Rituals of Royalty and the Elaboration of Ceremony in Oman: View from the Edge

Ceremonial and elaborate protocols are commonly associated with kingship, authority and power and imbued with a sense of an ancient past. Yet traditions, particularly as pertaining to European practices, are often made up, choreographed and then formally instituted in a matter of a few years. Throughout Europe and the developing world, traditions have been, and continue to be, invented and kingship, oligarchy, and other institutions are set up, supported and occasionally simply maintained by such ceremony. Once established these rituals tend to take on a life of their own, sometimes thriving in an inverse relationship to the actual realities of power and authority. In the Middle East few studies exist which examine the study of royal rituals - invented and derived. Morocco, perhaps more than any other state, has been the focus of a number of such studies a few others considered aspects of ceremonial and monarchy in Jordan. In the case of Oman, however, there are no studies at present which consider the relationship between created ceremonial in the consolidation of power and authority in the perception of the citizens of that state. This article will briefly explore the creation and elaboration of ceremonial and court ritual in the Sultanate of Oman after the accession of Sultan Qaboos bin Said in 1970. It will attempt to show that while the creation of rituals of royalty were important for building a sense of national belonging among even the most remote communities in the country, these same ceremonials and created traditions developed lives of their own, stultifying courtly behaviour, and contributing little to the organic sense of Omani citizenship.

Gendered vulnerability and forced conscription in the war in Syria

This paper was presented at a workshop on ‘The Long-term Challenges of Forced Migration: Local and Regional Perspectives from Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq’ organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in June 2016. It was published as part of a collected papers volume available in English and Arabic

Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, by Keith David Watenpaugh

Book review: Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism by Keith David Watenpaugh Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015, 272 pp.&nbsp

The Syrian Humanitarian Disaster: Disparities in Perceptions, Aspirations, and Behaviour in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey

Humanitarian assistance coupled with an unsustainable policy of regional containment have only created greater poverty and misery for Syrians fleeing civil war. How this has been allowed to happen on the southern shores of the Mediterranean – where extraordinary social linkages and networks have existed for centuries – lies mainly in the disparities between perceptions, aspirations and behaviour among refugees, practitioners and policymakers in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. This article highlights in particular three such disconnects: the a historical approach to engaging with displaced people in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, which has led to the implementation of international blueprints of humanitarian support that are disconnected from people’s needs; the imposition of an encampment policy at odds with displaced people’s need for temporary settlement enabled through their own social networks; the redundancy of humanitarian practitioners’ background and experience in dealing with the particularities of displaced populations in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the failure to build on practices that work

Refugee Voices: Exploring the Border Zones between States and State Bureaucracies

Settled people have been forced to move and nomads have been coerced into settling for as long as there has been history. Until the emergence of the Westphalian concept of the nation (where the state corresponded to the nation, groups of people united by language and culture), movement and mobility were largely recognized and accommodated. However, most contemporary academic disciplines as well as public institutions adopt a particular sedentist perspective on the nation-state. It is commonly recognized that people are displaced and move when political states collapse; they return when political security is restored. The liminal “state” outside the defined territory of the nation-state, where the displaced are found, is regarded as a threat to the world order.1 Predominant theory has been that people must be tied to territory, and thus the durable policy solutions advanced are frequently about resettlement. Reality does not support either current forced migration theory or humanitarian aid practices, however, and an epistemological change in thinking about forced migrants is urgently required. This means looking beyond the nationstate— the purview of most academic work in this area— and beyond traditional barriers between disciplines, to give cross-disciplinary attention to the self-expressions and experiences of forced migrants. Furthermore, the forced migrant creates a dilemma in how aesthetic expression is displayed, as their forms of expression cannot be squarely identified with one state or another. The dispossessed and displaced are changed by their experiences in the grey zones between states, and their migrations cannot be neatly catalogued as belonging to one state or culture

Los efectos del clima sobre las sociedades trashumantes

Omán y Mongolia son un reflejo de los retos climáticos y sociales modernos de los medios de vida propios de los trashumantes

Displaced Iraqis: Predicaments and Perceptions in Exile in the Middle East

Much has been written about Iraqi refugees in the eight years since the March 2003 Anglo-American invasion of the country. Most of this work tries to understand the refugee crisis which followed from the perspective of “top-down” governmental and institutional factors such as interstate relations, state fragility, and regional insecurity. The key innovation of this paper is that it explores “bottom-up” factors. The focus of this paper is on the perceptions, interests, and perceived predicaments of displaced Iraqis themselves as contrasted with the perceptions of them by international players locally based in the Middle East region. As such the paper focuses on factors such as: livelihood strategies, economic engagement, protection rights, and alternatives to refugee/forced migration statuses. By reorienting analysis to local people-based perceptions the paper provides new ways of understanding not only the conditions of protracted displacement but also a broader scope for durable solutions.On a beaucoup écrit au sujet des réfugiés irakiens durant les huit années qui nous séparent de l’invasion anglo-américaine de l’Irak en mars 2003. Une grande partie de cet article tente de mieux comprendre la crise des réfugiés favorisée par des facteurs tels que les relations internationales, la fragilité des états, et l’insécurité nationale et dont la source est au sommet de la société. Cet article innove en explorant aussi les facteurs dont la source est à la base de la société. Ainsi, on se penche sur les perceptions, les intérêts, et les situations difficiles des Irakiens déplacés, en comparaison avec les perceptions qu’ont de ces derniers les acteurs internationaux actifs régionalement au Moyen Orient. Plus particulièrement, l’article se concentre sur des facteurs tels que la recherche de moyens de subsistance, l’engagement économique, les droits de protection, et les statuts alternatifs à ceux de réfugiés et de migrants forcés. En réorientant l’analyse sur les perceptions des personnes impliquées localement, cet article présente de nouvelles façons de comprendre non seulement les conditions des déplacements prolongés, mais offre aussi une approche plus large permettant de trouver des solutions durables

La evolución del sector de la estabilidad en el Líbano: el papel de la sociedad civil

En las últimas décadas, la sociedad civil ha desempeñado un papel fundamental para la estabilidad social en el Líbano esforzándose por mejorar la cohesión social entre los diferentes colectivos

Advocating multi-disciplinarity in studying complex emergencies : the limitations of a psychological approach to understanding how young people cope with prolonged conflict in Gaza

The paper looks at the limitations and strengths of using the A-cope questionnaire for measuring strategies for coping with prolonged conflict by Palestinian young people in Gaza. The scale was administered to young people between the ages of 8 and 17. The results show some gender differences in coping strategies. However, some items on the subscales are not relevant for Muslim societies or societies in situations of prolonged conflict. The authors suggest that combining an anthropological contextual perspective and qualitative data with psychological instruments is an effective way of addressing the limitations of using a single quantitative method of assessment in non-Western complex social and cultural settings