""A new e-book edition of the classic study of the radical changes in lifestyle, trade, agriculture, and land use that have taken place on Egypt's northwest coast in the face of a huge influx of Nile Valley settlers and touristsThe arid regions impose strict limits upon human existence and activity. And yet by respecting those limits, the flourishing and stable culture of these regions has for centuries been sustained. In the late twentieth century, however, forces such as modernization, globalization, and the politics and economics of nations became so great that major changes in the old ways.

The arid regions impose strict limits upon human existence and activity. And yet by respecting those limits, the flourishing and stable culture of these regions has for centuries been sustained. In the late twentieth century, however, forces such as modernization, globalization, and the politics and economics of nations became so great that major changes in the old ways had to take place for the sake of survival. Egypt's northwest coast, where meager coastal rains have supported a sparse but thriving population of Bedouin, saw the arrival of settlers from the Nile Valley, accustomed to a very different way of life and production, and hordes of tourists whose "empty, silent structures" effectively turned the most productive strip of the coastal range into an artificial desert. This study documents the great accommodations that took place to ensure the arid rangelands of the northwest coast continue to be viable for the demands of human existence imposed on them. "A main thesis of this study," the authors write, "is that change in the northwest coast of Egypt has strong parallels in other arid regions of the wider Arab world; and specific comparisons are made to change underway elsewhere-especially regarding the transformation of Arab nomadic pastoralist production to a new form of ranching, and the related changes of sedentarization and the monetization of most aspects of livelihood."

Desert Borderland investigates the historical processes that transformed political identity in the easternmost reaches of the Sahara Desert in the half century before World War I. Adopting a view from the margins—illuminating the little-known history of the Egyptian–Libyan borderland—the book challenges prevailing notions of how Egypt and Libya were constituted as modern territorial nation-states. Matthew H. Ellis draws on a wide array of archival sources to reconstruct the multiple layers and meanings of territoriality in this desert borderland. Throughout the decades, a heightened awareness of the existence of distinctive Egyptian and Ottoman Libyan territorial spheres began to develop despite any clear-cut boundary markers or cartographic evidence. National territoriality was not simply imposed on Egypt's western—or Ottoman Libya's eastern—domains by centralizing state power. Rather, it developed only through a complex and multilayered process of negotiation with local groups motivated by their own local conceptions of space, sovereignty, and political belonging. By the early twentieth century, distinctive "Egyptian" and "Libyan" territorial domains emerged—what would ultimately become the modern nation-states of Egypt and Libya.

This book explores the tribal politics of the Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin in the borderland of Egypt and Libya. These tribal politics are part of heterarchy in which sovereignty is shared between tribes, states and other groups and, within this dynamic setting, the local politicians of the Awlad ‘Ali are essential producers of order beyond the framework of the nation state. Based on long-term fieldwork, this monograph is ideal for audiences interested in North African Politics, Libya, Egypt, and borderland studies.

The Bedouin in the Negev region have undergone a remarkable change of life style in the course of the 20th century: within a few generations they changed from being nomads to an almost sedentary and highly educated population. The author, who is a Bedouin himself and has worked in the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture as Superintendent of the Bedouin Educational Schools in the Negev for many years, offers the first in-depth study of the development of Bedouin society, using the educational system as his focus.

A scholarly volume devoted to an understanding of contemporary nomadic and pastoral societies in the Middle East and North Africa. This volume recognizes the variable mobile quality of the ways of life of these societies which persist in accommodating the ‘nation-state’ of the 20th and 21st century but remain firmly transnational and highly adaptive. Composed of four sections around the theme of contestation it includes examinations of contested authority and power, space and social transformation, development and economic transformation, and cultures and engendered spaces.

This book is the first to explore Arabic tourism from a business viewpoint, rather than taking a sociological, anthropological or political stance. It focuses on business planning, management and marketing destinations in the Arab World, which are topics crucial for industry stakeholders and which have previously been neglected in the tourism literature. The book examines similarities and differences in the emergence and development of the tourism industry in countries across the Arab world as well as its inbound and outbound travel flows. It analyses several different aspects of Arabic tourism including tourism policy, organisation and planning, tourism product development, destination marketing and consumer behaviour. This volume will be of interest to postgraduate students and researchers of tourism studies, business and Middle Eastern studies.