This thesis is an attempt to introduce the governor of to-day to the work of their earliest predecessors, in the belief that it will prove to be, if not always an example, at least of considerable relevance to the problems of modern administration. The purpose of the thesis is to construct a history of the governorship (al-wilaya) and the governors (al-wulat).

‘Bless you, may you bury me’ is a common refrain among older people in the Syrian capital Damascus, directed especially towards children and young adults when they help with daily tasks or provide joy by their play or achievements. The sentiment expresses the hope that the old may die before the young and be mourned by them. It makes explicit the interlocking of life-cycles, through aging and mortality, and presumes an understanding of ideal kinship temporality where successive generations succeed one another in their proper order. It also hints that there is no certainty in this process. Sustaining these ideals is contingent on persistent material and symbolic work, a tempering of hope with memory and experience. These types of daily reckoning of personal and kinship time through mortality and life courses are rarely explored in the literature on Middle Eastern kinship. But how do these formations of time and generation sustain and transform? Anthropological theorising on the ‘Arab Family’ models it as cyclically reproducing roles, while socio-historical discussions of regional ‘transformations’ in politics and society understand them as lineal and successive. Both contain implicit speculations about the perceptions of time and the role of generations. Neither model, however, fully addresses the instrumentality of the types of temporality and generation they presume. What is it about the unfolding of familial and social generations and the temporality they imbue that is so integral to the models of kinship and society used to understand the region? And what is happening when historical change and familial generations interact? Based on 18 months of fieldwork, this thesis explores the interrelationships of Damascene life courses and their reciprocity with the historical context in which processes of birth, maturation, procreation and death take place. It describes subjective dispositions manifested at specific points in the life course and the manner in which individuals relate to past, present and potential selves, through memory, narrative and historicity, and through the unfolding sensual experience of time, place and objects. These inter-generational relationships illustrate not a recycling, but rather an historical and historicising process through transformative exchange and reciprocity. By tracing the shifts in the narratives of kinship in and through time, I consider Damascene history and time as emergent properties of inter- and intragenerational dynamics within a supple kinship system. I assert that however much kinship activities such as eating together, transmitting property, marrying, bringing up children and giving them names may be concerned with maintaining order and propriety, they are also contentious creative forces whose tensions and joys are paramount to Syrian social transformation.

The study of terrorism has been both broad in scope and varied in approach. Little work has been done, however, on the territorial aspects of terrorist groups. Most terrorist groups are revolutionary to one degree or another, seeking the control of a piece of territory; but for the supportive population of a terrorist group, how important is the issue of territory? Are the intangible qualities of territory more salient to a given population than other factors? Are territorially based terrorist groups more durable than their ideologically or religiously motivated cohorts? This paper aims to propose the validity of the territorial argument for the study of political terrorism.

Student Number : 0218517V - MSc dissertation - School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies - Faculty of Science / Rapid population growth, combined with an expanding economy and tourist industry has lead to a water resource crisis in the United Arab Emirates. The water crisis includes serious difficulties in meeting basic needs, particularly in the agricultural sector, which is a dominating water consumer in the country. All economic sectors are finding it increasingly difficult meeting their water needs, which is primarily manifested by the natural scarcity of water recourses, depletion of groundwater, low efficiency of water use and low coverage of water and sanitation services. This dissertation presents a vision for a comprehensive Earth Information System that goes beyond the limited collection of, say, meteorological data, but seeks to create a national database of past, present and future data of the many related earth system components of both natural and human origin, all of which play a role in defining the hydrologic cycle, and ultimately, the state of water resources. This system is being motivated by the fact that most of the water resource assessments in the UAE cannot take advantage of such datasets because the data are either not collected, too fragmented, or are not part of a national archive that is accessible to the research community and the general public. This system will be developed at the highest level of the national government, through the Office of His Highness the President and the office of the Department of Water Resource Studies which will seek to provide improved water resource assessment using modern database and analytical methods, that will support the development of better studies and new, modern institutional networks and authorities.

