The past two years have seen surges of Arab masses participating in the movement(s) we know as the “Arab Spring.” While these populations have been calling for democracy, prosperity, and greater transparency from their governments, there has been little response from Western donors and development agencies, apart from superficial enthusiasm and support for the movements. This article argues that the lack of Western development response is a consequence of the pervasiveness of the West's Orientalist reflections of itself, which are its roles as definer, saviour, envisioner, and exception. These reflections have not been challenged by the “Arab Spring”; rather, they have been reconstituted and repurposed while retaining the trace of Orientalist discourse. This article concludes by suggesting that these Orientalist reflections can be done away with only by directly challenging the uneven exchange between the West and the region.

This article analyzes and assesses the impacts of Israeli-imposed physical obstructions on the mobility of Palestinians in the West Bank, using a case study focused on the Bethlehem-Ramallah route. These physical obstructions or mobility restrictions, introduced in the form of a matrix of checkpoints and barriers in the West Bank territory, arguably have negative implications for the articulation of a sustainable Palestinian state. The research methodology adopted is built through deliberations on available data sources (literature reviews, published reports, field-work investigations, and mapping interpretations using geographic information systems, or GIS). The findings show that in terms of both time and distance, the route Palestinians are forced to take to commute between Bethlehem and Ramallah is twice as long as the route that they could take if there were no mobility restrictions. Furthermore, if all checkpoints were closed, or if the Israeli El Plan were implemented, no travel at all would be possible, and the northern parts of the West Bank would be completely cut off from the southern parts.

The collapse of Soviet authority in Central Asia has left these states with an inchoate national identity. In Uzbekistan, an identity is emerging that is closely linked to the reemergence of Islam as a social and cultural substate, in spite of a decades-long effort to excise Islam from the region's cultural geography.Since independence, the administration of Islam Karimov has undertaken to incorporate elements of Islam into national identity, albeit only under conditions determined and controlled by the state. At the same time, the religious landscape has been transformed, with thousands of new mosques and medressehs appearing in the years after the dispersal of Marxist-Leninist ideology. The recovery of the Islamic heritage and its connection to national identity is reinforced by recent field research. Surveys of university students taken in several geographically-dispersed cities indicate solid support among youth in Uzbekistan for the precepts of the faith, a clear sign that the region's long divorce f...

The Aqaba by-pass was constructed through extremely rugged and arid granite mountains and alluvial piedmont overlooking the lower Wadi Araba and the Gulf of Aqaba. Different landform units, surface materials, and abundant ephemeral wadi channels exist along the road corridor. On 21 March 1991, after the completion of road construction and before its opening to trafic, a flood of 6-7 years return period occurred and caused heavy damage to the road. Another flood in December 1993 exposed the road to additional damage and problems. A geomorphological survey was carried out to evaluate the road corridor with respect to fluvial processes affecting the road and its safety. Three engineering geomorphological problems were recognized: (i) inadequate design for almost all major and minor wadi crossings; (ii) lack of understanding of geomorphic setting along the road corridor—fluvial activity, braided and changing wadi channels, sediment sources, and potential flood hazard had not been fully appreciated in the desi...

Based on discourse analysis of 226 Web-based newspaper reports on three major cyclones in the Bay of Bengal—Gorky (1991), Sidr (2007), and Nargis (2008)—this study assesses a number of research assumptions dealing with media framing of cyclone vulnerability on the Bay of Bengal coast. Using a social constructionist perspective, the content of each report is classified into several segments, each providing data on how the selected newspapers framed certain aspects of the disaster news. Frequency counts of these themes provide specific data for assessing several research paradigms. Newspaper discourse was replete with references to a set of socio-economic variables as elements of risk, such as an impoverished population, marginal locations in low-lying topographic settings, poor-quality housing, and a risk-prone subsistence economy, as the context for cyclone vulnerability on the Bay of Bengal coast. Data obtained from discourse analysis also provide evidence of cyclone victims' vulnerability due to logisti...

This article reviews three bilateral agreements made between Jordan and Syria over the last 50 years regarding use of the shared waters of the Yarmouk River. Jordan began constructing the long-planned Unity Dam and the permanent Adaseya diversion weir only after concluding the most recent agreement, in 2001. The article presents land-area and economic calculations to suggest why Jordan agreed to narrower and less favourable terms in the 2001 agreement—including a lowered dam height, a smaller allocation of Yarmouk waters, and a larger share of dam construction costs. It also identifies several environmental and political issues that the 2001 agreement does not address. The analysis shows that changing politics, hydrology, land use, and economics have motivated multiple past Yarmouk water agreements and may resurface to require further negotiations in the future.

The physical setting of the Karak Plateau and surrounding region in west-central Jordan provides an excellent opportunity to analyze ancient settlement practices and patterns. The western upland region is typified by agriculturally productive soils, annual precipitation amounts near 500 mm, and physical isolation from regions to the north and south by virtue of the Wadis Mujib and Hasa. The rocky slopes of the Dead Sea escarpment and the arid conditions of the Syrian/Arabian desert define the region's western and eastern borders. This paper explores the movement of ancient site locations across this diverse landscape from the Chalcolithic through the Umayyad periods, against the backdrop of climate and climate change. Though ancient settlement decisions were made on the basis of numerous and often complex factors (environmental and socio-political), this investigation found a definite correlation between climatic conditions and site location decisions. With one exception (the Nabatean Period), site densit...

Edward Said's influence on cultural, literary, and historical theory in post-colonial Ireland is highly significant. Theorists such as Seamus Deane, Declan Kiberd, and Luke Gibbons have engaged productively with Said's work to elucidate and interrogate the ways in which colonization and decolonization operate(d) in the Irish context, particularly through literary and historical texts. Irish geographers, however, have been slow to engage with the implications of Said's work for the construction of geographic knowledge, despite Said's obvious concern for the intersection of geography, colonialism, and decolonization. The geographical sense, he wrote, makes possible the construction of various kinds of knowledge, all of them in one way or another dependent upon the perceived character and destiny of a particular (1994, 78).In this essay, we draw on Said's insights into the process of decolonization to speculate on ways in which geography and geographic knowledge in newly independent Ireland may...