This paper explores the cultural consequences of an early manifestation of "technocapitalism," the establishment and operation of "transport and tourism" companies that provided the first bus services linking Damascus and Baghdad, and thereby "conquered" the Syrian Desert (badiyat al-Sham). Thus it investigates the nexus of venture capital, technology, journalism, and politics in the early to mid-twentieth century, the site at which a new spatial imaginary was being constructed and deployed. It also seeks to address a number of lacunae in the historiography of the modern Arab East by (1) shifting the discussion of Arab nationalism as a historical phenomenon from the sphere of politics to that at the intersections of culture and economy, and (2) testing the applicability of borderland studies' analytical framework to the entirely different set of geographical, historical, and cultural circumstances found in the twentieth-century Arab world. Through the examination of archival sources, memoirs, and the popular press of 1920s-1950s Syria, I will seek to recover the contemporary meaning of this spatially, temporally, and conceptually transformative process for Syria's political elites, its expanding literate masses, and its more "traditional" populations, i.e., the Bedouin tribes who inhabited the sprawling borderland shared by the new nation-states of Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. This process generated a vast body of discourse surrounding the aforementioned companies, chief among them the Nairn Transport Company, Ltd. Founded by two brothers from New Zealand, it was the first and most prominent of such firms, and thus the model for all its successors. Starting as an express mail delivery firm in 1923, Nairn quickly evolved into a cross-desert charter service running convoys of specially adapted Cadillacs, and finally adopting the successful formula of attaching deluxe (eventually air-conditioned) "Pullman" coaches to large American tractor trailers for daily round trips between Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad. This success generated a considerable body of discourse and a seemingly permanent place in the Syrian national imagination. My project is guided by the following questions. What spatial imaginary appears to have been prevalent in the early twentieth-century Arab East, and what role does physical geography appear to have played in its formulationv What agency - a role heretofore attributed exclusively to imperialist power and nationalist ideology - did venture capital wield in the rhetorical reconfiguration of "natural" boundaries in the region

This paper will provide an assessment of rural studies in Turkey and explore how this tradition can be blended with new theoretical approaches in anthropology and sister disciplines. In societies without a colonial past, like Turkey, ethnographic research is not limited to anthropology. In this context, it is possible to start the rural ethnographic research tradition with the Hygenic and Social Geography of Turkey series of the 1920s. The peasantism movement of the Kemalist period was followed by the tradition elaborated by Paul Stirling, and rural studies went through their heyday with the village monographies of the 1960s and 1970s. These years also witnessed the shift from villages to towns as the unit of research. Ethnographies of Turkey have recently gained momentum both in Turkey and in academic circles abroad. However, parallel to this development, the weight of urban centers in research has practically created an urban-rural divide, concealing the connections between the urban and the rural. This paper will explore the legacy and the future of rural studies in Turkey by investigating the representations, uses and management of forests in Turkey throughout the 20th century. The silence in social science research with regard to forest villagers who make up half of the rural population is perhaps one of the most striking examples of this divide. Yet forestry is closely tied to the Turkish modernization project of nationalism and economic development. Moreover it is situated at the junction between the urban and the rural. Through the case of how forests are imagined, experienced and managed, this paper will investigate the processes of citizenship and state making in Turkey in the twentieth century, thereby emphasizing the need for a new generation of rural research in ethnographies of Turkey. Combined with the proliferation of new research trends in rural, agricultural and environmental matters carried out in the world today, a critical look at this tradition in Turkey will form the basis for a new rural studies tradition. This new tradition will also serve as a channel for environmental anthropology, an inter-disciplinary approach that has recently established itself in academic circles to take a hold in anthropologies of Turkey.

The economic system of Morocco's high plateaus, based on nomadic livestock breeding, has undergone a highly dynamic evolution. Major trends include: the sedentarization of people and urbanization of lifestyles, even though livestock management has become more mobile; a growing competition over territory with wide-ranging informal land appropriations; and the tapping of alternative income sources such as seasonal agricultural labor in Europe. My paper starts from the assumption that, as a consequence of such transformations, old ways of categorizing people are no longer adequate to describe new social realities and should hence be re-examined. Such traditional classifications are mainly related to a family's social position held within the tribal structures, and the number and type of animals they own. Instead, I look for alternative criteria to describe emerging socio-economic groups or strata more accurately. Which elements can highlight ongoing processes of differentiation and polarization or, conversely, of convergence and homogenization? Should the possession of certain items, like cars or TV sets, be understood as a status symbol? Does access to formal institutions and education make a difference? Or is herd size still the prime indicator of wealth and status? In order to answer such questions, I analyze data from a standardized household survey conducted in 2009 among three tribes in the province of Jerada, Morocco. These quantitative insights permit an assessment and discussion of new distinctions among the area's inhabitants.

