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Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East examines the role played by cultural institutions in producing present-day and future contexts for the production, dissemination, and reception of contemporary art in the Middle East and North Africa. It provides critical contexts for a discussion that has become increasingly urgent in recent years—the role of culture in a time of conflict and globalization—and critiques the historical state of cultural institutions in an age of political upheaval, social unrest, exuberant cultural activity, ascendant neoliberal forms of privatization, social activism, and regional uncertainty. Future Imperfect draws attention to the ongoing demands and antagonisms that have affected cultural production across the region, in both historical and recent post-revolutionary contexts. In doing so, the book offers an in-depth discussion of how cultural producers have developed alternative institutional models to negotiate the constraints placed on their practices. How cultural institutions operate within the conditions of a global cultural economy, and alongside the often conflicting demands they place on cultural production in the region, is likewise an overarching point of reference throughout this volume. While the politics of contemporary cultural production and institutional practices in the Middle East can tell us a great deal about local and regional concerns, one of the cornerstone ambitions of this volume is to inquire into what they can also impart about the politics of global cultural production. This involves exploring the multiple ways in which contemporary art practices are being reduced, willingly or otherwise, to the logic of global capital. What is needed in terms of infrastructure for cultural production today and how can we speculatively propose new infrastructures and institutions in the context of current realities?

The increasingly complex, algorithmically mediated operations of global capital have only deepened the gap between the social order as a whole and its lived experience. Yet, Fredric Jameson's notion of cognitive mapping, attentive to the conflicting tendencies of capitalist operations, is still helpful for addressing the local instantiations of capital's expanding frontiers of extraction. I am interested in tracing the historicity of those operations as well as the totality they are actively part of in the present from the vantage point of the Middle East, especially along with the entangled trajectories of oil, finance, and militarism. To this end, I examine countervisual practices in the realm of media arts that contest the aesthetic regime through which the state-capital nexus attempts to legitimize its imperial logic and violence. My reconfiguration of cognitive mapping as countervisuality in Nicholas Mirzoeff's terms demonstrates that there is no privileged position or method of cognitive mapping, which ultimately corresponds to an active negotiation of urban space across the Global North/ South divide.

The paper draws on a recent research collaboration with the London based women's organization MEWso (Middle Eastern Women society organization). It discusses the importance of storytelling and other creative and participatory approaches, such as the World Café, to co-produce knowledge on polygamy involving a different range of social actors such as third sector organizations, academics and women involved in polygamous familial relationships. The paper focuses specifically on one of the workshops where the researchers used body-map storytelling, which is particularly appropriate for helping participants share their story with the rest of the group. This approach has been called "visceral methods" because it draws on the sensory and affective experiences mobilised to reveal discursive, material and structural aspects of research participants' stories (Sweet and Ortiz Escalante, 2014). Body maps have also been understood as cognitive maps representing a mixture of spatial cognition, place representations and spatial imagination that can provide information not only about places themselves, but also about people's identities and behaviours in relation to them (Vacchelli 2018). Body maps, similarly to cognitive maps, have the potential to convey ideas and images of individuals' economic, political, cultural or social contexts with an emphasis on their emotions and feelings (Mendoza and Morén-Alegret, 2013).

The paper is an attempt to encompass the geo-political and geo-strategic fault lines which could put the region in a perpetual strategic dilemma leading to initiation of a strategic tug of war between the Middle Eastern Powers. The author has highlighted various pros and cons of establishment of an independent Kurdistan and its implications on the entire Middle Eastern Region. Moreover the author has analyzed various practical reasons behind the non-establishment of an independent state. Furthermore last part of paper focuses on the global and regional reactions on the establishment of new Kurd state followed by few policy options.

