Why do states tolerate large numbers of refugees? This dissertation offers an answer to this puzzle by examining changes in policy responses by the international community toward Iraqis displaced after the U.S. invasion of 2003. From 2003-2006, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt remained quiet about the growing humanitarian needs of displaced Iraqis. From 2007-2010, these countries abruptly shifted policy to claim that they were hosting millions of Iraqis, and to allow Iraqis greater access to public goods and humanitarian assistance. I argue that this policy shift occurred because of new opportunities to extract strategic rents from the international community in the form of foreign aid and development assistance tied to the presence of refugees. I also explain how and why the UN Refugee Agency facilitated host country behavior during these two time periods, even in contradiction with its mandate under international law. I ground my argument in more than 100 interviews with UN Agency officials, NGO workers, government officials, and Iraqi refugees conducted in Jordan, Syria, and Egypt and at the UN Refugee Agency Headquarters in Geneva between 2007 and 2010. I also utilize research in the archives of relevant newspapers, national departments of statistics, and the UN Refugee Agency Headquarters. Previous political science literature largely conceives of refugees as a burden on state infrastructure, or as a potential security risk. This dissertation challenges this literature by suggesting that, under some conditions, states may derive political and economic benefits from the presence of refugees, explaining why they tolerate displaced populations. This dissertation also contributes to the understanding of how authoritarian regimes adapt to new opportunities for strategic rents. This dissertation also explores how an international organization can operate as both a principal and an agent, constrained by the preferences of its member or donor countries, yet autonomously advancing its own interests while shaping the political environment in which it operates. I show how the malleability of international refugee law has helped actors to manipulate humanitarian assistance for their own gain. Finally, this dissertation explores how the destabilization of Iraq affected international relations within a region that has been forever changed. / Government

This dissertation uses the experiences of Arab Islamist fighters in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) to rethink prevailing notions of world order. These actors are frequently glossed as “foreign fighters”: rootless, unaccountable extremists attempting to impose rigid forms of Islam on local “moderate” Muslim populations, be it in BiH, Afghanistan, Chechnya, or other sites of conflict with non-Muslim powers. By illuminating some of the many diasporic and imperial circuits linking BiH with other parts of the world, this dissertation provides a richer historical and sociological context in which transnational activist movements no longer seem so aberrational. This study argues that the mobilization to join the “jihad” alongside Bosnian Muslims can be usefully understood as a universalist project: an attempt to incarnate a worldwide Muslim community (umma) theoretically open to all of humanity, in which activists struggle through the experience of racial, cultural, and doctrinal difference vis-à-vis Bosnian and other Muslims. This approach opens up two broad avenues of inquiry. First, it allows an analysis of how Muslims of different backgrounds interacted in contexts of fighting, intermarriage, and doctrinal disputation. Second, it helps analytically situate the jihad in relation to other forms of armed intervention also acting in the name of humanity, most importantly UN peacekeeping and the U.S.-led “Global War on Terror.” This study is based on approximately 12 months of fieldwork in BiH between 2006 and 2012, mostly in Sarajevo, Zenica, Tuzla, and Bugojno. Open-ended life-history interviews were conducted in Arabic and English with Arab residents of BiH and their Bosnian comrades, kin, and critics. Additional interviews took place in Yemen, France, and Egypt. The study also draws extensively on archival materials culled from various sources, including Bosnian army and intelligence documents gathered by the UN war crimes tribunal, U.S. State Department cables disclosed by Wikileaks, and extensive printed and online materials by participants in and supporters of the jihad written in Arabic, the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian, and Urdu.

In 1703, the chief scribe (reisü'l-küttab) Rami Mehmed Efendi (d. 1708) was appointed as the grand vizier in the Ottoman Empire. In scholarship, Rami Mehmed epitomizes the transition in the political cadres from the people of the sword/seyfiye to the people of the pen/kalemiye as the first chief scribe to be appointed as the grand vizier. While this transition has long been accepted as a crucial aspect of eighteenth-century Ottoman history, the cultural and intellectual formation of "the people of the pen" as a distinct community before this period has not been adequately examined.

