This collection of essays investigates questions of oil and water resources contestation, wars, and cooperation in the context of the Gulf region, especially Iraq, and of the Nile Basin. It explores different opinions, rather than arrive at consensus, regarding the following questions: Does scarcity lead to violent conflicts? Or does abundance? And once war starts, what is the role of resources in expanding/limiting the scope and intensity of war and prolonging/shortening it? Finally could resources, whether scarce or abundant, induce cooperation instead of dispute and violence? Why and how? Cairo Papers in Social Science 30/4
The Burden of Resources: Oil and Water in the Gulf Region and the Nile Basin
Cairo Papers Vol. 30, No. 4
Edited bySharif S. Elmusa
1 May 2011
112 pp.
14X19cm
ISBN 9789774164507
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$19.95
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Edited bySharif S. ElmusaThis pioneering, multidisciplinary volume, explores a rich constellation of ideas about the natural environment in the Middle East and their philosophical, political, historical, and gendered roots. It does this through close textual analyses of the Epic of Gilgamesh (Sharif Elmusa), Hayy Ibn Yazan and Robinson Crusoe (Robert Switzer), the Letter of the Animals (Elizabeth Sartain), and modern Egyptian fiction (Maysa Hayward). These are framed by an editor’s introduction and an article by John McNeill, winner of 2001 World History Association Book Award. Cairo Papers Vol. 26, no. 1.
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