Abstract ; During the Great War, the Ottoman Empire fought on several major and minor fronts, both in the Middle East and in the Balkans. Although initially seen as a military liability by its allies and a weak enemy by its foes, Ottoman armies delivered some heavy blows to the Entente powers, mainly the British. Yet, by 1918, the military was battered beyond recognition. Ottoman civilians did not fare any better: they suffered and died by the millions due to war, deportation, massacre, disease, and famine. ; SeriesInformation ; 1914-1918-Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War ; SeriesInformation ; 1914-1918-Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War

Henry Siegman asks whether the next US President can rescue a two-state solution to the Israel–Palestine conflict; Lakhdar Brahimi discusses Iran – war or peace in the Middle East?; Eric Rouleau assesses the Iranian nuclear threat; Walid Khadduri looks at concerns over the future of Iraq and regional implications.

Orientalism – and its images – are far from dead. Despite Edward Said's forceful critique of Orientalism as a regime of representation that dominates and structures an ambiguous 'East', its discourse persists. Representations, in the form of paintings, drawings, photography, films, and maps, have been powerful means by which the 'Middle East' has been pictured in the last two centuries, and, as such, have animated imperialist projects, fueled Orientalist and self-Orientalist fantasies, and upheld reductive and essentialized understandings of the region and its people. Since September 2001, Orientalist imagery has undergone a political and social intensification, which is now compounded by the 'refugee crisis.' This intensification has been made apparent in discourses that easily interchange the 'immigrant' for the 'refugee' and 'Muslim' in Europe and the US, but also in tropes of Arab, Muslim or Oriental otherness used by political actors in the region itself. This symposium examines the continued seductiveness that Orientalism seems to hold over the production of images of the contemporary 'Middle East', both inside and outside of the region. How are (self) Orientalized images and imaginaries translated into perceptions of authenticity and identity? How do such images figure into the policies and politics in the ongoing 'global war on terror'? How do modes of contemporary image-making engage with, resist, or respond to tropes of Orientalism in the current political moment? The symposium features a talk and parallel exhibit by Tintinologist Nadim Damluji on early-to-mid 20th century Arab comic strips, which examine the genealogy of Orientalist image-making from the cartoon to cartography in the present moment. Programme Thursday, 6 July 2017 11:00 Welcome and Introduction 11:30 – 13:30 Panel I: Mapping and Geographies of Heritage Moderator: Saima Akhtar, Yale University Geographies of Orientalism Mariam Banahi (Anthropologist, Johns Hopkins University) Syrian Heritage Archive Project (SHAP): Archives as a Basis ...

About 90 policy makers, Members of Parliament, serving and former Ministers, media leaders, academics and water experts from across the Middle East came together for the first annual High Level Forum on Blue Peace in the Middle East at Istanbul on 19-20 September 2014. The forum was co-hosted by the Strategic Foresight Group and MEF University of Istanbul, Turkey in cooperation with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Political Directorate of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. The participants proposed concrete initiatives at bi-lateral as well as regional levels to promote cooperation and sustainable management of water resources in the region. The Forum began with special presentations on the experience of the Senegal River Basin Authority in collaborative water management and work in progress of Orontes River Basin Atlas for post conflict water management in Syria and its neighbouring countries.

The paper is an attempt to encompass the geo-political and geo-strategic fault lines which could put the region in a perpetual strategic dilemma leading to initiation of a strategic tug of war between the Middle Eastern Powers. The author has highlighted various pros and cons of establishment of an independent Kurdistan and its implications on the entire Middle Eastern Region. Moreover the author has analyzed various practical reasons behind the non-establishment of an independent state. Furthermore last part of paper focuses on the global and regional reactions on the establishment of new Kurd state followed by few policy options.

The Middle East is undergoing the most dramatic transformation since the region emerged out of the Ottoman Empire after WWI. Radical Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, the fixations of the Western media, are symptoms of this transformation. Over the past thirty years, however, significant social and economic developments have led to changing perceptions of the role of women, the growth of a vibrant middle class, civil society and free media, and rising demands for the political liberalization of increasingly unpopular authoritarian regimes across the region. The participants in the proposed interdisciplinary roundtable will draw on theory and research to examine three topics in order to clarify the nature, process and implications of these changes: (1) Women, Education and Work (Leuenberger); (2) Media (Al-Obaidi); and (3) Democratization (Mozaffar). Professor Lewinstein will comment on the presentations from the perspective of contemporary Islamic discourse. Each presentation will be about 15-minute long followed by Q&A.