Thesis advisor: Peter Krause / What explains the lack of democracy in the Arab Middle East, when so many other, less wealthy regions of the world have democratized over the past five decades? This thesis engages with each of the major explanations for the "Arab democracy deficit"--Islam, the "oil curse," authoritarian statecraft, and external intervention--but argues that there is a more fundamental culprit for the region's woes: the weakness of state-based nationalism. At a time when nationalism is increasingly seen as synonymous with exclusion and discrimination, such a finding may strike many observers as counterintuitive. However, this thesis theoretically and empirically demonstrates how healthy, state-based nationalism can provide the societal cohesion needed to establish liberal governance. It then offers in-depth analyses of the development of national identity and democracy in eleven separate Arab countries, arguing that the rise of regional Arab nationalism in the 1950s severely undermined the development of state-based nationalism (wataniyya), and laid the groundwork for decades of instability, civil strife, and oppression. Fortunately, the examples of Tunisia and Lebanon--and to some extent Jordan and Morocco--demonstrate that wataniyya can lead to much more democratic outcomes when properly nurtured. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Scholar of the College. / Discipline: Political Science.

Thesis advisor: Franck Salameh / Anti-Semitism has become a virulent, pervasive phenomenon in the Modern Middle East today. In the past, anti-Semitism was mostly absent from mainstream Middle Eastern society. In the past two centuries, however, social and political upheaval, the encroachment of Western influence in the region, and the effects of Zionist organizations and the state of Israel have made the region a dangerous place for Jews. Anti-Semitism is perpetuated today by political and religious leaders as well as the media and is fueled by the anger and frustration of the people of the Middle East. This study examines the roots and causes of anti-Semitism in Middle Eastern history, in the religions and foreign powers that have impacted the region, and in the events of the twentieth century. It details the nature of anti-Semitism today and examines this phenomenon specifically in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan in a comparative case study. This investigation closes by examining the possible steps towards ending Jew hatred in the region. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: Kathleen Bailey / This paper seeks to address the inclusion of Kuwaiti women as political actors. Kuwait held elections on May 16, 2009, and Moussoma al-Mubarak, Rola Dashti, Aseel al-Awadhi, and Salwa al-Jassar became the first women elected to the National Assembly. This victory occurred on the fourth anniversary of female enfranchisement in Kuwait. In an attempt to account for variations among the number of women in parliament in Kuwait by drawing on research from the field of descriptive representation, I found that the year of female suffrage, the religion of Islam, Kuwait’s cultural implications of gender-equality, the peculiarities of Kuwait’s electoral system, and timing and framing to be particularly important in the case of Kuwait. A consideration of substantive representation is also relevant to Kuwait, as early signs of involvement of the women members of Parliament indicate that women’s interests are on the political agenda in Kuwait. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: International Studies Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.

Nearly five years have passed since the political upheaval that swept through many Middle East and North African (MENA) countries began. Syria was caught in the grip of this revolutionary moment, one that drove the country to a civil war with no apparent way out. Analysts advanced a number of explanations for this event, which included the demographic profile of the younger generations and the economic difficulties they experienced, corruption of the government, the use of techniques from successful campaigns and the coordination of dissent through traditional/offline and new/online forms of contention. The employment of the new media by anti and pro-government groups has reached an unthinkable scale, to the point that the media have become instruments not limited to the purpose of informing, planning and coordinating the protest, but “performing” in the conflict, exacerbating the fight, instilling fear in the enemy and intimidating the adversary, while proselytising. By going beyond the dichotomy that frames the media as a deus ex machina of the uprising or, conversely, as a means of its expression, this thesis demonstrates how the new media did not simply play a crucial role at the time of the uprising and subsequent civil war, but an even more decisive role in the years that predated the uprising. The underlining argument of this research is that during the decade leading up to the uprising in Syria a (silent) form of mobilisation got underway as an effect of contextual factors (economic, institutional and social conditions), conditioned by people’s access to the new media. The new media became the mobilising structures of Syria’s pre-uprising social movement, the tools that changed people’s access to information and encouraged civic engagement in a period of structural friction and social ferment. The media are here contemplated as a microcosm, which affects and is affected by other different, hitherto unrelated (f)actors. Ultimately, in light of the growing popular mobilisations that are taking place around the globe and the leading role that the new media technologies are playing within these, the thesis offers perspectives of analysis on the role that the new media technologies are offering citizens to contest political authority as well as opposing social and economic inequalities worldwide.

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