faculty book – Elliott360

Seeking interesting gift ideas for friends and family during the holiday season, or just wanting to give yourself the gift of a good read as winter settles over the campus and many remain holed up at home? Look no further than the latest publications from our esteemed faculty.

Michael Brown, Chantal de Jonge Oudraat et al, The Gender and Security Agenda

“This refreshingly engaging book with multidimensional perspectives is a must-read for all. It is an outstanding contribution to global discourse on women’s equality and empowerment in the crucial area of peace and security…” —Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and President of the UN Security Council in March 2000

Alexander Dent, Digital Pirates: Policing Intellectual Property in Brazil

“Digital Pirates is an insightful and often beautiful exploration of digitization as a dissolving agent for older cultural forms, a catalyst for new ones, and a context for reconsolidating the boundaries that define markets, institutions, laws, and publics.”—Joe Karaganis, Columbia University

Ben Hopkins, Ruling the Savage Periphery Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State

“This is an ambitious and important book. The concept of ‘frontier governmentality’ is a very engaging and largely persuasive idea with broad applicability…”—Andrew Graybill, author of Policing the Great Plains: Rangers, Mounties, and the North American Frontier

Vincent Ialenti, Deep Time Reckoning How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now

“Imagine yourself as an ancestor of people living ten thousand or a hundred thousand years in the future. Ialenti focuses on these unfathomable timescales through the lens of radioactive waste and illuminates how readjusting our time horizon underlies our survival.” —Ruth DeFriesDenning Family University Professor of Sustainable Development, Columbia University; author of What Would Nature Do?

Sean Roberts, The War on the Uyghurs: China’s Internal Campaign against a Muslim Minority

“This is the backstory behind one of the biggest stories in China—the incarceration of more than one million Uyghurs in a dystopian network of what are claimed to be reeducation camps. Who the Uyghurs are and how they came to be classified as terrorists … could not be more timely.”—Barbara Demick, former Beijing bureau chief, Los Angeles Times, author of Nothing to Envy

Nilofar Sakhi, Human Security and Agency – Reframing Productive Power in Afghanistan

“…the scholar and activist Nilofar Sakhi illuminates the failure of many development programs to transform Afghan communities and points the way to a more effective approach based on local creativity, productive power, and community control.”— Richard Rubenstein, George Mason University

Eric Schluessel, Land of Strangers: the Civilizing Project in Qing Central Asia

“Through this theoretically rich exploration of Qing philosophy and practice of colonial rule, we see how violence and forced intimacy shape enduring group identities in Xinjiang…Schluessel uncovers the interactions of everyday life among colonizing Chinese, intermediaries, and colonized Uyghurs in late Qing Xinjiang.” —Marianne Kamp, author of The New Woman in Uzbekistan: Islam, Modernity, and Unveiling Under Communism

David Shambaugh, China and the World and Where Great Powers Meet

“China and the World is an impressive volume on a vital subject at a critical time. For the coming generation of (American) students, China will be the single most important international topic in their textbooks; relations with this dynamic behemoth will profoundly affect their lives as well as the world.” — Winston Lord, Former US Ambassador to China

“What does great power rivalry mean? David Shambaugh provides an engaging and readable account of how the US-China competition is playing out in its Southeast Asian epicenter. One could not ask for a more thoughtful and experienced guide to this fraught relationship.” — Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University and author of Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump

Robert Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations: Power and Policy of an Emerging Global Force, (5th edition)

“Robert Sutter’s book is the best comprehensive introduction to the background, trends and dynamics, and implications of contemporary Chinese foreign relations available…It is an indispensable guide to a topic of foremost importance in world affairs today.”— Alice Miller, Stanford University

Interview of Dr. Nathan Brown conducted via email by Sumaya Almajdoub, MA ‘17.

Hello Dr. Brown, I’ve enjoyed reading your book, and the first question I wanted to ask you is about the title. Your title mentions the “revival of Arab politics,” what do you mean by “revival”? When did Arab politics “die”?

I do not think that politics ever completely died, but it was often driven underground. When I did research on Egypt in the 1960s, I was struck by how little politics was part of the public record—when I looked at publications like newspapers there was a narrow range of views, and only top officials seemed able to set the terms of what was said. When I first traveled to the Arab world in the early 1980s, politics did not form a large part of public or private discussion. That really changed beginning in the 1990s in all kinds of public and private channels.

In your book you elaborate on the ways in which lively, complex and nuanced discussions continue to happen in the Arab public sphere, can you give us examples of these discussions?

Even with the authoritarian wave of the past few years, it is still the case that there is a lot more politics discussed in social media, older media, and private conversations. As an example, “personal status law”—the category of law that covers marriage, divorce, and inheritance—is constantly debated by people who are not only well versed in technical religious vocabulary on those issues but also very aware of the practical implications of small changes in the law. The debate is sensitive, since it involves issues that matter to everybody. But it is also sophisticated.

Do these discussions in the public sphere affect outcomes on the ground? Do they shape policies? Why or why not?

I looked at several areas—constitution writing, school curricula, personal status law—to try to see where public debates actually seemed to affect decisions made by public officials. What I found was that a lot of the debates are not really connected to political realities; officials can and do ignore them. There are exceptions—I found, for instance, cases in which public officials decided to reach out to influential religious and women’s rights groups—who eyed each other suspiciously–to make a change to divorce law that had wide support. But for the most part, debates become more polarized because advocates of contrary views do not have to deal with each other.

What about those who argue that the Arab world is witnessing political apathy due to increased levels of suppression, destabilization and civil strife? How would you respond to them?

I think the level of alienation is growing. But alienation is not the same as apathy. What I sense is a growing despair about formal politics—parties, organizations, elections—particularly for younger generations. But that alienation from the current order can take many forms—from enthusiastic action in 2011 to withdrawal in 2018—and I think it is very much an open question what form it will take in the coming years.

How has the Arab public sphere changed with the introduction of the internet and social media? Have debates become more polarized? Are these changes only relevant to the Arab public sphere, or is this part of a global phenomenon?

Debates have become more polarized and newer social media may facilitate that process but they are not the driving force. The way in which regimes have declined (somewhat unevenly) in their ability to control all channels of communication has allowed people to form linkages. That such linkages sometimes lead to silos and echo chambers is not simply a phenomenon in the Arab world.

One phenomenon that is particularly pronounced in the Arab world—though hardly unique to it—is the decline of various kinds of authority. Religious authority, for instance, has not disappeared but it has become more pluralistic. Many more voices join debates and the range of views heard is becoming much greater. And the separation between the two senses of “authority”—ability to make decisions that govern people and ability to have one’s views treated with deference—is also marked.

Was there a specific event or incident that inspired you to write this book?

No specific event, no. I was interested even before the 2011 uprisings. But I had begun to notice how lively debates were becoming but how few of those debates seemed to be getting attention.

Was this book easier or harder to write compared to your other publications?

It was much broader. That made it easier in the sense that I did not need to know every detail before starting to write. But it also made it harder, since I had to think a lot more about what generalizations could be justified.

Do you have any advice for aspiring scholars who want to write a book? Or is there anything you’d like to add?

Do not write a scholarly book unless there is a specific question that you think needs to be answered and that you can pose and answer in a compelling way.

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