Contentious borders : the Middle East and North Africa post-2011
Title: Contentious borders : the Middle East and North Africa post-2011
Editor(s): DEL SARTO, Raffaella A.
; FAWCETT, Louise; OKYAY, Aslı Selin
; FAWCETT, Louise; OKYAY, Aslı Selin
Date: 2017
Citation: Special issue of International affairs, 2017, Vol. 93, No. 4
ISSN: 0020-5850; 1468-2346
Abstract:
The recent upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have exerted pressure on the regional state system and its borders. In a landmark special issue, scholars consider these pressures from a range of theoretical and geographical perspectives. Uniting the articles is the concept of ‘contentious borders’. This concept seeks to encapsulate the interplay between Westphalian notions of statehood, exported to the region during the era of European colonial domination, and the prominent transnational identities of pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism which challenge the state system. From North Africa to Turkey, and from geopolitics to anthropology, this issue sheds new light on a region so often presented as crisis-ridden. In taking this broad view of statehood and sovereignty the authors question the Western narrative of ‘failed’ states, and point instead to the durability of borders and national systems.
Table of Contents:
-- Contentious borders in the Middle East and North Africa: context and concepts, Raffaella A. Del Sarto 767
-- States and sovereignty in the Middle East: myths and realities, Louise Fawcett 789
-- The changing borders and borderlands of Syria in a time of conflict, Leïla Vignal 809
-- Turkey’s post-2011 approach to its Syrian border and its implications for domestic politics, Asli S. Okyay 829
-- Contesting borders? The formation of Iraqi Kurdistan’s de facto state, Johannes Jüde 847
-- Border management in an era of ‘statebuilding lite’: security assistance and Lebanon’s hybrid sovereignty, Simone Tholens 865
-- Approaching borders and frontiers in North Africa, Jean-Pierre Cassarino 883
-- The practice and culture of smuggling in the borderland of Egypt and Libya, Thomas Hüsken 897
-- Borders and sovereignty in Islamist and jihadist thought: past and present, Mohamed-Ali Adraoui 917
-- States, boundaries and sovereignty in the Middle East: unsteady but unchanging, I. William Zartman 937
-- Book reviews
-- Book review essays
-- The Mediterranean and its migrants: porous policy for a porous border, Claire Spencer 949
-- The paradoxes of ‘new’ Turkey: Islam, illiberal democracy and republicanism, Ayla Göl 957
