Most research on the Gulf states focuses on oil and its impact on state power. The literature on rentier theory almost unanimously agrees that oil rents buy off citizens and lead to socio-political stagnation. Massive protests and government attempts to address citizen demands in Kuwait between 2011 and 2013 call into question that narrative. Since those protests, the Kuwaiti government has taken steps to increase its representation of public officials and accessibility in the public sphere, including by expanding the government's presence on Instagram. How have Kuwaiti citizens voiced their opinions to government accounts? And how has the government responded to online criticism?

This essay looks at the pattern of interactions between the state and Kuwaiti citizens on Twitter and Instagram using a content analysis of government accounts. The findings raise questions about the validity of the payoff thesis and understandings of consent and acquiescence. My analysis illustrates that there is a public dialogue that moves beyond the rigid structure of state and society by which the literature has traditionally understood Gulf rentier societies.

The term “social sciences” (‘ulūm-i-ijtimā’ī) has gained currency in Iran only during the last fifteen years or so, but some of the disciplines falling within its purview have been in existence for a longer period. Thus the first institution for teaching political science was established in 1899, and the first chair of sociology was created in 19 35 in the University of Tehran. Besides, iike Molière’s bourgeois gentillhomme who belatedly realized that he had been making prose all his life without being aware of it, some Iranian scholars too have long been engaged in writing, translating and conducting research on social problems or using sociological concepts without being conscious of themselves as social scientists.

Since from a chronological viewpoint, political science appeared in Iran prior to other disciplines of social sciences and its studies involve problems of a distinct nature, the present paper is divided into two parts: the first dealing with political science, and the second with sociology and related disciplines.

When asked to gather information for any type of research project, books are the last place many of our students want to look, unless forced to do so because print sources are required as part of the assignment. The research tool of this “post-literate” generation is the computer, and their most frequently used source of information is the internet. In fact, using the internet seems to be the best way to keep my students engaged in any extensive, or ongoing, research project.

Syria, its contemporary life as well as its long history, presents immensely rewarding possibilities for the student of the Middle East. Moreover, there is a great deal of published material on Syria’s geography, ethnography, and social and political institutions, but — as one would expect in view of the modern history of the Levant — the overwhelming majority of these studies have flowed from the pens of French scholars. Indeed, most Americans, even those highly conversant with Middle Eastern affairs, regard Syria with befuddlement if not consternation. As a result, Syria is truly a neglected area in American scholarship. There have been few attempts to investigate the country seriously even from the outside, let alone to conduct research within its borders. On the other hand, those Americans who have worked in Syria, including the present writer, have found it a good place to carry out scientific research, so long as one observes certain commonsense rules. In the following paragraphs, I shall try to sketch the areas where research is permitted, research facilities available in Syria, the varying procedures necessary to gain research permission, and living conditions. Because of the nature of my own work there, most of my comments refer specifically to Damascus unless otherwise stated. Likewise, all the data presented in this paper was gathered before the outbreak of fighting on October 6, 1973, and may thus be only partly valid as of this writing.

A New Academic fashion in the disciplines of history, anthropology, and cultural criticism is to “foreground” authors in works of scholarship. But it is not in imitation of what is currently fashionable that I have chosen to make my address autobiographical. I am a historian who enjoys writing narrative history and who elsewhere has argued that the narrative remains as valuable and as legitimate in modern scholarship as theory. So here I wish to tell a story that may hold some lessons for those scholars who seek freedom from the constraints imposed both by the norms of Middle Eastern societies and by the rules of the western academy. In our post-modern, post-structural, post-colonial world, all the certitudes have been shaken, and the narrative might well be the only kind of story that we can relate to with any kind of authority.

These three books, written by sociologist Syed Farid Alatas and historian Allen James Fromherz, represent the continued academic fascination with the Muqaddimah, the work of the North African Arab Muslim historical theorist Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406). The Muqaddimah has been the subject of an entire library of articles and books since it was first published and translated in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. Written mainly by Westerners and Western-educated Middle Easterners, most of these publications have studied one or another aspect of Ibn Khaldun's dialectical model of tribal state formation, which constitutes the intellectual core of the Muqaddimah. Many authors of these works have also noticed and commented on the similarity of Ibn Khaldun's historical model to Western sociological theory. Relatively few scholars have written about Ibn Khaldun himself. Most but not all of these scholars agree that Ibn Khaldun was a brilliantly original intellectual, but many express different views about the genesis and nature of his ideas and their significance. Alatas and Fromherz provide two contrasting studies. Alatas's two books are closely related sequential studies, devoted to explaining Ibn Khaldun's model and relating it to the social sciences. Fromherz's work is biographical, although he also discusses Ibn Khaldun's theories. Both authors make significant contributions to the understanding of the man and his ideas, while also implicitly demonstrating why Ibn Khaldun and the Muqaddimah will continue to be subjects of research and controversy.