1. Urban Politics in the Middle East
- Author:
- Mona Harb, Marc Lynch, Jillian Schwedler, Gehad Abaza, and Munqeth Othman
- Publication Date:
- 10-2023
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS)
- Abstract:
- Urban politics has received growing attention in the anthropology, sociology, and political science of the MENA region. In line with global trends, questions of scale, territory, flows and connectivities and materialities have come to the fore, with a wide range of creative and novel lines of inquiry connecting the global to the hyper-local and every scale in between. In February 2023, POMEPS partnered with the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut and The Policy Initiative think tank for a workshop in Beirut to bring together an interdisciplinary group of young scholars from across the region to explore questions of urban life, politics, and culture. The papers moved beyond more traditional political science topics such as municipal government, decentralization, clientelistic voting, protests, and clientelism. While those themes certainly operated in the background, the authors assembled in Beirut pushed to shift the lens towards multi-scalar ethnographic modes of inquiry, highlighting the materialities and relationalities of the hyper-local, examining sites and places which concentrate power dynamics.
- Topic:
- Economics, Migration, Politics, Race, Religion, Sectarianism, Culture, Syrian War, Mobility, Urban, Trade, Music, Transportation, Cities, Heritage, Resistance, Labor Market, Domestic Work, and Urbicide
- Political Geography:
- Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Tehran, Baghdad, Algeria, North Africa, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Beirut, Cairo, Tunis, and Aqaba