◽  
Ellen Lust
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Procedural Outcomes

The nation-state is in crisis. The increasing mobility of capital and information, unprecedented waves of people moving across borders, and rise of actors, such as ISIS, unwilling to abide by the rules of the Westphalian system, challenge the very notion of territoriality, citizenship, sovereignty, and the state's monopoly over the legitimate use of force. Studies on the Middle East and North Africa since the Arab uprisings took the region by storm, upending “conventional wisdom” held by many political scientists and scholars, have focused largely on the causes, genealogy, and procedural outcomes of the events. These are important, but as we shall see, the uprisings also highlighted the need to think carefully about how the modern state has changed, is being adapted, or has been superseded. How is the “state,” a foundational conceptual construct in the social sciences, to be located in light of these events? And to what extent do the concepts we employ and the language we use accurately reflect and allow us to interrogate realities, or do they obscure them? This roundtable aims to spark this much-needed discussion.

scholarly journals Women of Fes

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-122
Author(s):  
Emilio Spadola
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Space ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
Family Code ◽  
Mega Cities

The city of Fes, the once “bourgeois citadel” (J. Berque’s words) of Moroccoand once the world’s most populous city (1170-80), has in modernity beenunhappily bypassed for coastal trading hubs and global mega-cities. Materialand symbolic elements of Fassi power persist, however, and anthropologistRachel Newcomb’s finely researched and written ethnography identifies them in upper-middle-class women’s gender identity. In so doing, Women ofFes helps the fields of anthropology, sociology, gender studies, and Islamicstudies to illuminate the often-neglected power of class to shape gender in theMuslim Middle East and North Africa, demonstrating, not pointedly, thatclass divides women within as much as across cultures.Newcomb’s book concerns women of, not merely in, Fes, namely, a classof women of “original” Fassi families navigating the social ruins and newopportunities of daily urban life. Its disparate topics – urban rumors, women’sNGOs, reforms of the Moroccan Muslim family code (mudawanah), flexiblekinship, public space, a dépassé lounge singer – shift the book’s centerfrom class to gender and public life. Her skillful identification of class issueswithin the latter, however, gives the book a necessary coherence ...

Studying Networked Communication in the Middle East

2018 ◽  
pp. 415-436
Author(s):  
Javier Borge-Holthoefer ◽  
Muzammil M. Hussain ◽  
Ingmar Weber
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Data Science ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Computational Social Science ◽  
Digital Networks ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Civil Unrest ◽  
The Social

Digital infrastructure has been rapidly embraced in the Arab Middle East and North Africa in the last decade, opening a unique window for computational social science and network data science scholars. However, there are currently two coexisting social and economic realities in the region, which result in very different usages and dynamics of networked communication: countries with chronic civil unrest in which digital media have largely served as mobilization tools (e.g., Tunisia, Egypt), and relatively stable and wealthy societies that face social change and economic hyper-development (e.g., Qatar, Kuwait). Given such diversity across the region, how and why should social scientists study digital networks in the Middle East? What can digital networks teach us about the social and political aspects of the modern Middle East? In sum, while claims about digital technologies’ impacts across the region have been critiqued for being speculative and overblown, we suggest that digital technologies have instead broadened our ability to understand ongoing transformations among Arab states and societies.

Islamic and Conventional Micro-Financing in the MENA Region

2020 ◽  
pp. 216-239
Author(s):  
Imene Berguiga ◽  
Yosra Ben Said ◽  
Philippe Adair
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Financial Performance ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Social Performance ◽  
Microfinance Institutions ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conventional Services

The performance of MicroFinance Institutions (MFIs) is analysed for the period 2004-2015. Sample consists of 67 MFIs in the Middle East and North Africa region. It includes a subsample of 18 Islamic MFIs (IMFIs), whereof Solebusiness grants exclusively Islamic financial services and Window provides both Islamic and conventional services. A model of simultaneous equations with interacting variables tests seven hypotheses addressing financial performance, social performance, and the social and financial performance relationship. Conventional MFIs (CMFIs) experience higher financial performance than IMFIs and Window experiences higher financial performance than Solebusiness; IMFIs do not experience higher social performance than CMFIs; whether conventional or Islamic, MFIs face a financial vs. social performance trade-off.

EDMOND YAFIL AND ANDALUSI MUSICAL REVIVAL IN EARLY 20TH-CENTURY ALGERIA

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Glasser
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
Performance Tradition ◽  
Muslim Spain

AbstractEdmond Yafil was a key figure in the early 20th-century Algerian revival of Andalusi music, a high-prestige urban performance tradition linked to medieval Muslim Spain. Yafil's experiments with printing, transcription, audio recording, amateur associations, concert-hall performance, and new composition helped transform the production, consumption, and circulation of Andalusi music. Although Yafil was widely respected, his reputation was fraught with ambiguity during his lifetime and has remained so since. While not divorced from his position as a Jew in turn of the century Algiers, Yafil's ambiguity is best understood within the context of the complex Andalusi musical milieu of his day. This study of Yafil shows revival to have been a gloss for a partial but far-reaching shift in the social basis of Andalusi music making and calls for a broader rethinking of the familiar concept of revival in North Africa and the Middle East and beyond.

New visions for citizen formation: An analysis of citizenship education policy in Morocco

2019 ◽  
pp. 174619791988627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hajar Idrissi ◽  
Laura C Engel ◽  
Youssef Benabderrazik
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Citizenship Education ◽  
Policy Reform ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Strategic Vision ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

This article offers perspectives on the framing of citizenship education in recent education policy reform in Morocco. Against a background of shifting conceptions of citizenship and citizenship education occurring both globally and regionally in the Middle East and North Africa, the article focuses on Morocco’s Strategic Vision for Reform 2015–2030, offering an analysis of the main section of the policy targeting citizenship education, referred to in the document as chapter 3 (‘For a school that develops the individual and society’), lever 18 (‘Enact a society of citizenship, democracy and equality’). Drawing on policy analysis of these sections of the reform documentation, we examine the various recommendations that reference national Moroccan citizenship education, concluding that the discourse surrounding citizenship education tends to emphasize a disciplined conception of citizen formation, framing the student as apathetic and passive. Moreover, the article analyzes these recommendations within the social, cultural, economic, and political context of Morocco, offering insights on potential challenges in its implementation.

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