Middle Eastern Networks: Society, Elites, and Radical Movements

Middle Eastern Networks: Society, Elites, and Radical Movements
Dr. Harel Chorev Halewa
 

The purpose of this course is to expose its students to the new methodologies offered by the interdisciplinary science of Network Analysis, and the ways in which they can be used to better understand social and political actors in the Middle East. The course opens with an introduction in which we will study basic tools and research approaches of Network Analysis. After the introduction, we will apply these tools and concepts to different case studies.
 

Participation and assignments
Absence of three classes without justification cancels the student's participation in the course. The course grade will be calculated according to 20% participation, and 80% home-exam' score.
1. Introduction: the methodology of Network Analysis in Middle Eastern Studies
Reading:
Albert Laszlo Barabasi, Linked (Cambridge: Perseus, 2002), pp. 1-9, 41-64.
2. The Islamic civilization's networks
3. Informal familial & legal networks of customary law ('Urf) in Israel and Palestine.
Reading:
Doron Pely, “Where East Not Always Meets West: Comparing the Sulha Process to Western-Style Mediation and Arbitration,” Conflict Resolution Quarterly, vol. 28, no 4 (Summer 2011), pp. 427-440.
Doron Pely, “Honor: the Sulha’s Main Dispute Resolution Tool,” Conflict Resolution Quarterly, vol. 28, no 1 (Fall 2010), pp. 67-81.
Movie: ʿAjami (2009).
4. Elite and Family Organizationsʼ networks: the Cases of the Ja'abaris (Hebron) and the al-Masris (Nablus).
Reading:
Harel Chorev-Halewa, “Changes in the Status of the Palestinian Elite Families: the Al-Jaʿabari and the Al-Masri Organizations,” forthcoming.
5. Social Media Networks and the Arab Spring.
Harel Chorev, “The Spring of the Networked Nation: Social Media and the Arab Spring,” The Levantine Review, Vol. 1, No. 2 (December 2012), pp. 120-139. Documentary: Chicago Girl (2013)
6. The Networks of Hamas: guerilla, Terror and institutionalization.
Ziad Abu Amr, “In the Right Place at the Right Times: Shaykh Ahmad Yasin and the Origins of Hamas,” in Scott Appleby (ed.) Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalists Leaders of the Middle East, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996).
Documentary: Hamas behind the Mask (2005).
Crime and Punishment in the Gaza Strip (2011).
7. The Networks of al-Qa'ida.
Will be given later.