Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East and North Africa

The landscapes of the Middle East have captured our imaginations throughout history. Images of endless golden dunes, camel caravans, isolated desert oases, and rivers lined with palm trees have often framed written and visual representations of the region. Embedded in these portrayals is the common belief that the environment, in most places, has been deforested and desertified by centuries of misuse. It is precisely such orientalist environmental imaginaries, increasingly undermined by contemporary ecological data, that the eleven authors in this volume question. This is the first volume to critically examine culturally constructed views of the environmental history of the Middle East and suggest that they have often benefitted elites at the expense of the ecologies and the peoples of the region. The contributors expose many of the questionable policies and practices born of these environmental imaginaries and related histories that have been utilized in the region since the colonial period. They further reveal how power, in the form of development programs, notions of nationalism, and hydrological maps, for instance, relates to environmental knowledge production. Contributors: Samer Alatout, Edmund Burke III, Shaul Cohen, Diana K. Davis, Jennifer L. Derr, Leila M. Harris, Alan Mikhail, Timothy Mitchell, Priya Satia, Jeannie Sowers, and George R. Trumbull IVhttps://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/1017/thumbnail.jp

Modernity’s Histories: Rethinking the Long Nineteenth Century, 1750-1950

The paper suggests that the UC Multi-Campus Research Group in World History should consider undertaking a collaborative research project aimed at rethinking the history of the long nineteenth century in comparative world historical perspective, suggesting some reasons why demarcating a research area on this scale might be productive, as well as some broad topics within it that appear to be potentially of interest. These days for a variety of reasons we are suspicious of large scale historical narratives and the uses to which they have been put. But faute de mieux, we continue to frame our work in terms of the dichotomous division between the West and the Rest, often without our being aware of it. It is the author's contention that by neglecting the larger frames in which our work might be inserted, we deprive it of larger resonances that will enable us to connect with broader audiences. Whether we like it or not, big narratives will inevitably be invoked by readers as they seek to render intelligible our smaller scale histories. There is therefore a compelling need for a self-consciously comparative world historical approach.Why the nineteenth century? Because it seems to be the piece that has thus far been left out of the rethinking of modern world history. Little noticed until now, the outlines a new world historical framework for the early modern period has begun to emerge. Similarly, the outlines of a global framework for the history of the twentieth century can be perceived (though here for a variety of reasons the crystal ball remains cloudier). The paper explains, however, that despite major progress, both enterprises seem at the moment to be stuck, and unlikely to progress until the job of inscribing nineteenth century history into world history has progressed. The nineteenth century is key. Yet despite a lot of research, we’re still far from being able to devise a truly world-centered historical framework for the nineteenth century. Accordingly, it is time for scholarly energy to be focused on integrating this new work into a self-consciously world historical narrative framework

Orientalism and World History: Representing Middle Eastern Nationalism and Islamism in the Twentieth Century

This is a essay about framing, about contextualization. It seeks to situate the political and cultural transitions the modern Middle East has undergone in this century in their world historical contexts, the better to help us understand the meanings of the present shift to Islamist forms of politics in the region. It is my contention that scholars have misunderstood the world historical significance of the emergence of nationalism in the area, that they have misconstrued its relationship to orientalism and to the European enlightenment more generally, and (as a result) largely misunderstood the nature of the Islamist challenge. In many ways my reflections here spring from a dissatisfaction with the inadequacies (both epistemological and world historical) of the ways in which some critics of orientalism have located modernity

Collective Action and Discursive Shifts: A Comparative Historical Perspective

As a world historian interested in both the history of European orientalism and modern Islamic history, I have long been struck by the similarities between the indeterminacy of our present time and that of the early twentieth century. One place where these indeterminacies come together is the Middle East. Unpredicted by all observers, an Islamic political revival is under way. Since the Islamic revolution in Iran (1978-79), secular nationalism is in retreat in the region, confounding both Left and Right alike. Why is there an Islamist movement in Algeria (the erstwhile center of Third Worldism)? Why is Egypt, which was the leader of progressive Arab nationalism under Nasser, itself increasingly exposed to an Islamist challenge? How are we to understand these developments? Do they represent a retreat from modernity? Accounting for the Islamist movement in the Middle East has thus far confounded all theories. For those concerned with theory and history this gap should induce more concern than it has so far. One way to remap the dimensions of this problem is through a consideration of the similar incomprehension that greeted the emergence of nationalisms in the area following the collapse of the Ottoman empire

’There is No Orient’: Hodgson and Said

islam, orientalism, middle-east, Islamic World and Near East, Other Religion, Political History

World history : the big eras : a compact history of humankind for teachers and students

A brief history of the world based on material in the web site "Worldforusall". This book brings together in printed form the essays that introduce the nine big eras in World History for Us All, a web-based model curriculum for world history. Takes a global approach which focuses on "big ideas of continuity and change" rather than on individual civilizations. Includes study questions for each chapter.Introduction: history, geography and time -- Big era one: humans in the universe (1.3 billion-200,000 years ago) -- Big era two: human beings almost everywhere (200,000-10,000 years ago) -- Big era three: farming and the emergence of complex societies (10,000-1000 BCE) -- Big era four: expanding networks of exchange and encounter (1200 BCE-500 CE) -- Big era five: patterns of interregional unity (300-1500 CE) -- Big era six: the great global convergence (1400-1800 CE) -- Big era seven: industrialization and its consequences (1750-1914 CE) -- Big era eight: a half-century of crisis (1900-1945) -- Big era nine: paradoxes of global acceleration (1945-present) -- Epilogue: reflecting on the past, thinking about the future

World history : the big eras : a compact history of humankind for teachers and students

World History: The Big Eras is a brief history of humankind written to encourage teachers and students to think about the past on big scales. Presenting world history in panoramic view, it puts forward the idea that students will achieve deeper understanding of world history, and find their studies more engaging, if they are guided to relate particular subject matter to large patterns of historical change.Reprint of the same title published in 2009 with ISBN: 9780963321879173 page(s