Kaukasos kai Kentriki Asia / Caucasus and Central Asia

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Chitralekha Zutshi

"Despite its centrality to the political life of India and Pakistan, Kashmir has met with rather perfunctory treatment from historians of South Asia. The few works of history and politics that have appeared on this region, moreover, insist on defining Kashmiri culture, history, and identity in terms of the ahistorical concept of Kashmiriyat, or a uniquely Kashmiri cultural identity. This book, in contrast, questions the notion of any transcendent cultural uniqueness and Kashmiriyat by returning Kashmir to the mainstream of South Asian historiography. It examines the hundred-year impact of indirect colonial rule on Kashmirs class formation. It studies the uses (and abuses) made of Kashmirs political elites by the state. It looks at the responses of Kashmirs society to social and economic restructuring. It shows that while all these historical changes had a profound impact on the political culture of the Kashmir Valley, there is nothing very inevitable or quite definite about the 'political regionalism' and 'Islamic particularism' of this area. Using local language sources and every important archive, this major history of the formation of Kashmir shows precisely how the Kashmir Valley assumed the position it has come to occupy in postcolonial South Asia."--Jacket.

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Shireen T. Hunter

Traces the shared history of Russia and Islam in expanding compass; from the Tatar civilization within the Russian heartland, to the conquered territories of the Caucasus and Central Asia, to the larger geopolitical and security context of contemporary Russia on the civilizational divide. The study stresses political and geopolitical relationships.

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Alami M'Chichi Houria

La volonté du gouvernement marocain, en 1999, dʹintégrer les femmes au développement a suscité de nombreux questionnements entre modernistes et islamistes. Selon H. Alami MʹChichi (professeur de science politique à la faculté de droit de Casablanca), lʹintroduction de lʹanalyse du genre dans le domaine politique permet, dʹune part de mettre à nu des rapports socialement et historiquement construits, responsables de nombreuses inégalités entre les sexes, et, dʹautre part de révéler des divergences entre modernistes et islamistes, mais aussi des confusions partagées sur la place de la femme dans la société marocaine.

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Michael Field

Precious oil and export markets, wars in Lebanon and the Persian Gulf, peace talks at the White House, terrorist eruptions: more now than ever, Arab affairs are the West's affair. And yet as we find ourselves increasingly enmeshed in its politics and economics, the Middle East remains a mystery to most of us, a world of dimly understood connections and impenetrable complexities. The Arab world at last becomes accessible in this book. The only book to include developments since the Gulf War and the historic pact between Israel and the PLO, Inside the Arab World gives us a complete and detailed picture of the region as it is today, as well as a clear sense of how Arab affairs have evolved and where they may lead. Despite its abundance of oil, the Arab world has failed to produce a single successful economy. Michael Field, a recognized expert and long-time reporter on the Arab states, explores the cultural, political, and geographic reasons for this failure. Ranging from Algeria to the Gulf states to Egypt and Syria, he considers the fragmentation of society, the people's tolerance of bad government, corruption, and the deadening economic effect of Arab socialism. But he also shows how the region - influenced partly by exposure to Western media, partly by reforms imposed by creditors - is changing now, taking its first cautious steps toward democracy, whose opportunities so far have been most firmly grasped by Islamic fundamentalists. Timely, thorough, and highly readable, this book offers much-needed insight into the Arab world as its politics and policies increasingly engage our own.