In this paper, I use a theoretical framework, Dis-[O]rientation, which I have been developing based upon the work of Homi Bhabha. I argue that as nomadic communities have been sedentarized throughout the MENA, provided with health care, education, and other "modern" amenities, they have entered a "Third Space," no longer living and behaving as herders, nor being fully absorbed within the settled societies which have sought to remove them from their historic cultural roots and lands. The existence of this "Space" is manifested in a variety of ways, including via gender relations. Using case study evidence collected in the Negev over the past two decades, I present my final findings of my most recent research study (2010) which suggests that as the State has actively sought to eliminate past social and economic activities, bedouin men have responded with increasingly higher rates of polygyny - that is, a so-called "traditional" behavior. And yet, the ethnic/national origins of second wives has changed considerably, progressing from the local (Israel) to the regional (MENA) to the global. I conclude the paper by contending that the phenomenon of neo-polygyny now developing in the region well represents communal efforts to negotiate/situate their newly developing identities within a "Third Space."

This paper examines the role of disciplinarity in the construction of American academic knowledge of the Middle East with a focus on the discipline of Geography. Questions of space, place, and landscape, as well as research on human/environmental relationships, have recently been at the forefront of some of the most exciting research trends in Middle East studies. In spite of the fact that, as a discipline, Geography emphasizes the spatial, and environmental dimensions of social and cultural processes, much of the recent research in the "spatial turn" in Middle East studies appears to enter the field through disciplines other than Geography. While there have been geographers engaged in Middle East studies for many years, the discipline has been a marginal one. Recently, a young cohort of discipline-trained geographers appears to be playing an increasing role in scholarship on the Middle East. Some of this research directly responds to and contributes to work in Middle East area studies, but much of it is published and presented in other discipline-specific venues. I argue that the disconnections and overlaps between discipline-trained geographic research and research in other disciplines in the "spatial turn" is a product of historic and contemporary problems of disciplinarity in the production of Middle East area studies knowledge. The closure of the Geography department at Harvard and the ensuing exclusion of geography from the Ivy League had particular consequences, as geographers have lacked many of the institutional connections and resources bridging their research to other fields. Disciplinarity continues to be of issue, as decreasing university resources and an increasing need for external funding for core university functions intensifies the reliance, institutionally, on disciplinary conceptual approaches and methodologies as well as hiring, teaching, and tenure and promotion requirements structured around departmental (and thus, disciplinary) priorities. Middle East area studies research may be challenging to produce in disciplines straddling a hard science/social science/humanities divide, or in contexts where externally funded research which reifies disciplinary paradigms may take priority. This paper is based on interviews with geographers and senior academics in Middle East studies, a survey of recent published research in the "spatial turn" in Middle East studies, and on a historic examination of the production of Middle East area studies knowledge by geographers. This research contributes to existing research on the 'crisis in area studies' which interrogates the cultural and economic politics of Middle East area studies research.

Since the introduction of Western Modernity into Egypt, and the subsequent increase in consumerism, the definition of gendered space in the market place has radically transformed. As recently as fifty years ago, middle and upper class women relied on tailors or home visits from vendors to obtain clothing, and much of their groceries were delivered. Currently, women figure prominently in shopping streets and malls. Not only are there clothing and accessories stores designed exclusively for women, but women are expected to do most of the family's shopping, including clothing, food and household goods. While this seems completely customary in a western context, it demonstrates a dramatic change in Egypt over the last fifty years. Building on the work of Mona Abaza, Homa Hoodfar and Galal Amin, who all studied consumer culture in Cairo, this paper investigates gendered retail space in Alexandria, Egypt. By using three case studies to discuss the boundaries and norms of gendered commercial space--Zinqat al-Sittat, the women's suq, Sharia Said Zaghloul, the main shopping street, and San Stefano, a new shopping mall - this paper examines gendered space on the urban micro level. This study looks at the percentage of shops dedicated to women's goods, the percentage of women shoppers in all shops and the percentage of women shop keepers to determine the physical presence of women in the market place and how that differs by type of market. This data is correlated with ethnographic accounts and interviews by the author about shopping habits and preferences to help understand why people make certain retail choices and how they perceive societal norms. Because the norms are in a state of change, it is important to document the actual current conditions rather than relying on anecdotes or assumptions. This will increase an understanding of the shifting societal norms in relation to gendered space in the market place.

