The contributors link innovative analytical concepts and ethnographic in-depth case studies from the Arab world. Based on the debates on politics from below and dynamic concepts of state, all the chapters focus on informal institutions, non-elite actors, and the dynamic and contradictory relationship between state and society.

An accessible and wide-ranging survey of modern Arab culture covering political, intellectual and social aspects.

This comprehensive guide captures important trends in international relations (IR) pedagogy, paying particular attention to innovations in active learning and student engagement for the contemporary International Relations IR classroom.

In The Politics of Islamic Law, Iza Hussin compares India, Malaya, and Egypt during the British colonial period in order to trace the making and transformation of the contemporary category of ‘Islamic law.’ She demonstrates that not only is Islamic law not the shari’ah, its present institutional forms, substantive content, symbolic vocabulary, and relationship to state and society—in short, its politics—are built upon foundations laid during the colonial encounter. Drawing on extensive archival work in English, Arabic, and Malay—from court records to colonial and local papers to private letters and visual material—Hussin offers a view of politics in the colonial period as an iterative series of negotiations between local and colonial powers in multiple locations. She shows how this resulted in a paradox, centralizing Islamic law at the same time that it limited its reach to family and ritual matters, and produced a transformation in the Muslim state, providing the frame within which Islam is articulated today, setting the agenda for ongoing legislation and policy, and defining the limits of change. Combining a genealogy of law with a political analysis of its institutional dynamics, this book offers an up-close look at the ways in which global transformations are realized at the local level.

Mass Communication in the Modern Arab World: Ongoing Agents of Change following the Arab Spring introduces, explains, and explores how unceasing growth of media and communication technologies has acted as an ongoing agent of change in the modern Arab world Each contributed chapter provides evidence of mass communication’s potential to transform society, culture, politics, economies and development in a region where expectations of media and communication are higher than those of the Western world. Studying these media platforms and communication channels and their relationship to governments and other social and religious institutions reveals how an area of over 400 million people has seen both good and bad of transformations from the global communication wave. Case studies of media formats and practices specific to the region illuminate cultural and political factors that impact the growth of media and allow it to positively contribute to all-encompassing democratization in the region. List of Contributors: Azza A. Ahmed, Mohammad Ayish, Tayeb Boutbouqatl, Aliaa Dawoud, Khaled S. Gaweesh, Ahmed El Gody, Kamal Hamidou, Fran Hassencahl,Tara Al-Kadi, Kyung Sun Lee, Deanna Loew, Noha Mellor, Hesham Mesbah, Meriem Narimane Noumeur, Saddek Rabah, Abeer Salem, Hend El-Taher, Leonard Ray Teel, Oshane Thorpe, Karin Wilkins, and Inas Abou Youssef

The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History critically examines the defining processes and structures of historical developments in North Africa and the Middle East over the past two centuries. The Handbook pays particular attention to countries that have leapt out of the political shadows of dominant and better-studied neighbours in the course of the unfolding uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. These dramatic and interconnected developments have exposed the dearth of informative analysis available in surveys and textbooks, particularly on Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria.

Anna Antonakis’ analysis of the Tunisian transformation process (2011-2014) displays how negotiations of gender initiating new political orders do not only happen in legal and political institutions but also in media representations and on a daily basis in the family and public space. While conventionalized as a “model for the region”, this book outlines how the Tunisian transformation missed to address social inequalities and local marginalization as much as substantial challenges of a secular but conservative gender order inscribed in a Western hegemonic concept of modernity. She introduces the concept of “dissembled secularism” to explain major conflict lines in the public sphere and the exploitation of gender politics in a context of post-colonial dependencies.