background preloader

Autres

Facebook Twitter

New Texts Out Now: Myriam Ababsa, Baudouin Dupret, and Eric Denis, Popular Housing and Urban Land Tenure in the Middle East. Myriam Ababsa, Baudouin Dupret and Eric Denis, editors. Popular Housing and Urban Land Tenure in the Middle East: Case Studies from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Cairo and New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2012. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Myriam Ababsa (MA), Baudouin Dupret (BD), and Eric Denis (ED): The first impulse behind this book came out of Eric Denis’ and Baudouin Dupret’s collaboration during the nineties at the French Institute in Cairo (CEDEJ), when the former conducted major research on urbanization and the latter on legal practice.

When Dupret moved to Damascus, he was granted some funding from a research agency to conduct an inquiry into the relationship between the law and urban transformations in southern countries; he asked Myriam Ababsa, who was based in Amman, to step in as a geographer specializing in urbanization within the Bilad al-Sham. J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does it address? Dissipating Dissent: Morocco's Stabilizing Spatial Tactics. When considering the wave of uprisings that swept the Arab world recently, otherwise known as the “Arab Spring,” Morocco is often perceived as the exception to the rule. The country’s socio-political profile led many to believe that it was only a matter of time for the disgruntled masses to take to the streets and bring down another regime that has monopolized governance for decades and on whom the country’s ills can be blamed. Morocco has survived the unrest, however, and its leadership seems to be as strong today as ever.

This is often explained with the promises of political reform that King Mohammed VI issued soon after regional uprisings started. This succinct narrative, albeit factual, does not accurately reflect the relationship between the resilient regime and the country at large. Spatial practices have been accorded significant attention over the last few decades by various intellectual traditions, notably philosophy, sociology, geography, and anthropology. Spatial Tactics. Libyan Eastern Tribal Chiefs, Population, and Government (Part 1 of 2) On 15 September 2012, the tribal chiefs of Libya’s eastern region held a meeting to announce their solutions to the recent spate of violence, which culminated in the attack on the US consulate on 11 September. Although invitations were extended to government officials at this meeting, the tribes announced a clearly critical stance vis-a-vis the government’s weak politics, at times condemning its performance and thus affirming a new capacity to criticize the Libyan state.

At 10:00 AM, the chiefs and their guests began to arrive at a wedding hall in Benghazi. When I arrived at the meeting, I was surprised to see a half a dozen or so security guards standing at the entrance. I had not seen as many policemen in Benghazi since I had arrived the previous week. Present at the meetin­­­g were tribal chiefs­­­­ accompanied by their close male relatives, army officers, political activists, government representatives of Benghazi, and a few journalists.

[Image from 15 September meeting in Benghazi. How Not to Study Gender in the Middle East. When Satire Conquered Iran by Slavs and Tatars. One of the most important contributions to modern Azerbaijani literature and culture was the irreverent early twentieth-century magazine Molla Nasreddin. What follows is an introduction to the magazine by the artist collective Slavs and Tatars, together with a series of magazine excerpts featured in their book, Molla Nasreddin: The Magazine That Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, recently published by JRP-Ringier, in a series edited by Christoph Keller. —The Editors Published between 1906 and 1930, Molla Nasreddin was a satirical Azeri magazine edited by the writer Jalil Mammadguluzadeh (1866-1932), and named after Nasreddin, the legendary Sufi wise man-cum-fool of the Middle Ages. Managing to speak to the intelligentsia as well as the masses, however, the magazine was an instant success and would become the most influential and perhaps first publication of its kind to be read across the Muslim world, from Morocco to India.

Turkey’s Towering Ambition by Hugh Eakin. In March 1548, having brought the Ottoman Empire to the height of its power, Suleiman the Magnificent decided to build a mosque in Istanbul. “At that time,” an anonymous chronicler explains, His Highness the world-ruling sultan realized the impermanence of the base world and the necessity to leave behind a monument so as to be commemorated till the end of time….Following the devout path of former sultans, he ordered the construction of a matchless mosque complex for his own noble self. In late May of this year, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—Turkey’s powerful prime minister, a devout Muslim, and the self-styled leader of the new Middle East—announced that he would be erecting his own grand mosque above the Bosphorus. It will be more prominent than Suleiman’s. “We will build an even larger dome than our ancestors made,” an architect involved in the project, Hacı Mehmet Güner, boasted to the Turkish daily Milliyet in early July.

All this, too, can be seen on the streets of Istanbul.