Suchergebnisse

Creating change in Saudi Arabia -- The modern Saudi visual arts movement -- The emerging comedy scene -- Media companies and filmmakers -- Shaping the future

For much of the last twenty years, China's ties with Saudi Arabia have been understood in commercial terms, with most scholars arguing that the relationship has little cultural or historical depth. Drawing on multiple trips to China between 2011 and 2015 along with a ten-month period living continuously in Saudi Arabia in 2013 and 2014, this paper argues that there are factors other than economics that should be considered: namely, historical ties dating back to the seventh century, Saudi cultural and geo-strategic linkages to the United States, and the new economic and political geography of Eurasia. While cultural and strategic factors have limited the growth of Saudi-Sino ties since the start of the Arab Spring, they are likely to be the factors that allow for the two sides to realize the potential of their bilateral relationship in the future—even while retaining their close current alliances with other great powers.

For decades, many scholars have contended that Saudi Arabia is a fixed political system, where a conservative monarchy uses advanced technology, oil revenues, and religion to dominate the people. Such a system is often portrayed as inherently unstable, a seemingly never-ending series of collisions between an unchanging traditional political structure seeking to hold on to power at any cost and a dynamic modernity—a view encapsulated in a phrase expressed at virtually every public discussion of the Kingdom in the West: 'you must admit that Saudi Arabia must change'. Ironically this phrase confirms what this article argues is a secret to the success of Saudi Arabia in the contemporary era: the ability to legitimize transformation without calling it change. No society is static, including Saudi Arabia. Throughout the Kingdom's history, the defining social institutions have repeatedly utilized Tajdīd (Revival) and Iṣlāḥ (Reform) to respond to new technologies and the changing expectations of a diverse society. While Muslim scholars are most often entrusted to arbitrate this process, ordinary Saudis use this process to guide their actions in the various social spaces they encounter both at home and abroad. Critically, this process reflects the response of King Abdulaziz and the founders of the third Saudi state in the early twentieth century to the factors that had brought down previous Saudi states in the nineteenth century.

Despite sharing many of the socio-economic and political problems that led to revolutions in other Arab states, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia experienced little unrest, a fact many in the West attributed to the Kingdom's closed political system. The absolute monarchy has been viewed as thwarting political dissension through kinship and religious alliances and sharing of oil revenues. This article aims at reframing mainstream Western explanations of the failure of the Arab Spring to gain a foothold in the largest economy in the Arab World and present a fresh vision of Saudi politics and the reaction of Saudis to the Arab Spring—one that transcends the fear and the rigid framework that characterize most scholarly discussions of the Kingdom.

This presentation introduces the viewer to two forms of technology, radar and bombsights, and how each one changed the way air warfare was conducted. The Second World War was the testing ground for numerous advancements in military technology; and the contribution made through radar and bombsights created a level of strategic warfare never before experienced.