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.

No description available.

No description available.

The need for intergroup reconciliation programmes emerges within the prevailing narrative of cultural conflict. However, failing attempts to resolve conflict at the macro (political) level of society have called for a unique approach that seeks to address these issues creatively at the first point of contact. Therefore, the last twenty years have seen a proliferation of non-profit group workshops and interventions aimed at engaging groups in a diversity of dialogue. To date there have been very few of these interventions that have addressed conflict therapeutically at the micro level of society– at which communities interact directly with another. The aim of this research was to conduct an explorative mixed method study into how an intergroup encounter intervention between Palestinians and Israelis could encourage participants to understand each other as human beings with shared fears, hopes and rights that may surpass assumptions of the other as ‘the enemy’, thereby encouraging participants to ‘give the other a human face’. Conducted with a mixed group of twenty-eight participants, a pre-to-post survey measure analysed behavioural change, while a six-month follow-up interview with four participants explored the impact of participating in the acquaintance seminar on participants lived experiences. Final analysis indicated that while there was a trend towards behavioural change, the outcome was statistically non-significant. Meanwhile interpretive phenomenological analysis produced five key master themes that highlighted the impact of change and the contextual challenges of living with conflict. Managing new relationships and cultural barriers highlighted the key contextual challenges that participants were faced with. This highlights a need for investing resources and training into group conflict programmes that are promoted by key counselling psychology principles of practice. Overall, working with conflict is considered a relevant and unique opportunity for counselling psychologists and group facilitators, most of whom have no formal training or resources for working with conflict resolution in minority groups.

This research explores Iranian audiences of Farsi Christian satellite channels. It considers what the narratives and interviews of participants of this research reveal about the way audiences interact and negotiate with both religious broadcasts and their socio-political or religious contexts. What are the motivating factors that led the audiences first to watch Christian channels and secondly, where relevant, to change or add to their religious belief system? For those whose faith was transformed, how did this process happen according to their self-declared stories? Expressions of belief are analysed in order to consider their different understandings of religion, faith and their own belief system. The research also studies the triangular relationships between the audience, Farsi Christian media, and the audience’s culture(s). It is therefore a study of Farsi Christian channel audiences, their motivations in viewing the Christian message, their methods of interpretation and negotiations with different media texts, and their process of changing or altering their religion, using the concept of conversion as a tool of analysis. More specifically, I investigate the motivations of those in the audience of the four Farsi Christian satellite channels who stated that they had become Christians through that medium. I will examine factors that influenced both their interpretations of and negotiations with the religious media message, and their process of changing, adding to or modifying their belief system, including their understanding of religious conversion. My research investigates the interactions and negotiations between meaning making and mediation, and the process of faith transformation within Reception Theory against the background of the sociology of religion and culture in contemporary Iran. This research contributes to three areas of study: media reception (largely religious television) and sociology of religion and culture, mostly from the point of view of selfidentified conversion; Media, Religion and Culture, mainly using audiences’ interactions and negotiations methods with the channels, and the religion of Islam and Christianity in the Iranian political-cultural context. This involved analysing three hundred narratives drawn from audiences of four Farsi Christian satellite television channels, during the period between 2010 and 2015, as well as fifteen semi-structured interviews, two focus group discussions and a telephone survey. The argument develops over nine chapters. Chapter one provides the socio-political and religious context of the Iranian audience as well as presenting literature reviews and methodology, while Chapter two gives the Iranian (state and society) understanding of religion (din and mazhab) and of globalisation, as well as discussing the satellite channel usage. Chapter three introduces the four Farsi Christian satellite channels using data from interviews channel directors. Chapter four analyses the two focus groups’ discussion of the central question: how do audiences interact and negotiate with the Christian message presented on the channels? Chapters five, six and seven examine the participants’ narratives and interviews using respectively experimenting, negotiating and resisting attitudes of participants. Chapter eight discusses and analyses the findings, the conclusion sets out the implications, contributions and limitations of the research.

This thesis aims to address a key and understudied element of Turkish foreign-policy under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP): the civil-society factor. It answers the question: How has foreign-policy and diplomacy changed in this era due to the domestic dynamics, exploring how Turkey's image and global standing is dependent on the legitimacy and activism of non-state actors. The central aim being to understand how the interests, identity and practices of civil-society organizations (CSOs) have changed modes and channels of engagement with the Middle East: with Turkey increasingly deploying economic, humanitarian and cultural diplomacy in their relations with the region. The theoretical focus provides an alternative perspective on foreign-policy from a societal and ideational perspective. The empirical focus examines the development of civil-society in Turkey alongside the trajectory of changing foreign relations with the Middle East. This thesis highlights the variation in CSOs in terms of their relationship with the government: the type of interaction based on a number of variables such as autonomy from the government, the democratization process, the security environment and openings in the political space. By analysing the patterns of interaction and influence of CSOs, this dissertation contributes to the literature on civil-society influence and literature on Turkish foreign-policy (TFP). This thesis aims to contribute to growing research on civil-society's role in Turkey, however within the specific and understudied context of Middle East relations. It choses civil-society as the main unit of analysis in what is acknowledged to be a complex and multifaceted policy environment. However, as will be discussed throughout this thesis in relation to strong elements of continuity in TFP, the emergence of normative discourses, social, economic and political ties at the level of civil-society is one of the most distinct changes of the AKP era. Turkey's engagement with the Middle East has been shaped, and channelled through these actors, legitimized to the public and the international community. This renders the behaviour of Turkish CSOs even more significant to international relations, with Turkey's pre-2013 image as a regional mediator, humanitarian diplomat and soft-power contingent on these actors.

