Suchergebnisse

This article explores how modernity and globalization unfolded in the neighboring cities of Jaffa and Tel Aviv during the long twentieth century. Each city was the cultural and economic capital of its respective national community, because of which they were in continual contact and conflict in a manner that often muddied the nationalistically determined boundaries between them. I explore how, beginning with Tel Aviv's establishment in 1909, Zionist leaders deployed a narrative of progress and modernity versus tradition and stagnation to effect a discursive, and ultimately a physical, erasure of the Palestinian Arab population of the region surrounding both towns. I argue that such paradigms, and the ideologies that support them, are fundamental components of globalization, whether in the era of "high imperialism" when Jaffa and Tel Aviv's conflict began, or today. Next I move to the contemporary period and explore the intersection of globalization, tourism, and the liberalized market. I conclude by discussing how a "spatialization" of the contemporary Jaffa is crucial to understanding the continuing conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, both within the borders of 1967 Israel and across the Green Line as well.

Much of the literature on the contemporary Middle East explores the relationship of strong, authoritarian states with Islamist groups; the professional literature also has examined the role of strong societies with weak states. There has been less study of the role of the various players
in weak states with weak societies. This article examines the cases of Palestine and Iraq, two societies undergoing occupation and with weak state structures, and the role of Islamist and other movements within them.

AbstractThis paper examines the role of economic and cultural globalization in the interaction between Muslim and European public spheres. Focusing on the dynamics of globalization at three levels — broadly, in the Muslim world and in Europe — I argue that globalization today is both more complicated and less broad than most of its proponents or critics assume. While most commentators assume that it is a primarily economic phenomenon (and so focus on the impact of supposedly increased global economic integration or technological innovation), these phenomena are concentrated largely within the mature G-8 economies and the most successful recent industrializers (such as the "Asian tigers"), leaving much of the developing world marginalized from the emerging "globalized" economy as defined in the mainstream literature. In this context it is culture that is the most powerful driver of contemporary globalization as it is experienced in the Muslims' majority world and in Muslim communities in Europe. This dynamic, in turn, has a powerful impact on how Muslim public spheres are shaped across Eurasia, particularly in the context of a transformation in the nature of globalization in the wake of September 11 towards a more militarized form of global economic interaction. An exploration of the dynamics of chaos as a defining feature of this emerging global system in the Middle East and North Africa, and Europe as well, along with a discussion of the role of anti-Semitism in contemporary discourses of globalization in the MENA and Europe, reveal the challenges to building more positive "Euro-Islamic" public spheres.

Constructing Boundaries is the latest entry in a growing body of revisionist
scholarship on the history and political economy of Palestine under the British, contesting the
once cherished notion that the Jewish and Palestinian communities of Palestine/Israel were
best investigated and understood as isolated and autonomously developing entities. By focusing
on one urban setting—Haifa, which during the Mandate period become Palestine's
most important port and industrial center—this work provides new insight into how the
industrial economy of Palestine shaped, and in turn was shaped by, the conflictual interaction of
the two communities.