Synopses & Reviews
Saudi Arabia in the Balance brings together todays leading scholars in the field to investigate the domestic, regional, and international affairs of a Kingdom whose policies have so far eluded the outside world. With the passing of King Fahd and the installation of King Abdullah, a contemporary understanding of Saudi Arabia is essential as the Kingdom enters a new era of leadership and particularly when many Saudis themselves are increasingly debating, and actively shaping, the future direction of domestic and foreign affairs.
Each of the essays, framed in the aftermath of 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, offers a systematic perspective into the countrys political and economic realities as well as the tension between its regional and global roles. Important topics covered include U.S. and Saudi relations; Saudi oil policy; the Islamist threat to the monarchy regime; educational opportunities; the domestic rise of liberal opposition; economic reform; the role of the royal family; and the country's foreign relations in a changing international world.
Contributors: Paul Aarts, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Rachel Bronson, Iris Glosemeyer, Steffen Hertog, Yossi Kostiner, Stéphane Lacroix, Giacomo Luciani, Monica Malik, Roel Meijer, Tim Niblock, Gerd Nonneman, Michaela Prokop, Abdulaziz Sager, Guido Steinberg
Review
“A thorough analysis of the country and of America's relationship with it. . . . Useful for readers seeking to understand the complexities of Saudi society and U.S. interests.”
-Library Journal,
Review
“Serves best as a source of information and some insight into the tactical questions facing the Saudi and U.S. ruling classes.”
-International Socialist Review,
Review
“Many illuminating essays.”
-The Economist,
Review
“A welcome and breathtaking burst of new knowledge. There is no volume today that contains so much useful material.”
-Joshua Teitelbaum,author of The Rise and Fall of the Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia
Review
“Aarts and Nonneman have organized the essays to complement one another in tone and content and to highlight both empirical and theoretical approaches.”
-Library Journal,
Review
“Arab America is a vital intervention in the growing field of Arab-American studies. At once an historical overview and an ethnographic study, it portrays a complex picture of activism as it negotiates Arabness in America. Organized around the tensions entailed in living on the hyphen of ‘Arab-American identity, the text insightfully highlights the dilemmas of a diaspora in an empire deeply embedded in the Middle East. Naber perceptively engages the feminist call for intersectionality in ways that are productive, dynamic and fresh.”-Ella Shohat,author of Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices
Review
“Arab America is a vital intervention in the growing field of Arab-American studies. At once an historical overview and an ethnographic study, it portrays a complex picture of activism as it negotiates Arabness in America. Organized around the tensions entailed in living on the hyphen of ‘Arab-American identity, the text insightfully highlights the dilemmas of a diaspora in an empire deeply embedded in the Middle East. Naber perceptively engages the feminist call for intersectionality in ways that are productive, dynamic and fresh.”-Ella Shohat,author of Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices
Review
"In Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism, Nadine Naber traces the historical, political, and community-building experiences of Arab Americans living in the San Francisco Bay area with impressive attention to the cultural, religious, and generational heterogeneity of her interlocutors...[This book] should be required reading not only in Middle Eastern Studies courses, but also for scholars in Ethnic Studies, Urban Studies, and other interdisciplinary fields that deal with questions of community building, racialization practices, and anti-imperialist struggle."-Mashriq and Mahjar: Journal of Middle East Migration Studies,
Review
"Researched over twelve years, Naber's ethnography Arab America...provides an intimate history of Arab American identity formation and social justice organizing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Naber's chapters guide the reader through a politically contextualized progression of Arab American history while situating her work in relation to diaspora studies and women of color feminisms."-Umayyah Cable,New Wave Arab American Studies
Review
"Numerous Arab-Americans have covered themselves in glory in recent years. But that is not the overriding theme of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics and Activism. The author, Nadine Naber, associate professor in the Programme in American Culture and the Department of Womans Studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, is interested in the cultural aspects of political activism in the Bay Area, and she is particularly preoccupied with how counter-narratives, embracing sexuality and gender, transcend what she describes as the restrictions and limitations of orientalist and conventional nationalist articulations of self and ground concepts of religion. Naber tackles these themes by scrutinising sympathetically the lives of young Arab-American political activists in the Bay Area of California in and around San Francisco. By doing so, she enunciates the dilemmas of the Diaspora. The author details the personal and political repercussions of these dilemmas in an engaging manner, highlighting the intimate correlation between means and ends."-Gamal Nkruman,Al-Ahram Weekly
Review
"Through an ethnographic study of life in the San Francisco Bay Area for members of the Arab diaspora, Nadine Naber's Arab America provides a unique and powerful contribution to studies of Arab Americans." -Karen Culcasi,Antipode
Synopsis
Arab Americans are one of the most misunderstood segments of the U.S. population, especially after the events of 9/11. In Arab America, Nadine Naber tells the stories of second generation Arab American young adults living in the San Francisco Bay Area, most of whom are political activists engaged in two culturalist movements that draw on the conditions of diaspora, a Muslim global justice and a Leftist Arab movement. Writing from a transnational feminist perspective, Naber reveals the complex and at times contradictory cultural and political processes through which Arabness is forged in the contemporary United States, and explores the apparently intra-communal cultural concepts of religion, family, gender, and sexuality as the battleground on which Arab American young adults and the looming world of America all wrangle. As this struggle continues, these young adults reject Orientalist thought, producing counter-narratives that open up new possibilities for transcending the limitations of Orientalist, imperialist, and conventional nationalist articulations of self, possibilities that ground concepts of religion, family, gender, and sexuality in some of the most urgent issues of our times: immigration politics, racial justice struggles, and U.S. militarism and war.
About the Author
Nadine Naber is Associate Professor in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Womens Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is co-editor of Race and Arab Americans (2007) and Arab and Arab American Feminisms (2011).
Table of Contents
Introduction: Articulating Arabness1. From Model Minority to Problem Minority2. The Politics of Cultural Authenticity3. Muslim First, Arab Second 4. Dirty Laundry5. Diasporic Feminist Anti-Imperialism Conclusion: Toward a Diasporic Feminist Critique