The following study traces the production and history of the talismanic scroll as a medium through a Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk historical periods. My dissertation understands the protocol of manufacturing and utilizing talismanic scrolls. The dissertation is a study of the Qur'an, prayers and illustrations of these talismanic works. I begin by investigating a theory of the occult the medieval primary sources of the Neo-platonic tenth century Ikhwān al-Safa and al-Bunī (d.1225). I establish that talismans are generally categorized as science (`ilm). Next, a dynastic spotlight of talismanic scrolls creates a chronological framework for the dissertation. The Fatimid talismanic scrolls and the Ayyubid pilgrimage scrolls are both block-printed and are placed within the larger conceptual framework of pilgrimage and devotion. The two unpublished Mamluk scrolls from Dar Al-Athar Al-Islamiyyah are long beautiful handwritten scrolls that provide a perspective on how the occult is part of the daily life of the practitioner in the medieval Islamic culture. Through an in depth analysis of the written word and images, I establish that textually and visually there is a template for the creation of these sophisticated scrolls. Lastly, I discuss the efficacy of these scrolls, I use theories of linguistic anthropology and return to the Islamic primary sources to establish that there is a language of the occult and there are people that practiced the occult. The word of God and the Qur'ān empower the scrolls I studied. As for the people who practiced the occult, I turn to the tenth century Ibn al-Nadim and Ibn al-Khaldun (d.1406), the people of the occult are understood. Yet, keeping in mind, that there is always a tension with the theologians that condoned practices of Islamic magic. / History of Art and Architecture

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.

<p> The human rights industry today generates and organizes knowledge about the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iranians. The cultural archive it produces has been used to advance the global North's geopolitical interests and the accumulation of capital and power that leads to human rights abuses in the first place. Use of the human rights framework as a political strategy among Iranian&ndash;Americans and other allies acting from across geographic, political, economic, religious and other boundaries is therefore risky. The dangers it introduces should be examined alongside its tactical uses.</p><p> This dissertation presents a close analysis of certain observables that make visible "human rights" discourse or activity related to the Islamic Republic of Iran today. It presents an examination of a series of texts that give "human rights" its shape: from academic and journalistic accounts to online data aggregators, film, social media, and related policies. It traces its use by competing actors: from activists and politicians to business leaders and academics. In so doing, the dissertation reveals important political, emotional, intellectual, and socio-economic contestations that arise through use of the human rights framework.</p><p> The dissertation sheds light on the motivations and methods of entities that take up the human rights framework as a political strategy. It narrates the relations between observables, revealing the architecture of a human rights "industry" that consumes and produces knowledge about Iranians and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In so doing, this dissertation reveals the vulnerability of the human rights discourse and activities to other projects and finds that the human rights industry motors a form of (neo)Orientalism that should be interrupted if the network of actors around the world that are set up to address violations of "human rights" are to be effective at helping to maintain or uphold the dignity and freedom of Iranians in a sustainable way.</p>

