ABSTRACT
The underlying social and cultural patterns of the Arab world still change with glacial slowness: after nearly a hundred “modern” years, the lot of most peasants is still poverty and victimization by the rich and powerful; social relations, even in the so-called “revolutionary” states, remain largely subject to the ancient servitudes of kinship, gender, rank, status, and position; and everywhere, the old dialectic between Islamic verities and secular values continues to be played out in a variety of inconclusive confrontations. Chance, fortune, unintended results have created a new, possibly more unstable set of political premises in almost all the states of the Middle East. The reversal of the Arab oil producers’ good fortune, when it occurred, came relatively swiftly; again, its causes and circumstances are less important for purposes than its shape and consequences for Middle East politics.