This book examines, for the first time ever, Middle-Eastern media censorship. By using an analytical and comparative approach this book, explicitly, shows how the censorial culture grew as the media developed in this region. It also illustrates the illusionary and deceptive arguments presented by the authorities citing articles and stipulations from the constitution that speaks for the freedom of the press and free speech. This book also shows the possibility for emerging models of media in the Middle East that highlight a direction toward democracy and the application of laws and regulations. ; https://vc.bridgew.edu/fac_books/1019/thumbnail.jpg

China's greater Middle East geoeconomic strategy is centered on an external trade and industry policy. This trade and industry policy combines geopolicy and geoeconomic policy to export industrial capacity bases in what amounts to a geoindustrial policy and a parallel trade strategy. Practical coordination is under the umbrella of the central International Capacity Cooperation macro-policy. China's provincial governments are then tasked with offshoring China's industrial capacity to Middle East economies through specialized International Capacity Cooperation funds, which are then coordinated by sectoral industry associations: International Capacity Cooperation Industry Enterprise Alliances. The final industrial policy is then deployed by matching China's provinces and prefectures to external geographies. This amounts to a State Outward Direct Investment Strategy. This paper uses primary sourced Chinese policy documents from central and provincial state administrative agencies to build a historical institutional record. We then employ a Polanyian analysis of the embeddedness of State functions in China's external investment activities and industrial transfers, analyzing China's external trade and industry policy in the Middle East in terms of state-market institutional interrelationality.

This chapter discusses the recent findings relevant to the debate whether democratization affects the possibility of cooperation. Democratization could arguably heighten nationalism but full joint consolidation of internationalization and democracy can offset proclivities toward war. Two approaches in international relations assess the rise of China in starkly different ways. The first stems from a general theory that great powers are bound to challenge each other, often by force. A second approach builds on elements of the liberal tradition adapted to the conditions of an emerging global economy. There are important precedents for China's commitment to multilateral frameworks. Its "charm offensive" led to an understanding that a peaceful and prosperous Southeast Asia could guarantee continued overseas and regional investments, sustained flow of natural resources for China's growth and political stability, and smooth operation of crucial sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca that enable 80 percent of oil shipments to China.

Unfortunately, specializing in Middle East affairs guarantees you a job for many years to come due to the complexities and interdependences that exist concerning the challenges and the crises that the region is undergoing. It is unfortunate in the sense that the peoples of the region are facing these challenges and crises, seemingly without respite. I will proceed by making ten general observations about these challenges and crises. ; N/A

The total volume of work on the economies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remains low in comparison to other "developing" regions of the world, but it has been growing since the 1990s. This growth is due in part to the opportunities for students from the region to receive doctoral degrees in the United States and other Western countries and in even greater measure to the dedication of resources by international agencies and organizations to the cultivation of MENA economists. However, the process entails more of a penetration by Western neoclassical economic ideas and modeling techniques into work in and on the region than it does a meeting of the minds between economists and Middle East area studies specialists. By way of introduction, this chapter reviews the reasons for the weak links between the fields of economics and Middle East studies (MES) in the United States. It then examines the growth of the economics profession and its work in the Middle East and the shaping of this work by international and regional organizations, especially the Middle East Economic Association (MEEA) and the Economic Research Forum for the Arab World, Turkey, and Iran (ERF). The chapter concludes by considering the contested boundaries between economics and MES and how the political uprisings of 2011 were both affected by and affect the work of economists in the region, as painful economic reality and the contest of economic ideas quietly underlay the louder and more dramatic political turmoil of 2011–13.