This book investigates approaches to community heritage within the Arab region and the underlying theories associated with these approaches. It aims, within the context of the region, to define ‘community’ and ‘heritage’, as well as examine the emergence and development of this field. The volume’s contributors deploy a wealth of case studies from the Middle East and North Africa to provide a unique forum for discussion, comparability, analysis and deeper understandings of current trends in community heritage. In particular, the volume explores the relationship between communities and their heritage, the meanings and values placed upon it, the nature and degree of community participation and engagement in its interpretation and management, and how its different registers affect and produce sometimes unexpected community heritage formations. It also examines the level of responsibility held within the profession towards this essentially democratic process of public participation in their heritage in a region shaped by controversial histories, political turmoil and tourism-driven economies. The volume builds on current research and practice in community heritage globally by debating and re-centring a suite of familiar and new issues related to hitherto under-researched regional-specific methodologies, and developing fresh insight into the theoretical underpinning of these practices. It will be of value to heritage scholars and practitioners as well as those interested in politics, identity, education and the dynamics of heritage-based sustainable development.

This edited volume offers an understanding of how the international community, as a collection of significant actors including major states and intergovernmental institutions, has responded to the important political and social development of the Arab Spring. Contributors analyze the response by international organizations (UN, EU, NATO), big powers (US, Russia, China, UK), regional powers (Turkey, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia) and small powers (Kuwait, Qatar). The book thus makes a sound contribution to the existing literature on the Arab Spring in form of foreign policy analysis and provides an overview of the current shape and outlook of global politics.

Whether precipitated by political or environmental factors, human displacement can be more fully understood by attending to the ways in which a set of bodily, material, imagined and virtual mobilities and immobilities interact to produce population movement. Very little work, however, has addressed the fertile middle ground between mobilities and forced migration. This book sets out the ways in which theories of mobilities can enrich forced migration studies as well as some of the insights into mobilities that forced migration research offers.The book covers the challenges faced by both forced migrants and receiving authorities. It applies these challenges to regions such as the Middle East, South Asia and East Africa. In particular, the chapter on Iraq to Jordan foced migration tests the sincerity of the concept of Pan-Arabism; the chapters on Bangladesh and Ethiopia deal with the more historically familiar variables of warfare and famine as drivers of forced migration.This book will be of value to practitioners in the area of human rights and to scholars of racial and ethnic politics, human geography and globalization.This book was published as a special issue of Mobilities.

This volume presents theoretical ideas, case studies, and reflective insights on community archaeology across the Middle East, with contributions by scholars working in and from Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, and Syria. The chapters represent a multitude of insights from contemporary public archaeology practice—drawing on theoretical frameworks and discussing the realities of challenges and opportunities presented by opening up archaeological experiences to wider publics in different social and political settings. In particular, the volume focuses on the following three themes: (1) defining and reflecting on ‘community’ in community archaeology; (2) which archaeologies to employ in community archaeology; and (3) measuring the success and failure of community archaeology. In addressing these issues, the chapters reflect different historical trajectories and cultures that enable us to find similarities and differences in the theory and practice of community archaeology. In more recent decades a shift has been noticed among both national authorities and foreign archaeological expeditions, with more emphasis on local heritage experiences. However, this frequently took the form of guiding and introducing communities to ‘their heritage’. Only more recently local voices have become more heard in definitions of heritage and decisions on preservation matters, with more projects tying these voices into their research objectives. This volume presents several projects that combine postcolonial approaches, citizen participation, and community work across the Middle East. By focusing especially on this geographical area, the volume also reflects upon the current state of public and community archaeology in this unique and complex region, adding to the already rich literature from the rest of the world. The Middle East has a long, fascinating, but also complicated history of archaeological investigation, deeply entrenched in colonization, and more recently in the decolonization process. The involvement and social values of the associated communities have often been overlooked in academic discussions. This book aims to redress that imbalance and present original research that reflects on the work of current scholars and practitioners and draws similarities and differences from diverse cultures.

Born from the fields of Islamic art and architectural history, the archaeological study of the Islamic societies is a relatively young discipline. With its roots in the colonial periods of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its rapid development since the 1980s warrants a reevaluation of where the field stands today. This Handbook represents for the first time a survey of Islamic archaeology on a global scale, describing its disciplinary development and offering candid critiques of the state of the field today in the Central Islamic Lands, the Islamic West, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The international contributors to the volume address such themes as the timing and process of Islamization, the problems of periodization and regionalism in material culture, cities and countryside, cultural hybridity, cultural and religious diversity, natural resource management, international trade in the later historical periods, and migration. Critical assessments of the ways in which archaeologists today engage with Islamic cultural heritage and local communities closes the volume, highlighting the ethical issues related to studying living cultures and religions. Richly illustrated, with extensive citations, it is the reference work on the debates that drive the field today.

Teaching Arabic as a Heritage Language is a practical guide to Arabic pedagogy for Heritage Learners of Arabic. Exploring the teaching of Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL) in North America and Europe, it covers sociocultural topics such as diglossia and religion alongside theoretical approaches to Heritage Language Learning. It also provides a new and detailed definition of the heritage language learner (HLL) of Arabic. The role of the professor and the material are explored to ensure a successful learning experience. The latest advances in HLL are considered together with the recent and recommended changes in classroom practice, giving rise to the recognition of the individual needs of heritage learners. This is an indispensable resource for instructors, researchers, and students in the fields of TAFL and TASOL, as well as linguists interested in Arabic language learning and teaching.

Language and Identity in the Arab World explores the inextricable link between language and identity, referring particularly to the Arab world. Spanning Indonesia to the United States, the Arab world is here imagined as a continually changing one, with the Arab diaspora asserting its linguistic identity across the world. Crucial questions on transforming linguistic landscapes, the role and implications of migration, and the impact of technology on language use are explored by established and emerging scholars in the field of applied and socio-linguistics. The book asks such crucial questions as how language contact affects or transforms identity, how language reflects changing identities among migrant communities, and how language choices contribute to identity construction in social media. As well as appreciating the breadth and scope of the Arab world, this anthology focuses on the transformative role of language within indigenous and migrant communities as they negotiate between their heritage languages and those spoken by the wider society. Investigating the ways in which identity continues to be imagined and re-constructed in and among Arab communities, this book is indispensable to students, teachers, and anyone who is interested in language contact, linguistic landscapes, and minority language retention as well as the intersections of language and technology.

'Tourism in the Middle East' embodies a multi-discursive approach to the study of tourism in the region, offering not only different perspectives but qualifying local knowledge and realities.

Tackling the issue in a systematic, scientific manner, this book also examines Islamic online communications, online censorship, and Internet use by the civic society as an alternative channel for its mostly oppressed voices.