Scholars of African cities have long struggled to articulate Egypt's urban African identity. Recent work on postcolonial African urbanism has focused on other sub-Saharan African cities that feature marginalized urban majorities segregated along lines of class, race or ethnicity, or cities whose governmental regimes physically relocated human and industrial resources to match state ideology and establish legibility and control within urban environments. If these are the requirements for a postcolonial African urban environment, the recent history of Cairo, Egypt should be considered. In 1969, facing exponential population growth and a struggling post-1967 war economy, Gamal 'Abd al-Nasir formally announced his New-Town program, which established satellite cities in the arid desert around Cairo, and attempted to move displaced Bedouin farmers and middle class Cairean residents and industry in an effort to control the alarming population growth rate and jumpstart the agricultural economic sector. However, the program's legacy has been marked by its logistical failures rather than its economic and social successes. Since 1969, fourteen satellite communities have suffered from lack of resources, public transportation, and permanent residents. Like in other African nations, the Egyptian government borrowed advice and plans from a variety of international firms and donors in an attempt to transform the New-Town Program into a sustainable urban development project. In addition, Cairo's New-Town Program failed to consider existing social patterns in favor of a nationalist ideology. In this paper, I track the history of the New-Town Program in light of recent works on "unique" African cities by asking two questions: in what ways did the Egyptian government mirror actions taken by other nations on the African continent when designing the New-Town Program, and in which ways did it differi And, given the existence of these trends, can a case be made for Cairo as not only an African city, but as one that its distinguishable in possessing characteristics of social formation that are endemic only to its metropolitan areap I assert that the New-Town program is similar to other African urban modernist projects in terms of its scale, financial cost, and stated commitment to urban improvement, but suffered the same fate as similar African modernist urban programs as it attempted to socially engineer environments that were incompatible for sustained economic growth and social interaction due to flaws in design, resource distribution, and individual-level support.

The massive geographic changes wrought by the Aswan High Dam necessitated a remapping of Egyptian space through new narratives of time and family. The state and many ordinary Egyptians hailed the dam's benefits to the nation's progress toward technological modernity in the late 1950s and early 1960s. `Abd al-Halim Hafiz's ode "The High Dam" blared in mundane public spaces (Fernea and Fernea 1991), extolling the dam's challenge to colonialism and its ability to restore time in Egypt: "Let's build the land's future and return it to its youth." Simultaneously, the dam threatened the loss of Nubia, prompting government sponsorship of preservation and documentation campaigns through archeology, art/literature, ethnography, and photography. These campaigns fixed Nubia as "the past" (Winegar, 177) but also as female, through different conceptions of the relationship of that past to other layers of the past and contemporary people and objects. Yusuf Chahine's 1968 film about building the dam (al-Nass wal-nil; a Soviet co-production) depicted the different cultural, social, and environmental costs of the project for Egyptians, Nubians, and Soviets at work on the dam. The film specifically contrasted the dam's modernity with the inadequacy of women's social rights in Egypt, Soviet Russia, and Nubia. Understanding the struggles over the High Dam requires historians to disentangle competing narratives of time and family used to describe cultural heritage, riparian technology, and national progress. Christopher Witmore has recently called for clarification of "the measurement of time, a succession of dates--chronos--[from] the nature of time, which, like the weather, is much more chaotic and unpredictable--kairos" (AHR, December 2009, 1396). Different notions of the family helped to naturalize conceptions about the nature of time in these debates, this paper argues; a particular conflation of space, time, and gender made palatable an event suspended between the promise of national development and the suffering of humans and the environment. 2010 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the start of building the High Dam. Although aspects of the story have been documented in different disciplines (i.e., art history, sociology, engineering, political science), the contours of popular engagement with the dam project have not been explored. Such a study of the popular cultural politics of the dam challenges the conventional picture of cultural politics in the 1960s as either wholly dictated by the state (i.e., the Arab Socialist Union or newly subsidized universities) or wholly oppositional to it (the communists and Islamists).

Until recently, the Arab world's primary demographic problem has been the persistence of high fertility, which has contributed to rapid rates of natural increase and produced excessively high dependence ratios, with a large percentage of the population yet to enter reproductive age and join the labor force. However, fertility rates have fallen sharply in most countries and rapid rates of natural increase have abated. Paradoxically, this decline in fertility will combine with increases in longevity to create another perhaps equally serious demographic problem in the near future: a rapid aging of the population. While this phenomenon has largely been associated with mature industrial countries like Japan and Italy, Arab countries also face a dramatic shift in their age structure. In 2000, only 5.5 percent of the population in twenty two Arab countries was over the age of 65. By 2050, this is projected to increase to almost 15 percent. Countries that have experienced the sharpest drop in fertility will experience the most rapid aging: in Lebanon and Tunisia, potentially one of every four people will be over 65 by 2050, while in Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria the figure could exceed one in every five. Although extended family structures and multi-generational households will ensure that the elderly will be cared for, few Arab countries are prepared for a shift of this magnitude. Health care systems will be particularly burdened as morbidity and epidemiological patterns change and degenerative diseases increasingly supplant infectious ones. Once again, most countries will face high dependence ratios, this time because the working age population is supporting so many people over 65 rather than under 15. This paper documents the forthcoming shift in age structure with population pyramids and other illustrative charts and examines some of its social and economic implications. Because so much of its content can best be exhibited graphically, the material lends itself particularly well to a poster presentation.