Suchergebnisse

To consider in what ways incorporating the emerging field of environmental history into studies of the Middle East challenges our views of the past and/or present, it is necessary first to take stock of our mainstream notions of the environment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and how we think it has changed over the last several thousand years. The most common received wisdom about the environment in the MENA is that it is an arid, marginal environment, in many places a wasteland degraded by overgrazing and deforestation for hundreds if not thousands of years. The local populations, especially nomads and small farmers, are frequently blamed for the alleged environmental ruin. Born in large part of Western imperialism in the region, this environmental imaginary of the MENA has been uncritically adopted by the majority of postindependence ruling elites as well as development agencies.

Introduction: Imperialism, Orientalism, and the Environment in the Middle East : History, Policy, Power, and Practice / Diana K. Davis -- "A Rebellion of Technology" : Development, Policing, and the British Arabian Imaginary / Priya Satia -- Restoring Roman Nature : French Identity and North African Environmental History / Diana K. Davis -- Body of Work : Water and Reimagining the Sahara in the Era of Decolonization / George R. Trumbull IV -- From the Bottom Up : The Nile, Silt, and Humans in Ottoman Egypt / Alan Mikhail -- Drafting a Map of Colonial Egypt : The 1902 Aswan Dam, Historical Imagination, and the Production of Agricultural Geography / Jennifer L. Derr -- Remapping the Nation, Critiquing the State : Environmental Narratives and Desert Land Reclamation in Egypt / Jeannie Sowers -- Salts, Soils, and (Un)Sustainabilities? Analyzing Narratives of Environmental Change in Southeastern Turkey / Leila M. Harris -- Hydro-Imaginaries and the Construction of the Political Geography of the Jordan River : The Johnston Mission, 1953/56 / Samer Alatout -- Environmentalism Deferred : Nationalisms and Israeli/Palestinian Imaginaries / Shaul Cohen