The Middle East in Global Politics - Dr Glen Rangwala
The Middle East is usually studied in international relations with an emphasis placed on power politics and inter-state relations, with attention given principally to crisis events that happen within the region. This course starts with this traditional literature, but moves quickly on to two approaches largely overlooked in it. First, it develops an understanding of the Middle East's politics that looks to the importance of transnational factors, including regional economic change, diasporas and refugee movements, and the politics of global religious movements. Secondly, it looks to how the Middle East figures in global political change; it interrogates the 'crisis perspective' on the Middle East through exploring international advocacy groups around the world which present the Middle East as a problem region, and it looks at how a conception of the Middle East shapes political sensibilities in other parts of the world. The course presumes pre-existing knowledge of the modern history and politics of the region. There will be no lectures directly accompanying the seminar series, but students may be interested to attend the lectures for the third year undergraduate course on the politics of the Middle East, POL12.