Anthropology of the Middle East

Editor in Chief: Soheila Shahshahani, Shahid Beheshti University, Iran


Subjects: Anthropology, Middle Eastern Studies


Winner of the Zubaydah Ashkanani Prize 2019:
Sezin Topçu: Between 'Greatness' and 'Ignorance': The Transition to Nuclear Power in Turkey
Anthropology in the Middle East 14:2

CALLS FOR PAPERS
Trans, Queer, and Third Gender People in Muslim Countries

Volume 19 / 2024, 2 Issues per volume (spring, winter)

Aims & Scope

Recent political events have shown an alarming lack of awareness in western countries of life in the Middle East. Anthropologists, trained in analysing local discourses and social actions and their socio-political and historical contexts, play an important role in making social and cultural developments in the Middle East more comprehensible to a wider world.

This peer-reviewed journal provides a forum for scholarly exchange between anthropologists and other social scientists working in and on the Middle East. The journal's aim is to disseminate, on the basis of informed analysis and insight, a better understanding of Middle Eastern cultures and thereby to achieve a greater appreciation of Middle Eastern contributions to our culturally diverse world.

Anthropology of the Middle East (AME) is published twice a year, in the spring and autumn. Issues are often themed and on occasion guest edited. Each issue contains articles on specific research projects and outcomes on Middle Eastern topics. A section titled "Notes from the Field" features research in progress. Book reviews and shorter reports on books, films and conferences are also included.


Indexing/Abstracting

Anthropology of the Middle East is indexed/abstracted in:

  • Anthropological Index (RAI)
  • Anthropological Literature (EBSCO)
  • Anthropological Literature (Tozzer Library – Harvard University)
  • British Humanties Index (CSA/ProQuest)
  • Cabell's Directory
  • A Current Bibliography on African Affairs (Baywood)
  • Electronic Current Contents of Periodicals on the Middle East (Dayan Center)
  • European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS)
  • IBR – International Bibliography of Book Reviews of Scholarly Literature on the Humanities and Social Sciences (De Gruyter)
  • IBZ – International Bibliography of Periodical Literature (De Gruyter)
  • Index Islamicus
  • Middle Eastern & Central Asian Studies (EBSCO)
  • MLA Directory of Periodicals
  • MLA International Bibliography
  • Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers
  • Scopus (Elsevier)
  • Social Services Abstracts (CSA/ProQuest)
  • Sociological Abstracts (CSA/ProQuest)
  • World Wide Political Science Abstracts (CSA/ProQuest)

Editor in Chief: Soheila Shahshahani, Shahid Beheshti University, Iran

Managing Editor/Book Reports Editor: Fakhri Hagani, Georgia State University, USA; Georgia Tech, USA; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA

Editorial Advisory Board
Kamyar Abdi, Science and Research University, Tehran, Iran
Eleonore Armanet, Université d'Aix-Marseille, France
Gay Jennifer Breyley, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Christian Bromberger, Université d'Aix-Marseille, France
Jean-Pierre Digard, CNRS, Paris, France
Ingvild Flaskerud, University of Oslo, Norway
Mary Elaine Hegland, Santa Clara University, USA
Marcia Inhorn, Yale University, USA
Danila Mayer, Independent Researcher
Abderrahmane Moussaoui, Université Lyon 2, Lumière, France
Hiroshi Nawata, Akita University, Japan
Paulo Pinto, Universidade Federal Fluminense and Centre for Middle East Studies (NEOM/UFF), Brazil
Babak Rezvani, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Sabine Strasser, University of Bern, Switzerland
Soraya Tremayne, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford, UK
Tomoko Yamagishi, Meiji University, Japan

Manuscript Submission

Please carefully review the submission and style guidelines PDF here before submitting.

For guest editors, please review the guest editor guidelines.

The editors welcome submissions for publication in English or French. Electronic submissions are preferred, but mailed contributions will be reviewed. Please note that all correspondence will take place via e-mail.

Please send e-mail submissions and complete contact information to the Editor in Chief:
Soheila Shahshahan | soheilairan@gmail.com

Mailed submissions must include a disk or CD and three printed copies of the article:
Dr Soheila Shahshahan, Editor in Chief
Anthropology of the Middle East
Shahid Beheshti University, B.P. 19585-193
Tehran, Iran

Further correspondence, including inquiries about book reviews, may be directed to Dr. Fakhri Hagani, Managing Editor, at the.fakhrih@gmail.com.

