Counter-Narratives

History, Contemporary Society, and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen

M. Al-Rasheed, R. Vitalis, M. Al-Rasheed, R. Vitalis

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9781403963871
• eBook ISBN: 9781403981318
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Saudi Arabia and Yemen are two countries of crucial importance in the Middle East and yet our knowledge about them is highly limited, while typical ways of looking at the histories of these countries have impeded understanding. Counter-Narratives brings together a group of leading scholars of the Middle East using new theoretical and methodological approaches to cross-examine standard stories, whether as told by Westerners or by Saudis and Yemenis, and these are found wanting. The authors assess how grand historical narratives such as those produced by states and colonial powers are currently challenged by multiple historical actors, a process which generates alternative narratives about identity, the state and society.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Arabia Incognita: An Invitation to Arabian Peninsula Studies
• 2 The `Imama vs. the `Iqal: Hadari–Bedouin Conflict and the Formation of the Saudi State
• 3 Ecology, Knowledge, and Trade in Central Arabia (Najd) during the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
• 4 Shifting Loyalties and Failed Empire: A New Look at the Social History of Late Ottoman Yemen, 1872–1918
• 5 Leaving Only Question-Marks: Geographies of Rule in Modern Yemen
• 6 Aramco World: Business and Culture on the Arabian Oil Frontier
• 7 The Capture of Riyadh Revisited: Shaping Historical Imagination in Saudi Arabia
• 8 Struggles Over History and Identity: “Opening the Gates” of the Kingdom to Tourism
• 9 Evacuating Memory in Postrevolutionary Yemen
• 10 Seeing Like a Citizen, Acting Like a State: Exemplary Events in Unified Yemen
• Bibliography
• Index