Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons^™

Perspective: Arabia Infelix: The War Devouring Yemen, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

For many centuries, European cartographers labeled the southwest corner of the otherwise mostly desert Arabian Peninsula as Arabia Felix, or “Happy Arabia.” It was a place where towering mountains trapped clouds blown in from the Indian Ocean so that twice-annual monsoon rains blessed terraced slopes and lowland wadis with plentiful crops. Sadly, since fighting engulfed the country in late March 2015, Yemen has never been less felix.

Do Muslim Village Girls Need Saving? Critical Reflections On Gender And Childhood Suffering In International Aid, Rania Kassab Sweis

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Without contesting the idea that many Muslim girls around the world do constitute victims in very real ways. In this chapter, I want to raise a different set of questions. What does it mean when powerful actors in western-based international NGOs recognize the Muslim village girl as the ultimate savable victim? What gendered and racialized logics are at play in this category's strategic deployment, and what are their tangible effects for both NGOs and village girls who receive aid?

Do Muslim Village Girl’S Need Saving?: Critical Reflections On Gender And The Suffering Child In International Aid, Rania Kassab Sweis

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

In her chapter, "Do Muslim Village Girl’s Need Saving?: Critical Reflections on Gender and the Suffering Child in International Aid," Dr. Rania Sweis poses the following questions: What does it mean when powerful actors in western based international NGOs recognize the Muslim village girl as the ultimate savable victim'? What gendered and racialized logics arc at play in this category's strategic deployment, and what arc their tangible effects for both NGOs and village girls who receive aid'? She argues that large-scale international aid projects that aim to speak for, uplift and save Muslim village girls in Egypt and other countries …

Yemen, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

In February 2011, Tawakkol Karman stood on a stage outside Sanaa University. A microphone in one hand and the other clenched defiantly above her head, reading from a list of demands, she led tens of thousands of cheering, flag-waving demonstrators in calls for peaceful political change. She was to become not so much the leader as the figurehead of Yemen's uprising. On other days and in other cities, other citizens led the chants: men and women and sometimes, for effect, little children. These mass public performances enacted a veritable civic revolution in a poverty-stricken country where previous activist surges never …

What Does It Mean, "Promoting Democratization"?, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

Political speeches and even policy analysis from Washington, Ottawa, and the capitals of Europe in the past two decades about promoting democratization tend towards generalities and platitudes. This research asks what Western and international agencies actually do, on the ground in the Middle East, by way of fomenting democracy. Taking my inspiration from the sociologist Albert Hirschman who decades ago observed that projects are “privileged particles”[i] of socio-economic development assistance, I’ve collected well over twelve hundred examples.[ii] This summary table illustrates the aggregate finding that most projects cluster around electoral representation, legal or judicial development, and support for …

Euro-Med: European Ambitions In The Mediterranean, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

The European Union is carving out a sphere of potentially vast influence in the Euro-Mediterranean basin, while also cultivating special relationship further south in the Arabian Peninsula. European ambitions do not directly challenge US security policy in the Middle East. Rather, they parallel US interests in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America: for a large regional free trade zone open to imports and foreign investment.

Mission: Democracy, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

Incumbent national leaders invite foreign election monitors only when it is in their interest to do so. Rarely is significant financial assistance "conditional" on holding elections, although it does improve a regime's image abroad to do so. For governments being observed, the trick is to orchestrate the process enough to win, but not enough to arouse observers' suspicions.

Bidayat Al-Mujtama' Al-Madani Fi Al-Yaman, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Elections And Mass Politics In Yemen, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

Yemen's experiment in popular parliamentary elections has shaken things up in the Arabian Peninsula, the last place on earth that the United States wants to see democracy flourish. But internal political differences, profound economic crisis and Saudi hostility puts this achievement at risk.

The Economic Dimension Of Yemeni Unity, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

In North and South Yemen, disparities in patterns of private and public ownership were far more subtle than the designations "capitalist" and "socialist" suggest. In contrast with Germany, their marriage was more a merger than a takeover.

A Tale Of Two Families: Change In North Yemen 1977-1989, Sheila Carapico, Cynthia Myntti

Political Science Faculty Publications

Virtually every aspect of life in North Yemen has changed dramatically since 1977, including those aspects of Yemeni society which represent continuity with the past: tribalism, rural life, and use of qat.¹ The driving force for change has been economic. By 1975, Yemen was caught up in the dramatic developments that affected all Arab countries. Rising international oil prices generated enormous surpluses in the producing countries, enabling them to initiate ambitious development plans and forcing them to import workers.

The Yemen Arab Republic (YAR) was in a good position to provide those workers. In the late 1970s, one …

Autonomy And Secondhand Oil Dependency Of The Yemen Arab Republic, Sheila Carapico

Political Science Faculty Publications

Recent scholarship on state autonomy in the Third World has been influenced by the dependency thesis that capital accumulation at the core of the world economy is associated with economic underdevelopment and political dependency at the periphery. Dependency reasoning is rooted in a devastating empirical critique of the once prevalent modernization paradigm, in which national state policy was the central independent variable. According to dependency theory, peripheral nations' subordinate structural positions in the international political economy results in sacrifice of authoritative policy making to foreign investors, bankers, experts, governments, and institutions or their local counterparts. Typically specializing in primary commodity …