This thesis draws on 34 months of participant observation in a working-class neighborhood of Amman, Jordan to ask whether and how gender, specifically femininity, can serve as a framework for ethical self-cultivation. It describes the relationships between morality, progress, and gender in contemporary Jordan, where progress is viewed as important and inevitable but also amoral, and morality is associated with the past, which is the opposite of progress. Women are uniquely affected by these oppositions because they are expected to both preserve the morality of the past and embody progress, defined as maximizing their own self-interest through consumption, education, employment, and participation in public life. In this confounding context, women must be deliberate about how they choose to define and inhabit proper femininity, and the work of defining and inhabiting demands creative and productive engagement on their part. They respond by participating in a bounded public that not everyone can enter, and by making and maintaining a distinct temporality inside their homes that is distinguished from the temporality of urban life outside the home. They observe and work on their bodies in a complex and highly elaborated way, differentiating intuitive knowledge (authentic) from social knowledge (instrumental) and biological (medicalized), and they approach friendship as an arena for establishing boundaries between oneself and others, and for dealing with the social ramifications of the individualized approach to self-cultivation that is available to them.

In 2010, the Arab Spring started in Tunisia and expanded to other countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East. In Syria, it led to one of the most severe conflicts nowadays which turned into an international struggle with several external actors involved. Whereas most of the European countries, the United States and the Gulf countries oppose the Syrian government, Russia has supported the Assad-regime since the outbreak of the conflict. This present master thesis investigates Russia's role and motivation in the Syrian crisis and the country's support of the current Assad-regime. Due to the current relevance of classical geopolitics in Russia, the author took this approach for the investigation, complemented by some concepts from a current geopolitician. There seems to be evidence that Russian foreign politics is influenced by classical geopolitics and the approach explains, at least in part, the drivers for Russia's Syria policy. The qualitative analysis used primary and secondary sources, such as Foreign Policy Concepts, Security Reports, reports from key conferences, political speeches, letters and statements. The analysis revealed evidence, that Russia's engagement is driven by security issues, channelled by its own domestic terrorist fears. Additionally, the country seems to be aiming for...

After World War II the United States, faced with the new Soviet threat of Communism, instituted the foreign policy known as “containment” in order to mitigate the threat to Western European states of Soviet expansionism. After the fall of Communism in the USSR in 1991 that policy was deemed, at once, a success and an anachronism. The power vacuum that the subsequent abandonment of that policy created was most notable in the Islamic states that had served as proxies in the Cold War against Communism. Both the backdrop of containment as well as the withdrawal of that policy served to lay the foundation for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Muslim world as a function of American hegemony after 1991.

The Middle East, as one of the most dynamic and troubling world regions, has a wide range of problems. However, in my view, the essential, if not the most essential, security issue here, is terrorism. It seems that the relative decline of terrorist groups, such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda, has made us forget that there are indeed underlying problems that cause the emergence of these deadly organizations. This paper aims to identify these causes by analyzing Saudi and Iranian foreign policy towards U.S.-designated terrorist organizations: Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and Islamic State. In the process, the thesis will establish the general motives of these two states to support and fight terrorism, as well as their means of doing it. Furthermore, it will dive into the specifics of the policies that these two formulate towards every one of the previously stated groups. That will be done in order to prove arguments contending how Riyadh, in many ways, hinders U.S. counterterrorism efforts, while Iranians, contrary to popular belief, contribute to it. Acknowledging that there are many things on which these two states need to improve, the thesis will offer recommendations pointing to the need for Washington to take a more balanced approach to these two countries if it wishes to create a region where its...

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Water shortage is a salient issue in the Middle East commonly overshadowed by more sensational topics such as the oil crisis and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. There is a debate among scholars as to whether water shortages in the Middle East will destabilize the region into armed conflict. Realists argue that non sustainable water sources will be the catalyst which will inevitably lead states to fight one another in a zero-sum game over limited water resources. Liberal Functionalists argue that there are precedents for multilateral cooperation and a technical approach may hold the key to providing solutions to the current water crisis. This research will examine three case studies from the Middle East region: the Jordan River Basin, the Tigris and Euphrates River Basin, and the Disi Aquifer on the border of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Limited to a specific geographic region, these cases are indicative of water shortages that have or will become potential geostrategic centers for the water crisis.

Thesis advisor: Kathleen Bailey / Recent times have seen the world fall far short of its responsibility to protect and support refugees in crisis. Recognizing this reality, policymakers and scholars are beginning to push for a reassessment of the traditional solutions to refugee crises implemented by states, the United Nations, and non-governmental organizations. This manuscript aims to shed light on how these policymakers can coalesce around more effective solutions in the future. To do so, it will analyze three case studies of refugee crises in Jordan: the Palestinians, Iraqis, and Syrians. The cases will seek to answer how and why Jordan chose to “solve” each crisis in the ways that it did. It will then assess how various “solutions”—meaning policies, programs, or partnerships aimed at improving the livelihoods of refugees—have affected each group of refugees differently. The effectiveness of these solutions will depend on a number of factors which constrain or enable Jordan’s ability to support refugees. Ultimately, the findings reveal that some solutions will remain unattainable to refugees in the near future. Others solutions, however, are evolving in ways that open doors to new, alternative solutions which possess significant potential to deliver the rights and meet the needs of the world’s refugees more effectively. In a world fraught by the persistence of global refugee crises, it will offer a few reasons why we should believe current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, when he says there is “some hope.” / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Scholar of the College. / Discipline: Political Science.

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