Have other questions? Please refer to Info for Authors for general information and guidelines including topics such as article usage and permissions for Berghahn journal article authors.


License Agreement

As part of the Berghahn Open Anthro initiative, articles in this journal are published open access under a Creative Commons license. As a contributor to a Berghahn Books Journal, you are responsible for completing, signing, and returning one of the signed license agreements for each author with your submitted article. Submit forms to copyright@berghahnjournals.com

By default Authors will use the CC BY-NC-ND - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-noDerivs License, if you require a different license or have other queries please contact copyright@berghahnjournals.com


Ethics Statement

Authors published in Anthropology of the Middle East (AME) certify that their works are original and their own. The editors certify that all materials, with the possible exception of editorial introductions, book reviews, and some types of commentary, have been subjected to double-blind peer review by qualified scholars in the field. While the publishers and the editorial board make every effort to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinions or statements appear in this journal, they wish to make clear that the data and opinions appearing in the articles herein are the sole responsibility of the contributor concerned. For a more detailed explanation concerning these qualifications and responsibilities, please see the complete AME ethics statement.

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Anthropology of the Middle East is a part of the Berghahn Open Anthro subscribe-to-open initiative. Launched in 2020, BOA-S2O has successfully converted a collection of 16 anthropology journals to full Open Access using S2O as its equitable and sustainable model of choice.

This article examines the resurgence of tribalism as a sociological component of contemporary Qatari society. Utilising an ethnographic, mixed-methods design, the article begins with a survey of the substantial scholarship concerning tribes in Arabia. That scholarship provides ideas and understandings that only partially explain the vitality of contemporary tribalism. The article then demonstrates tribalism's ongoing social importance by analysing data from a quantitative survey of 800 Qatari citizens. The article concludes with the ethnographically situated contention that tribalism functions as a mechanism for asserting social power in the contemporary Qatari state, and is therefore an emblematic component of Qatari citizenship.

Tajik Male Labour Migration and Women Left Behind

Can They Resist Gender and Generational Hierarchies?

Poverty and unemployment send at least one million Tajiks to Russia for low-level labour migration. The migrants, mainly male, leave women behind to manage on their own. As a result, women have to work all the harder to try to feed themselves and their children, often against great odds. Male migrant labour to Russia, along with unemployment, alcoholism, drug dependency and other problems, also results in a shortage of marriageable males. This is a serious problem because Tajiks expect girls to marry early. Globalisation, poverty and male labour migration serve to exacerbate existing gender and generational hierarchies.

Marriage has become an expensive proposition in the United Arab Emirates, so much so that it is used by some Emirati men as justification for marrying someone outside Emirati society. This article examines the changes in Emirati weddings over the last 30 years, presents a synopsis of the public discussion of Emirati marriages, and considers how the carefully contained public discussion deflects the comprehensive changes that have transformed Emirati society.

Claiming Space

Documenting Second-generation Iranian Americans in Los Angeles

Author:

In 2009–2010 I collaborated with four Iranian documentary photographers to document everyday lives of the second-generation Iranian-American community in Los Angeles (LA). This article offers an overview of that project and exhibition, along with a selection of images, and presents interview data that suggests several impacts of place and of representations of Iranians on second generation Iranian-American identity. Youth experiences of geopolitical, community and familial struggles have motivated many in this generation to re-mould the image of ‘LA Persians’ by claiming space in diaspora for themselves and their children, the growing third generation.

The continuing practice of polygynous marriage on the part of the Bedouin of the Negev in Israel is generally seen as resistance to modernity for the sake of maintaining semi-nomadic ways of life. By this logic, the numerous anthropological studies that have shown that polygyny is more widespread among older generations (particularly among men of means) can be explained. In Israel, however, there is an added factor of modernity as enforced by the state and its alien Western values. Recent studies of the Bedouin in Israel have found that polygyny is on the increase among all age groups, regardless of their socio-economic status. This article addresses this seemingly surprising finding, discussing some of the main social and political motivations that underlie the growing prevalence of polygyny as exhibited by the Bedouin in Israel.