Anthropology in AID: Case Study of the Nepal Mission

1980 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-62
Author(s):  
Laurie Mailloux
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Ford Foundation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian Culture ◽  
Major Field ◽  
Arabic Speaking

Arriving at the Kathmandu airport in May of 1979 for my first overseas assignment at an AID Mission, I repeated a question that I had been asking myself since I learned of my Nepal assignment. How is an anthropologist who is trained as an Arabist, who has done major field work in the Middle East and Arabic speaking communities in the United States, going to function effectively in Nepal? Prior to my arrival, I had made fleeting rationalizations that my consultancy for the Ford Foundation in India in 1976 had given me a preliminary introduction to "Asian culture." But most of all I clung to the belief that anthropology, as the study of humankind, transcends the interests of any particular village, nation or culture, and that by virtue of its comparative/universalist perspective, teaches us how to evaluate facts about human nature in all societies.

3. The Cold War in the Middle East

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Sluglett
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines how the Cold War affected the states of the Middle East. More specifically, it considers the evidence of which factors drove regional developments and how it has been contested by both international relations and regional scholars. After providing an overview of the immediate origins of the Cold War, the chapter discusses the role played by oil during the Cold War. It then analyses early manifestations of the rivalry between the Soviets and the United States in Greece, Turkey, and Iran at the beginning of the Cold War, and uses Iraq as a case study of the changing nature of the relations between a Middle Eastern state and both superpowers from the 1940s until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Finally, it evaluates the overall impact of the Cold War on the Middle East as a whole.

THE CASE OF WILLIAM YALE: CAIRO’S SYRIANS AND THE ARAB ORIGINS OF AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN THE POST-OTTOMAN MIDDLE EAST, 1917–19

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 681-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Reibman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
National Sentiment ◽  
Arab Politics ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
Political Scene

AbstractThis article explores the American role in the Syrian political scene in Cairo toward the end of World War I and in its immediate aftermath. It challenges the absence of the United States and of American actors as primary players in much of the historical writing on the Middle East in this period. It illuminates a neglected episode of regional American diplomacy, argues that the United States was not relegated to the periphery in local debates surrounding the dismemberment of Ottoman Syria, and emphasizes the broader uncertainties that characterized the competition for Mandate territories in the Middle East prior to 1920. In doing so, it takes a close look at the long-forgotten reports of William Yale, the U.S. State Department's “Special Agent” in Cairo in late 1917, and situates them within evolving trends in Syrian-Arab politics. Yale, who surfaced in Egypt after serving with Standard Oil in Palestine, was the key Arabic-speaking American “on the spot” and proved to be an astute if imperfect observer of the diversity of Syrian national sentiment. A survey of his reports allows for a new perspective on Cairo's Syrians and their pragmatic and ideological turn toward the United States as World War I unfolded. Alienated from Britain and France, they looked increasingly to the United States, and the appeal of a postwar American trusteeship over Syria gained currency among émigré intellectuals and aspiring powerbrokers.

American Policy in the Middle East

1975 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Ferrell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Position ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Arabic Speaking

It is not difficult to discern the historic factors which have brought the Middle East into its present position of “crisis area” in the foreign relations of the United States. The reasons why we have gotten from there to here, from the somnolent state of Middle Eastern affairs in, say, the year 1914 and their still sleepy condition in 1939 to the split-second enmities and antagonisms of the mid-1970's have been pointed up by events of recent history. First of all there was the rise of nationalism. Evident in Egypt in the late nineteenth century, it spread slowly to the other Arabic-speaking peoples of the region. Nationalism in the Middle East has become extremely important during the last twenty-five years.

Arab Intellectuals and the Bush Administration's Campaign for Democracy: The Case of the Greater Middle East Initiative

2007 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami E. Baroudi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle East ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Negative Image ◽  
Democratic Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Formative Experiences

This article considers how Arab intellectuals represent the United States and American foreign policy in their editorial contributions to Arabic newspapers. As a case study, it examines Arab intellectuals' reactions to the George W. Bush Administration's campaign to effect democratic change in the Middle East, as articulated in the Administration's 2004 Greater Middle East Initiative (hereafter GMEI or Initiative). I argue that the predominantly hostile reactions to the GMEI stemmed mainly from a closed and negative image of the United States permeating Arab intellectual circles. This negative image is the product of the history of American policy towards the region and, equally important, of the beliefs, values, and formative experiences of Arab intellectuals. The article concludes by addressing ways to ameliorate this image.

International interventions in non-democratic states between democratic change and achieving interests (Iraq as a case study after 2003)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Omran Ali
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The Us ◽  
Democratic Change ◽  
The Cold War

This research seeks to critically analyze the international efforts, particularly the United States of America, in transforming authoritarian and non-democratic states into democratic ones, and clarify to what extent the US seeks to achieve real democratic change in non-democratic countries, especially Iraq, and whether their main goal is to achieve stability and their vital interests or democratic change and reform. It argues that although spreading democracy and human rights in the Middle East has become, especially after the end of the Cold War, one of the main goals of the US, but, in reality, the US is not ready to sacrifice its vital interests in the region at the expense of spreading democratic values, as well as reducing its strong security and economic relations with its non-democratic allies, or even applying the required pressure on them. Consequently, this increases doubts about the credibility and seriousness of the US in achieving its goal of spreading democracy in the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular.

Gendered differences in emigration and mobility perspectives among European researchers working abroad

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scheibelhofer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Highly Skilled

This paper focuses on gendered mobilities of highly skilled researchers working abroad. It is based on an empirical qualitative study that explored the mobility aspirations of Austrian scientists who were working in the United States at the time they were interviewed. Supported by a case study, the paper demonstrates how a qualitative research strategy including graphic drawings sketched by the interviewed persons can help us gain a better understanding of the gendered importance of social relations for the future mobility aspirations of scientists working abroad.

‘A Routh O’ Auld Nick-Nackets’ – the antiquarian collection of John Rae

2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Case ◽  
National Museums ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.

The United States and the Middle East

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-14
Author(s):  
James Abourezk ◽  
Paul Findley ◽  
Edmund Ghareeb
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The United States
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