The global trend of economic liberalization is yielding unexpected results. Instead of increasing cross-national uniformity and the development of formal civil and political organizations, ...international interdependence has been accompanied by the rise of a plethora of ascriptive-based groups. Not only has social science made little headway in explaining this general phenomenon, but the mapping of micro-mechanisms through which ascriptive allegiances are generated is lacking. This dissertation makes the following three arguments, based on over 200 interviews, surveys, and ethnographic data from Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. First, concrete and identifiable causal links exist between economic liberalization and the rise of identity-based politics, even where these are mediated by the unintended institutional consequences of liberalization. Second, the specific form taken by identity-based movements is related to the production profile, which is often subjected to new challenges as a result of economic liberalization. Third, contemporary identity-based movements are not throwbacks to prior cultural constructs, but are actively created economic, political, and ideational templates for coping with the new and radically transformed economic reality. Whereas religious-based movements have often been studied, the outcome I seek to explain in Jordan is the rapid and dramatic rise of formalized kinship institutions in the wake of economic liberalization. Between 1989 and 1999, over 400 family associations were established in a population of less than six million. Unlike “traditional” Arab family structures with which they are often confused, these institutions are organizationally, spatially, and compositionally distinct from previously existing kin groups. Using in-depth ethnographic material, interviews, and administrative files, I argue that identity politics took this form in Jordan for several reasons. The demise of state welfare services, combined with economic hardships caused by liberalization and the regional recession, produced a need and opportunity for new types of economic services and labor market connections. Employment contacts, integral to organizational success in this context, can best be provided by cross-class kinship institutions due to the nature of Jordan's service-based economy. Further, the form of kinship used in these associations varies with the labor market and welfare opportunities of the family.
Advocating the increase of non-governmental organisations in order to solve social and developmental problems is controversial in some fields: sociology and political science, among others, debate ...the role of these organisations as status quo and pacification institutions, and highlight their inadequacies and arbitrariness. Business can be enticed to link with grassroots social security providers in cases where governments impose such involvement and where NGOs serve as 'micro-agents' or interlocutors for commercial companies, supplying the time-consuming labour needed to connect with the grassroots in poor and rural communities. Some of the general themes that emerge from the case studies are the centrality of life insurance to the ability of poor families to manage risk and the usefulness but difficulty of including health insurance in the social security portfolio.
...kin-based mutual aid organizations tend to eschew explicitly political objectives in favor of serving the immediate social and economic needs of group members. Financed by membership dues and ...contributions of labor and goods, they provide assistance to group members in the form of interest-free loans, emergency medical aid, educational scholarships, and maintenance of shared collective goods such as preschools, libraries, or ambulances. In Jordan before the introduction of neoliberal economic reforms, the state--through a combination of welfare provision, consumer subsidies, and public sector employment--offered security to many Jordanians, particularly the East Bankers who have served as a core base of support for the regime.
ABC's Episode of Anti-Semitism Baylouny, Anne Marie
The Washington report on Middle East affairs,
05/1994, Volume:
XII, Issue:
7
Magazine Article
Responding to ADC's complaint, and a deluge of mail from ADC members, ABC now has promised to introduce a positive Arab-American police officer, "Abboud," as part of "Loving's" script. In a March ...letter to ADC, Ms. Hikawa said that although officer Abboud "will have a small part at first, if response is strong, his role could grow." After receiving complaints that it had created an "evil Arab male stereotype," ABC claimed that it had initially introduced him as a European. According to ABC's Vice President of Broadcast Standards, Chris Hikawa, the script indicated that "the character is from an unnamed European country but that he now calls Kuwait his home. It was further established that he was an `old-world' European who lived by a turn-of-the-century code of behavior as far as women were concerned. `Loving' made these changes to Dante Partou's biography out of a sensitivity to avoid an evil Arab male character."
