Featured Research

After the Arab Revolutions in 2011, Tunisia became a symbol of freedom and justice and thus the hope of an entire region. Now, the picture has been reversed: Political freedoms are being curtailed and the economy is in disarray, especially after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In the face of expanding inequality, resentment and attacks against ›Others‹ fall on fertile ground

As climate crisis ensues, a transition away from fossil fuels becomes urgent. However, some renewable energy developments are propagating injustices such as land grabs, colonial dispossession, and environmentally destructive practices. Changing the way we imagine and understand wind will help us ensure a globally just wind energy future. Saharan Winds contributes to a fairer energy horizon by illuminating the role of imaginaries—how we understand energy sources such as wind and the meanings we attach to wind—in determining the wider politics, whether oppressive or just, associated with energy systems.

This article investigates the dialogic construction of Jordanian identity discourse as reflected through the production of everyday discourse on the nation, following both Anderson’s (1983) idea of nation as a ‘socially constructed community’ and Billig’s (1995) concept of ‘banal nationalism’. Against both the narrative of unifying regime initiatives and Transjordanian ethnic exclusivism, we delve deeper into the narrative of everyday nationalism, revolving around everyday practices through which ordinary people ‘choose the nation’ by means of popular culture. We draw on nationalist songs, memes, graffiti and social media hashtags where Jordanian ‘everyday nationalism’ involves a dialogic construction of identity that can draw on either Transjordanian or Palestinian symbolism. This discourse of nationhood is dialogic through its constitutive, if oppositional, relationship between symbols representing Transjordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin. Here, 'choosing the nation’ goes beyond simple narratives of unity or exclusion, reproducing constitutive identity fractures yet remaining dependent on their continued existence.

This book provides an exhaustive analysis of the relationship between violence, urban space, and political subjectivity in Syria. It does so through an exploration of how urbicide, the violent destruction and alteration of the urban fabric, becomes a tool for the regime's governmental and sovereign exercise of power, decisively redefining state-society dynamics and cementing political loyalty in Syria. Read more: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526180261/

‘Vulnerability’ saturates contemporary humanitarian discourse and practice in English. But how is ‘vulnerability’ operationalised and translated – both literally and figuratively – and what can these dynamics tell us about the humanitarian system? Drawing on an extensive engagement with humanitarianism in Jordan, this article explores how ‘vulnerability’ is turned from a ubiquitous designator of need to an operationalizable indicator in humanitarian assessments, how ‘vulnerability’ overlaps and collides with national systems for determining need and targeting, and how the idea of ‘vulnerability’ is communicated in Arabic.