Shifting Sands

Shifting Sands
Author: James M. Dorsey
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2018-01-17
Genre: Middle East
ISBN: 9789814689762

The Middle East and North Africa are experiencing the most fundamental transition in their post-colonial history. It is a transition that is changing the borders of nation states as well as their political and social structures. Conflicting visions of what those structures should look like have ensured that transition will take years, and these deep-seated differences have ensured that the transition process is volatile, brutal and bloody. The balance of power shifts like quicksand. Shifting Sands: Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa is a compilation of essays that constitute a first stab at exploring the importance of sports in general and soccer in particular in the political, social and cultural development of the Middle East and North Africa since the beginning of the 20th century. In doing so, the book provides a new, fresh and unique perspective that contributes to understanding the turbulence sweeping the region that is fundamentally changing its geopolitics and political and social structures.

Shifting Sands: Essays On Sports And Politics In The Middle East And North Africa

Shifting Sands: Essays On Sports And Politics In The Middle East And North Africa
Author: James Michael Dorsey
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2017-11-24
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9814689785

The Middle East and North Africa are experiencing the most fundamental transition in their post-colonial history. It is a transition that is changing the borders of nation states as well as their political and social structures. Conflicting visions of what those structures should look like have ensured that transition will take years, and these deep-seated differences have ensured that the transition process is volatile, brutal and bloody. The balance of power shifts like quicksand.Shifting Sands: Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa is a compilation of essays that constitute a first stab at exploring the importance of sports in general and soccer in particular in the political, social and cultural development of the Middle East and North Africa since the beginning of the 20th century. In doing so, the book provides a new, fresh and unique perspective that contributes to understanding the turbulence sweeping the region that is fundamentally changing its geopolitics and political and social structures.

Sport, Politics and Society in the Middle East

Sport, Politics and Society in the Middle East
Author: Danyel T. Reiche
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2019
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190065214

A rigorous appraisal of the intersection of sport and politics across the region.

Football in the Middle East

Football in the Middle East
Author: Abdullah Al-Arian
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2022-08-10
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0197659276

Far and away the most popular sport in the world, football has a special place in Middle Eastern societies, and for Middle Eastern states. With Qatar hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, this region has been cast into the global footballing spotlight, raising issues of geopolitical competition, consumer culture and social justice. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book examines the complex questions raised by the phenomenon of football as a significant cultural force in the Middle East, as well as its linkages to broader political and socioeconomic processes. The establishment of football as a national sport offers significant insight into the region’s historical experiences with colonialism and struggles for independence, as well as the sport’s vital role in local and regional politics today–whether at the forefront of popular mobilisations, or as an instrument of authoritarian control. Football has also served as an arena of contestation in the formation of national identity, the struggle for gender equality, and the development of the media landscape. The twelve contributions to this volume draw on extensive engagement with the existing body of literature, and introduce original research questions that promise to open new directions for the study of football in the Middle East.

Global Sport Leaders

Global Sport Leaders
Author: Emmanuel Bayle
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2018-04-10
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 3319767534

This book analyses the careers, governance and management practices of some of the institutional sports leaders who have had the greatest impact on global sport in the 120 years since Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the Olympic Games. Through their positions in major sports organisations, their influence, the examples they set, their successes and failures, and their ability to bring about change, these notable individuals controlled and continue to control the development of Olympic and international sport. The portraits included within this collection provide a critical analysis of these leaders’ careers by examining sports management from a biographical perspective, and allowing readers to understand the challenges and obstacles faced by international sport’s top administrators. The contributors explore the interactions between these leaders’ career paths and their strategies, both within their organisations and in the overall sporting context. Global Sport Leaders will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including sports management, sociology, politics, history and international relations.