<p> The importance of caring relationships between youth and their teachers, mentors, and tutors, for fostering positive academic and socioemotional outcomes is widely recognized in the literature (e.g. Hamre &amp; Pianta, 2005; Hao &amp; Pong, 2008; Wentzel, 2003). However, limited research explores the nature and impact of caring relationships between refugees and their educators. Iraqi refugees make up a growing population in the United States (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2011). Understanding this growing population and identifying interventions that benefit youths' integration into an unfamiliar world is increasingly important. </p><p> This research expanded understanding of young Iraqi refugees' notions of caring and the implications of those caring relationships for refugee populations. This study was grounded in a theoretical framework, which integrated caring theory (Noddings, 2001), and social capital theory (Bourdieu, 1983; Putnam, 2000; Stanton-Salazar &amp; Dornbusch, 1995). Data were collected utilizing a multi-method approach. First, qualitative in-depth interviews with Iraqi refugees (ages 14-20) were conducted to examine their caring relationships with educators and the resulting academic and socioemotional benefits. A secondary analysis of a large database from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) (Portes &amp; Rumbaut, 2012) was also conducted, including people whose families came to the United States for political reasons. This research explored caring teacher-student relationships and their impact on students' academic outcomes and self-esteem. </p><p> Most of the interview respondents revealed that they had caring educators. Respondents perceived these educators as those who cared for them academically and personally. Students felt particularly cared for by educators who recognized their specific needs as refugees; these care-providers were often English as a Second Language (ESOL) teachers. While not all educators were perceived as caring, those who were caring provided resources for youths. Respondents benefited from caring relationships, as they learned about academic and professional programs, accessed assistance with college admittance, and received emotional support. The quantitative portion revealed that students who perceived their teachers to be good, fair, and interested, all indicators of caring, had higher self-esteem and Grade Points Averages (GPAs). Overall, this research fills an important gap in the literature and provides important implications for theory and practice.</p>

Lo studio analizza la relazione tra la struttura del potere neo-patrimoniale (fondata sullo scambio tra distribuzione arbitraria di opportunità economiche e lealtà politica) e la debolezza del sistema inter-statale arabo. Combinando un approccio storico-istituzionalista e un approccio intermestic, lo studio considera il neo-patrimonialismo arabo prodotto della contraddizione irrisolta tra la cristallizzazione delle sovranità statali imposte dalle ex-potenze coloniali e il progetto politico mancato della ‘Grande Nazione Araba’. Questa dinamica ha prodotto l’illegittimità strutturale dell’ordine inter-statale arabo, che investe lo stato nella dimensione territoriale e nella dimensione del potere. A cavallo degli anni 70’, nei regimi arabi si osserva una transizione dall’autoritarismo populista ad un sistema neo-patrimoniale. Esaminando i casi-studio di Egitto e Siria, questa tesi si propone di analizzare il divario tra lo state-building ‘weberiano’(legale-razionale) e ‘neo-patrimoniale’: in quest’ultimo, la mancanza di istituzionalizzazione legale-razionale impedisce la formazione di un legame di cittadinanza e asseconda la persistenza di identificazioni sociali tradizionali. In riferimento all’Egitto e alla Siria ,l’analisi mira a mettere in evidenza la relazione tra l’indebolimento (o il crollo) del regime e il collasso istituzionale dello stato. Questo fenomeno in Siria, a differenza dell’Egitto, si accompagna ad una ibridazione della sovranità statale, in virtù della frammentazione politicizzata della società siriana. / This thesis investigates the relation between Arab neo-patrimonial power structures (based on the arbitrary distribution of economic opportunities in exchange of political loyalty) and the weakness of the Arab inter-state system. Combining a historic institutional and an intermestic approach, this study considers neo-patrimonialism as the outcome of the unsolved contradiction between the crystallization of western-imposed sovereignties and the missed political project of the ‘Greater Arab Nation’ (contesting colonial borders). This has, in turn, produced the structural illegitimacy of the inter-state order, affecting both the territorial and the authority dimensions of the state. In dealing with this ‘legitimacy problem’, post-1970 Arab regimes have tended to replace populist authoritarian (ideological-grounded) with neo-patrimonial (material-based) power strategies. Through the cases of Egypt and Syria, the study aims at analysing the gap between a ‘Weberian’ (legal-rational) and a ‘neo-patrimonial’ state-building: in the latter case, the missing legal-rational institutionalization hinders a social identification based on citizenship, seconding the persistence of traditional identities. By examining Egypt and Syria’s power structures, this study enlightens the relation between regime collapse and institutional collapse. Unlike Egypt, which enjoys a substantial societal homogeneity, in Syria we witness the hybridization of state’s sovereignty, stemming from the politicized fragmented character of Syria’s society.