This historical paper uses the methods of textual analysis and both archival and published sources to examine cultural and political responses to the 1960 earthquake in Agadir, Morocco, using the earthquake as a lens through which to view the transformation of relations at the dawn of the post-colonial era. Four years after Moroccan independence in 1956, Moroccan society and culture were in a period of transition from the social and political patterns of the colonial to the new realities of political sovereignty and continued economic dependence. The French were meanwhile struggling with their own experiences of decolonization, having ceded control of Morocco and Tunisia in order to continue a devastating and ultimately futile war to keep control of Algeria. As the French grappled with the weakening of their cultural and political power in Africa, the United States was expanding its influence as it sought allies, markets, and cultural prestige to counter the perceived threat of Communist influences. The seismic catastrophe that devastated the Moroccan coastal city of Agadir on February 29th, 1960 provided an opportunity for Moroccans, French, and Americans to re-conceptualize their relationships and to advance various and diverse agendas. The involvement of the French in relief and reconstruction efforts revived French colonial-era discourses of paternal benevolence, discourses that had been recently undermined by the brutality of French opposition to the independence movements in their colonies. For imperial apologists, the earthquake restored faith in a humanitarian France, helping peoples in need of tutelage and assistance, thus allowing the history of the French relationship with Africa once again to be viewed with pride rather than shame. Moreover, humanitarian relief offered the hope that France's economic strength and moral virtue could preserve France's influence in the world, even in the absence of a political empire. For Americans, the earthquake reinforced notions that the old colonial order was yielding to a new globalization of international relations in which the United States would take on a dominant role as a benevolent superpower. For the Moroccan monarchy and the nationalist leadership, the horror of 1960 had the potential to challenge the triumphant narrative of independence, and the Moroccan leadership moved quickly to recast the disaster as a nation-building event. The paper argues that all of these responses were shaped by older, colonial-era discourses that clouded perceptions of the situation at hand and distorted the formation of policy responses and effective propaganda.

This paper examines some of the challenges the counterinsurgency strategy of the Obama administation faces in Afghanistan. It argues that the many of the challenges that confound development straties in Counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts are also exist in post-conflict reconstruction processes in countries where violence has been brough to an end. In particular, these challenges center on satisfying the immediate needs of the population, building government capaicity, and involving local communities in the development process. In short, any post-conflict reconstruction process is a balancing act between providing security, humanitarian relief, and physical infrastrucuture, on the one hand, and addressing longer-term development objectives on the other. In the context of Afghanistan where the conflict is on-going, however, this balancing act become that much more complex since development and humanitarian assistance are inextricably linked with the military objecitves of the United States and its NATO allies. This nexus between security and development means that short-term security objectives may trump short-term and especially long-term development objectives. In other words, there is an inherent tension between the need to provide quick development projects that can "win the hearts and minds" of the popualtion which is central to the COIN effort and the need to craft long-term, sustainable development. This paper, argues that a key challenge that COIN efforts will face is how to draw on the best practices of development and post-conflict reconstruction work that point to key role that local capacity-building and lccoal owership of development efforts in ensuring sustainable development. Despite the existence of these best practices, translating this knolwedge into effective programming in post-conflict reconstruction has frequently not met the expectations of the local communities. All to often, reconstruction, reconciliation, and peace-building projects have been designed and implemented by international donors in ways that reflect their priorities, preferences, and values rather than those of local communities. As a consequence, local communities do not always feel that they have been sufficiently consulted during the process of design and implementation. Without such consultaitons and community input, many projects, however, well-intentioned, remain alien and disconnected from the needs and realities of ordinary people. By examining public opinion data from Afghanistan, this paper argues that in a case like Afghanistan, where the development process is so closely linked to miltiary objectives, this lack of local ownership of development is even more pronounced. This in turn has deteriminetal impact on launching sustainable development programs.