Affluence and Poverty in the Middle East is an introduction to the political economy of the Middle East, focusing on its most salient features - persistent poverty and extreme inequality. El-Ghonemy analyses the factors influencing the region, including its unique historical, religious and cultural mix, as well as its economic foundations and forms of corruption. For each factor he employs case-studies drawn from throughout the region, from Turkey to Sudan and Morocco to Iran. In the final section El-Ghomeny discusses possible solutions to the challenges facing the region, including possible uses of a peace dividend, and the role of democracy.

SCOTT (copy 1) From the John Holmes Library collection.

Land was the major economic resource in the pre-modern Middle East. Questions of ownership, of access, of management and of control occupied a central role in administration, in law, and in rural practice over many centuries. Nevertheless, the subject of land and property relations is still not well understood.

Irregular or illegal housing constitutes the ordinary condition of popular urban housing in the Middle East. Considering the conditions of daily practices related to land and tenure mobilization and of housing, neighborhood shaping, transactions, and conflict resolution, this book offers a new reading of government action in the cities of Amman, Beirut, Damascus, Istanbul, and Cairo, focussing on the participation of ordinary citizens and their interactions with state apparatus specifically located within the urban space. The book adopts a praxeological approach to law that describes how inhabitants define and exercise their legality in practice and daily routines. The ambition of the volume is to restore the continuum in the consolidation, building after building, of the popular neighborhoods of the cities under study, while demonstrating the closely-knit social relationships and other forms of community bonding.

This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.