This thesis examines the transformation of the Kurdish national struggle in Turkey from a political movement to a social movement. The Thesis will argue that the Kurdish national struggle during the Twentieth Century in Turkey was largely a failure, and that the emergence of the Unions of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK) has been a direct and concrete response to this failure. The thesis will track how the KCK has transformed a one-dimensional political nationalist struggle into a multi-dimensional one, including politics, culture and society for the Kurds living in Turkey. The focus here will be on the period from March 2005, when the KCK was established, until July 2011 when the KCK announced its Democratic Autonomy project. In order to explain how and why the KCK has emerged, the Thesis takes an approach based on social movement theories to analyse the KCK as a social and cultural nationalist movement that deploys various approaches and techniques. The KCK is shown to take this new and more popular and successful tact through a comparison of the discourse surrounding the Kurdish national struggle before and after the establishment of the KCK. The ‘new discourse’ of multi-dimensional struggle is, in particular, compared with the old unadulterated discourse of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which was a straight reaction to the Turkish state policy towards the Kurds and their struggle. The analysis of this process is accomplished through an examination of numerous contemporary resources such as the PKK and the KCK policies and literatures, government intelligence reports, books, journals, and through conducting tens of qualitative interviews alongside comprehensive observation during my fieldwork for this thesis. Ultimately, the Thesis will argue that the transformation of discourse for the KCK from the PKK is evident in its “Democratic Autonomy model”. The KCK proposes this model as an alternative to the nation state model in Turkey.

This thesis revisits the relationship between ideology and foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly that between Arab nationalism and state regional policy in the Gulf. It seeks to answer the question: What explains a Gulf Arab state's policy toward regional alignment in the independence phase? In doing so, the thesis explores the specific case of Bahrain between 1971 and 1981, a period in which Bahrain attained its formal independence and then moved towards alignment in the form of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). To answer this question, the thesis advances existing explanations in the study of international relations in the Middle East (IRME), especially the constructivist approach to norms and identities in the relationship between Arab nationalism and foreign policy. Some constructivists claim that shifts in regional norms from 'Arabism' to sovereignty allow one to explain foreign policy in the Middle East after 1967. While such a claim is received uncritically by IRME, the regional policies of individual Gulf Arab states have mostly been examined in this vein and thereby assumed to share some commonalities driven by cultural, sectarian and institutional homogeneity among these states in the region. However, this thesis offers an alternative account of it. By integrating other histories of Arab nationalism with IRME and conceptualising nationalism as a modern ideology, this thesis argues that internal socio-political dynamics mediate the interplay of ideology and a state's regional policy. It further argues that the formation and evolution of Arab nationalism in international relations of the Gulf is best understood beyond norms and identities, and examined under a more historical and sociological scrutiny − taking both colonial history and the process of capitalist formation into consideration. This thesis draws on Antonio Gramsci's insights to build a theoretical framework for conducting a historical sociological investigation of the case of Bahrain. Through a reformulation of Gramsci in an alternative Gramscian approach to the Coxian one in the study of international relations (IR), this thesis reconstructs three interrelated concepts from Gramsci − development, ideology and struggle − to examine the social bases that conditioned the formation and evolution of Arab nationalism, and the political struggle that shaped a locus in which Arab nationalism influenced Bahrain's policy towards Gulf alignment in the 1970s. It argues that the political struggle included different, contradictory more often than not, social forces deriving from Bahraini late-coming capitalist formation under British colonialism. Then, the struggle continued to impact on the ideological development of Arab nationalism and its interplay with Bahrain's regional policy. The thesis further argues, in a Gramscian sense, that the struggle was a conflict between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces, which escalated along with the rise of the New Arab Left and the upheaval caused by Marxist-Leninist revolutions in Arabia from the late 1960s onwards. But, it was unresolved after an interrupted process of 'historical restoration' between 1971 and 1975. As a consequence, the Al Khalifa regime in Bahrain, as an incomplete hegemony, faced the dilemma of being open about its alignment with the US. Nonetheless, in the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s, a series of extended regional issues arose, including the Arab cause, the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. The ways in which Al Khalifa responded to these issues reflected the dynamic ideological ties between Arab nationalism and Bahrain's regional policy and paved the road to Bahrain's participation in the GCC in 1981. Through an integration of the Bahraini case and the reformulated Gramscian framework proposed in this thesis, the thesis offers a more complex account than the existing literature of international relations in the Gulf and contributes to the historical sociology of IRME in general.