ABSTRACT
These chapters span four main themes: history, politics, economics, and culture. Topics include an analysis of the multicultural Middle Ages in Anatolia and Spain; social movements in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran; the challenges of managing water and oil resources in Saudi Arabia; Lebanese blogging; and Tunisian texting. The authors of the case studies hail from a variety of disciplines; indeed, many of them work in an interdisciplinary fashion, so that thematic overlap exists. In all of the chapters, the authors draw links between their specific cases and larger, global challenges and trends. How will cultural diversity be managed in an increasingly interconnected global society? How will people organize to govern their political and economic affairs in times of hardening ideological divides and ongoing scarcity? These case studies from the Middle East resonate with trends in other regions of the globe, where populations struggle with similar questions.
