Jewish Israeli Women Soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are marked as the feminine "other" and work to reify the institution's power in Israeli nation-making. As subjects of the militarized Israeli state, women operate as legitimizers of Israel's masculinist authority. They soften the aggressive actions of the IDF through their demarcation in the feminine category, but they are also capable of furthering Israel's arguments regarding its egalitarian modernity through narratives of female "empowerment." As the subjugated "other" within ideas of Jewish Israeli national belonging, Jewish Israeli women soldiers operate for the means of the state's re/production of the nation and therefore of the state's power.

In this survey, women's roles (jobs) and their participation in the workforce in the Muslim Middle-Eastern countries will be discussed generally; moreover, some of the Middle-Eastern countries, such as Egypt and Iran, will be studied a little more specifically as a sample. The status of women, their education, skills, and profession, will be explained historically from the date of the Islamic period until today. The problems and factors that prohibited women from having outside jobs, social life, and equal rights in past and present times (from 610 A.D. to 1982) will be analyzed. On the other hand, the attempt is to make a general picture of women's conditions in the society to which they belong from the time of Muslim's Prophet until today.

This thesis was designed to describe family change in Oman as it undergoes urbanization and modernization. A survey questionnaire to measure these changes was developed. Some questions were developed in two forms for a comparison of family change across two generations. Respondents were asked to answer the questions as they applied to their current family situation. They were then asked to consider, according to their best recollections, what the situation was in their parents' generation.

The sweeping changes in the Middle East, so-called the “Arab Spring”, necessitate revisiting constitutionalism in the region. This task entails a fresh look at the idea of rule of law and constitutionalism amongst the people of the Middle East. One of the widely misconceived and yet understudied constitutional movements in the Middle East belongs to Iran. A new perspective on the trajectory of constitutionalism in Iran would better equip us to comprehend rule of law in the Middle East. From the 1905 Constitutional movement to the 1979 Revolution, Iran has undergone major changes. Each transformation created a rupture with the preceding order fostering a fresh look at rule of law in Iran. The current studies have mainly concentrated on the political and social aspects of these groundbreaking events. The legal aspect of each of event has remained largely unnoticed and under-researched. It is important to fill the gap by focusing on the role of constitutions, despite its shortcomings, and international commitments of states using Iran as an example. The objective is to bring to the fore the role constitutionalism plays in incentivizing states to enter into international commitments and to comply with their international commitments. More than before, the mutual relationship between constitutionalism and international relations is intertwined because of two main developments: a. for better or worse, international relations have become increasingly judicialized, meaning all aspects of inter-state interactions are now subject to some normative regimes; b. more than ever, states feel the need to structure their domestic and inter-state relationship by resorting to a normative structure which is best materialized in constitutions. Using Iran as an example, this dissertation aims to fulfill the following: First, it is critical to understand whether a state is a constitutional state and whether its domestic power relations are subject to any checks and balances (broadly speaking). By reviewing Iran’s recent history through this lens, the dissertation shows that Iranian’s legal culture presents (a version of) constitutionalism. Second, it is critical to understand whether constitutionalism leads to any differences in the international behavior of such a state. Based on its constitutionalism, Iran’s international behavior has been premised on legalistic and juridical grounds.

The following thesis examines the identity-based implications of the disengagement from the West Bank, the Madrid Conference, the Oslo Accords, and the Peace Treaty with Israel on Palestinian identity in Jordan. The paper analyzes various sub-groups of Palestinian-Jordanians and their relationships with Jordanian and Palestinian identities; it then discusses the way in which Jordan’s narrative has been projected onto and internalized differently by its Transjordanian and Palestinian-Jordanian citizens. As the Jordanian government’s position shifted from “Jordan is Palestine” to “Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine,” this thesis exposes the tension inherent in hybridized Palestinian-Jordanian identities that developed in the absence of the possibility of return to Palestine over subsequent generations.

This senior thesis is a study of Putnam’s two-level game theory and how it applies to the Israeli-Arab and later the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In particular, I analyze how Putnam’s theory explains the successes and failures of past negotiations and what this means about the future of potential negotiations. I conclude that win-sets between the Israeli and Palestinian governments are too far apart for the parties to reach a successful peace accord and that until their citizens are willing to make more significant concessions there will not be lasting peace.

State violence in Egypt is an embedded part of daily life and popular culture, and well documented in social and news media. The uprisings of January 11, which took place in Egypt were organized in large part against violence and torture regularly delivered by police forces. In this dissertation I examine the implications of chronic state violence on everyday life for low-income Egyptians. In doing so, this dissertation provides analysis of how violence shapes forms of intimacy within social life, how it shapes urban landscapes and the politics therein and how it informs individual piety and banal practices of security. This work contributes to studies within feminist geopolitics, memory and emotion within geography by understanding the lives of Cairenes through their experience of the landscape and places they inhabit, maneuver through, and create with the memory and threat of state violence. The project focuses on four selected sites in Greater Cairo: Kholousy Street in Shoubra, Musky Market in Old Cairo, Cairo University in Giza, and Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. These sites have been chosen because they represent different nodes of daily life (shopping, leisure, education, and political participation) for low-income Cairenes. Research methods include participant observation at the four sites, eleven focus groups and thirty-one interviews with low-income Cairo residents in two age cohorts: one group of participants between the ages of 18 and 26, and a second cohort between the ages of 49 and 57. For each of these questions, this project provides a gender sensitive comparison of the two age cohorts in order to gain insight into the role of youth and memory and gender in Cairenes’ interpretations and representations of the Mubarak era and the recent revolution.

This study examined the drivers' perception of the SAHER (means "watchful" in Arabic) system in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The purpose of this study was to analyze the perception of the SAHER system on impacting the overall traffic conditions in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia including its effectiveness and flaws. A survey was conducted and distributed to 70 drivers and residents of Jeddah. Drivers were divided into two groups based on their age. Five hypotheses were tested in this study. Hypotheses one through four were tested using the averages of related questions. Hypothesis five was tested statistically using a z-test for differences between the means. The overall conclusion of drivers' perception of SAHER on increasing road safety and reducing loss of life was generally positive. The conclusion for hypothesis 1, 2, and 3 was positive. The conclusion for hypothesis four was inconclusive. The conclusion for hypothesis five was retained to the null hypothesis with a 95% confidence level. A key recommendation from the study is that to measure the overall effectiveness of the system it will be prudent to observe how the system is perceived in other major cities of Saudi Arabia apart from Jeddah.

This study will examine if Akhuwat provides a sustainable Islamic interest-free Microfinance model for potential poverty alleviation. This question is particularly complicated for an organization that relies so heavily on subsidies. Theoretical debates of sustainability and the recognition of donations, cross-market comparisons, and data from audit reports will validate Akhuwat’s potential for long term sustainability. Analysis also highlights the discrepancies that plague this opaque industry.

This thesis focuses specifically on student media consumption around the Syrian Refugee Crisis at the Claremont Colleges through interviews and participant observation in order to understand the role of media photos in knowledge production around the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Looking at the role of photos in a cross-cultural understanding of the Refugee Crisis, this thesis analyzes the way individuals read and interpret these photos. I argue that photos have a vital role in knowledge production of the Syrian Refugee Crisis however their presentation and consumption occurs in a complex world without guidelines of what photos impact are and how they should be used. Finally, I aim to understand the potential for more ideal representation of the Syrian Refugee Crisis.