Table Of ContentA Cr itiCA l PolitiCA l
EConom y of thE middlE E Ast
A nd north A fr iCA
Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern
and Islamic Societies and Cultures
A Critical Political
Economy of the
Middle East and
North Africa
Edited by
Joel Beinin, Bassam Haddad,
and Sherene Seikaly
Stanford University Press
stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2021 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All
rights reserved.
“Ten Propositions on Oil” ©2021 by Timothy Mitchell.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written
permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Beinin, Joel, 1948– editor. | Haddad, Bassam, editor. | Seikaly,
Sherene, 1971– editor.
Title: A critical political economy of the Middle East and North Africa /
Joel Beinin, Bassam Haddad, and Sherene Seikaly.
Other titles: Stanford studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic societies and
cultures.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2021. | Series:
Stanford studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic societies and cultures |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020025580 (print) | LCCN 2020025581 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781503613836 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503614475 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781503614482 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Middle East—Economic conditions. | Africa, North—
Economic conditions. | Middle East—Economic policy. | Africa,
North—Economic policy.
Classification: LCC HC415.15 .C756 2021 (print) | LCC HC415.15 (ebook) |
DDC 330.956—dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov/ 2020025580
LC ebook record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov/ 2020025581
Cover design: Christian Fuenfhausen
Typeset by Newgen in 10.5/14.4 Brill
Contents
list of Contributors vii
Introduction 1
Joel Beinin
PArt 1. CAtEgoriEs of ANAlysis
1 Landed Property, Capital Accumulation, and Polymorphous Capitalism:
Egypt and the Levant 25
Kristen Alff
2 State, Market, and Class: Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia 46
max Ajl, Bassam haddad, and Zeinab Abul-magd
3 Ten Propositions on Oil 68
timothy mitchell
4 Regional Militaries and the Global Military-Industrial Complex 85
shana marshall
PArt 2. CouNtry/rEgioNAl studiEs
5 Rethinking Class and State in the Gulf Cooperation Council 105
Adam hanieh
6 Capitalism in Egypt, Not Egyptian Capitalism 123
Aaron Jakes and Ahmad shokr
7 State, Oil, and War in the Formation of Iraq 143
nida Alahmad
vi Contents
8 C olonial Capitalism and Imperial Myth in French North Africa 161
muriam haleh davis
9 L ebanon Beyond Exceptionalism 179
Ziad m. Abu-rish
10 The US-Israeli Alliance 196
Joel Beinin
11 Repercussions of Colonialism in the Occupied Palestinian Territories 215
samia Al-Botmeh
notes 237
selected readings 305
index 321
Contributors
Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and professor
of Middle East history, Emeritus, at Stanford University. He has written and
coedited twelve books, most recently, Workers and thieves: labor movements
and Popular Uprisings in tunisia and Egypt. In 2001-2 he served as president
of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA).
Bassam Haddad is the director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Pro-
gram and an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government
at George Mason University. He is the author of Business networks in syria: the
Political Economy of Authoritarian resilience, and coeditor/founder of Jadaliyya
e-zine. Bassam received MESA’s Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his
service to the profession and as executive director of the Arab Studies Institute.
He is the founder of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Project, MESPI .org.
Sherene Seikaly is an associate professor of history at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. Seikaly’s men of Capital: scarcity and Economy in
mandate Palestine explores how Palestinian capitalists and British colonial
officials used economy to shape territory, nationalism, the home, and the body.
Her next book project, from Baltimore to Beirut: on the Question of Palestine,
follows the trajectory of a peripatetic medical doctor to place Palestine in a
vii
viii Contributors
global history of race, capital, slavery, and dispossession. She is the coeditor
of Journal of Palestine studies and cofounder and coeditor of Jadaliyya e-zine.
Zeinab Abul-Magd is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Oberlin
College. She is the author of militarizing the nation: the Army, Business, and
revolution in Egypt and imagined Empires: A history of revolt in Egypt. She
earned her PhD in economic history at Georgetown University and BA in
political science at Cairo University.
Ziad Abu-Rish is Co-Director of the MA Program in Human Rights and
the Arts and Visiting Associate Professor of Human Rights at Bard College.
In 2020–21 he was the American Druze Foundation Fellow in the Center for
Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He serves as Co-Editor
of Arab studies Journal and Jadaliyya.
Max Ajl is a post-doctoral researcher at Wageningen University and an
associated researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and
the Environment. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Peasant studies
and review of African Political Economy. He writes on national liberation and
postcolonial development in the Arab region.
Nida Alahmad is a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh’s Politics and
International Relations department. She is currently completing a book manu-
script with the tentative title state matters: theorizing the state and its Experts
through the iraqi Experience.
Kristen Alff is an assistant professor of history and international studies
at North Carolina State University. Her work focuses on business history, the
history of capitalism, gender, and agrarian history of the Levant between the
late Ottoman and early Mandate periods. Kristen’s book manuscript in prog-
ress is a global history of capital and property in Palestine.
Samia Al-Botmeh is an assistant professor of economics at Birzeit Uni-
versity. Her areas of interest include gender economics and political economy
of development with a special focus on Palestine.
Contributors ix
Muriam Haleh Davis is an assistant professor of history at the University
of California, Santa Cruz. Her current book project investigates how colonial
ideas of Islam underpinned the construction of economic planning initiatives
in Algeria, from the liberal capitalist system envisioned by French planners to
the socialist policies introduced by the independent Algerian state. She has
articles in Journal of modern history and Journal of European integration, and
she recently coedited an edited volume entitled north Africa and the making
of Europe: Governance, institutions and Culture.
Adam Hanieh is a reader in development studies at SOAS, University of Lon-
don. His research focuses on the political economy of class and state formation,
with a geographical emphasis on the Middle East. He is the author of three
books, most recently money, markets, and monarchies: the Gulf Cooperation
Council and Political Economy of the Contemporary middle East, which was
awarded the 2019 International Political Economy Group (IPEG) Book Prize of
the British International Studies Association and the 2019 Middle East Political
Economy Project Book Prize by the Arab Studies Institute.
Aaron G. Jakes is an assistant professor of history at the New School,
where he teaches on the modern Middle East and South Asia, comparative
studies of colonialism and imperialism, global environmental history, and
the historical geography of capitalism. He is the author of Egypt’s occupation:
Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism.
Shana Marshall is the associate director of the Institute for Middle East
Studies at George Washington University. She earned her PhD in international
relations and comparative politics of the Middle East at the University of
Maryland–College Park in 2012. Her research focuses on the political economy
of militaries in Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE, and has appeared in middle East
report (mEriP), international Journal of middle East studies, Jadaliyya, and
the Carnegie Middle East Center.
Timothy Mitchell is the Ransford Professor of Middle Eastern Studies
at Columbia University. He teaches and writes about the politics of the Arab
world, the making of economic ideas and other forms of expert knowledge,
