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Urban life and questions of violence / Nelida Fuccaro -- The semantics of violence and space / Rasmus Christian Elling -- Elite conflict and the urban environment : eighteenth-century Cairo / James E. Baldwin -- Urban space and prestige : when festivals turned violent in Jeddah, 1880s-1960s / Ulrike Freitag -- Citizenship rights and semantics of colonial power and resistance : Haifa, Jaffa, and Nablus, 1931-1933 / Lauren Banko -- Challenging the Ottoman pax urbana : intercommunal clashes in 1857 Tunis / Nora Lafi -- A tamed urban revolution : Saudi Arabia's oil conurbation and the 1967 riots / Claudia Ghrawi -- Making and unmaking spaces of security : Basra as battlefront, Basra insurgent, 1980-1991 / Dina Rizk Khoury -- A patriotic uprising : Baghdadi Jews and the Wathba / Orit Bashkin -- Dissecting moments of unrest : twentieth-century Kirkuk / Nelida Fuccaro -- War of clubs : struggle for space in Abadan and the 1946 oil strike / Rasmus Christian Elling -- Urban rupture : a fire, two hotels, and the transformation of Cairo / Yasser Elsheshtawy

Fuccaro's article explores new geographies of leisure and consumption that emerged in Manama and in Bahrain's oil camps in the first decades of oil development. New forms of public communication such as the press, printed materials, and cinema are used to explore urban spaces, actors, and social contexts of leisure and consumption as the unique by-product of oil. On the one hand, the focus is on the images and messages popularized by these new media and on the emergence and influence of an advertising and public relations market. On the other, a variety of actors are analyzed as the producers and recipients of these messages and images: Manama's young people and the city's entrepreneurs, the public relations strategists of the Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO) and the Bahrain government, the expatriate housewives, and the indigenous oil workers. The article begins with a discussion of Manama's youth culture in the 1950s as epitomized by the cinema and the youth club. It then opens the discussion to the broader landscape of Bahrain's capital city as the center of a new world of commodities and services. Manama's urban life is then contrasted to that of opulent and secluded Awali, the company town built by BAPCO in 1937, in order to illustrate how Awali's lifestyle was experienced, represented, and perceived by its expatriate population, foreign visitors, and Bahrainis. The last section of the article analyzes the role of BAPCO in popularizing new urban and suburban consumer and leisure cultures since the early 1950s through magazines, cinema, and propaganda materials.

This article concentrates on the Kurdish quarter of Damascus and investigates the relationship between communal/ethnic identity, spatial organization and the socio-political structures of the city. It challenges the notion of quarter as an 'ethnic cluster' by examining historical processes of integration of the Kurdish community in the body politic of Damascus. In the colonial period the emergence of new arenas of public action for the Kurdish community are analysed with reference to the emergence of new ideas of class and community.

So Harran had been since the beginning of time, and so it was when Ibn Rasheed and his men arrived. The Company men, who had visited many places before Harran, chose it as a port and headquarters of the Company, as well as a city of finality and damnation.Abdelrahman Munif,Cities of SaltThe cultural, physical, and socio-economic displacement of traditional Gulf societies has been strikingly portrayed by Abdelrahman Munif in his fictional account of the diaspora of a poor oasis community after the discovery of oil. Munif's oil city, seen through the eyes of this community, is a daunting and transient place of contrast and dual personality, a city whose historical memory has been swept away by the evils of modern technology and by neo-colonial forms of economic exploitation.Cities of Saltrecounts the hidden tale of Gulf cities, a tale which, this article will argue, is too often neglected in urban studies on the region.

In modern Iraq, processes of state formation and national integration have been consistently affected by a number of ethnic issues and concerns. This became particularly evident in the decade after the country became independent from British Mandatory control in 1932. First, in the immediate postcolonial period ethnicity became central to the development of Iraqi national and international politics. Second, ethnic specificity emerged as a major factor in the shaping of postcolonial Iraqi society, despite the continuous attempts at enforcing a new national identity on the part of a still fragile state. This article discusses the important role played by ethnicity during the first stages of Iraqi national development by focusing on the impact of conscription on the Yazidi Kurds of Jabal Sinjar.

This volume explores the ways petroleum as an industry and substance has moulded the social, cultural and artistic life of the Middle East. Rather than tackle the powers of this crucial resource from the perspective of macro-economics, impersonal rentier states and large corporations, this book 'brings oil back' into the ebbs and flows of Middle Eastern life. It focuses on the ways petroleum mediates and is mediated by national formations and imaginaries, visual practices, as well as scientific, business and artistic production. In focusing on the largest oil producing and exporting region in the world, this volume sheds light on the effects and affects of petroleum's presence within and beyond the oil-industry.Part 1 - Exposing Oil sets out the main themes through which oil is analysed in the volume (visibility, experience, representation and mediation). Part 2 - Oil Images deals with image making by the oil industry (as graphs, aerial photographs and promotional media) and by artists and designers who have engaged with, and commented on, oil's presence in the region. Part 3 - Oil Subjects focuses on the production of (oil) subjecthood and the formation of oil knowledge.

"Covering a period from the late eighteenth century to today, this volume explores the phenomenon of urban violence in order to unveil general developments and historical specificities in a variety of Middle Eastern contexts. By situating incidents in particular processes and conflicts, the case studies seek to counter notions of a violent Middle East in order to foster a new understanding of violence beyond that of a meaningless and destructive social and political act. Contributions explore processes sparked by the transition from empires--Ottoman and Qajar, but also European--to the formation of nation states, and the resulting changes in cityscapes throughout the region"--Provided by publisher

Studies how oil has shaped the societies and cultures of the modern and contemporary Middle EastProposes a new research agenda for the study of oil's varied lives in the modern and contemporary Middle EastIncludes 13 case studies, including 2 photo essays by leading artists and designersTakes a thematic approach to promote interdisciplinary thinkingPresents contributions from leading historians and anthropologists, world-renown artists, curators and designers, and younger scholars who are developing an outstanding research portfolio on oilThis volume explores the ways petroleum as an industry and substance has moulded the social, cultural and artistic life of the Middle East. Rather than tackle the powers of this crucial resource from the perspective of macro-economics, impersonal rentier states and large corporations, this book 'brings oil back' into the ebbs and flows of Middle Eastern life. It focuses on the ways petroleum mediates and is mediated by national formations and imaginaries, visual practices, as well as scientific, business and artistic production. In focusing on the largest oil producing and exporting region in the world, this volume sheds light on the effects and affects of petroleum's presence within and beyond the oil-industry.Part 1 – Exposing Oil sets out the main themes through which oil is analysed in the volume (visibility, experience, representation and mediation). Part 2 – Oil Images deals with image making by the oil industry (as graphs, aerial photographs and promotional media) and by artists and designers who have engaged with, and commented on, oil's presence in the region. Part 3 – Oil Subjects focuses on the production of (oil) subjecthood and the formation of oil knowledge