Participation Culture in the Gulf

Participation Culture in the Gulf
Author: Nele Lenze
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2018-09-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351061682

This book examines the civil–social interactions which have shaped and continue to influence the political and social development of modern Gulf societies. It analyses the influence of public and private social spaces, such as sports arenas and dawawin as well as developments in the legal and cultural spheres. Geographically, the volume covers Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Each chapter discusses a different aspect of current trends in society, offering a multidimensional perspective on recent developments. In so doing, the chapters highlight the existence of a growing participation culture as a force for dynamic social change in a global context. Bringing to attention the continuing social change in public and private spaces, which have increased public social interactions within the last ten years, this books also demonstrates the opening of dialogues between the public and the authorities. The contributors are established scholars living in the Gulf, as well as academics with long-term field research in the region, thus providing unique perspectives on current sociopolitical trends in the Gulf states. Participation Culture in the Gulf will be useful to students and scholars of Middle Eastern politics and society, as well as social movements and political participation more generally.

The Athlete as National Symbol

The Athlete as National Symbol
Author: Nicholas Villanueva, Jr.
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1476671176

 Examining the phenomenon of nationalism in the world of sport, this collection of new essays identifies moments when athletes became national symbols through their actions on and off the field. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and related global events of the 1980s and 1990s, scholars have explored how race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality shape and are shaped by nationalism and national participation. Topics include: race, golf and the struggle for social justice in South Africa; sport as a battleground within the Israel/Palestine conflict; multiculturalism and the Olympic Games; and white privilege in sport. These case studies explore the strength (and fragility) associated with national identity, and how athletes become icons for their nations.

Routledge Handbook of Middle East Politics

Routledge Handbook of Middle East Politics
Author: Larbi Sadiki
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 834
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1351692593

Drawing on various perspectives and analysis, the Handbook problematizes Middle East politics through an interdisciplinary prism, seeking a melioristic account of the field. Thematically organized, the chapters address political, social, and historical questions by showcasing both theoretical and empirical insights, all of which are represented in a style that ease readers into sophisticated induction in the Middle East. It positions the didactic at the centre of inquiry. Contributions by forty-four scholars, both veterans and newcomers, rethink knowledge frames, conceptual categories, and fieldwork praxis. Substantive themes include secularity and religion, gender, democracy, authoritarianism, and new "borderline" politics of the Middle East. Like any field of knowledge, the Middle East is constituted by texts, authors, and readers, but also by the cultural, spatial, and temporal contexts within which diverse intellectual inflections help construct (write–speak) academic meaning, knowing, and practice. By denaturalizing notions of singularity of authorship or scholarship, the Handbook plants a dialogic interplay animated by multi-vocality, multi-modality, and multi-disciplinarity. Targeting graduate students and young scholars of political and social sciences, the Handbook is significant for understanding how the Middle East is written and re-written, read and re-read (epistemology, methodology), and for how it comes to exist (ontology).

China and the Middle East

China and the Middle East
Author: James M. Dorsey
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2018-07-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 331964355X

This book explores China’s significant economic and security interests in the Middle East and South Asia. To protect its economic and security interests, China is increasingly forced to compromise its long-held foreign policy and defence principles, which include insistence on non-interference in the domestic affairs of others, refusal to envision a foreign military presence, and focus on the development of mutually beneficial economic and commercial relations. The volume shows that China’s need to redefine requirements for the safeguarding of its national interests positioned the country as a regional player in competitive cooperation with the United States and the dominant external actor in the region. The project would be ideal for scholarly audiences interested in Regional Politics, China, South Asia, the Middle East, and economic and security studies.

Sport and Foreign Policy in a Globalizing World

Sport and Foreign Policy in a Globalizing World
Author: Steven J. Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317969170

Globalization is effecting a close convergence of sport and foreign policy. In order to respond to novel social, political, cultural and economic pressures, states are increasingly turning to sport as a foreign policy instrument; and they cannot ignore the corresponding influence that global sport has on their core interests. This book is devoted to exploring this relationship in detail. Although any examination of sport and foreign policy inevitably focuses on issues related to both politics and international relations, the primary intention here is to consider the dimensions associated with foreign policy. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.