Saudi Youth


Book Description




Being Young, Male and Saudi


Book Description

Based on remarkable primary research, this unique contemporary account of the lives of young Saudi men reveals a distinct group of voices.




Youth in Saudi Arabia


Book Description

This book uses the youth life stage as a window through which to view all domains of life in present-day Saudi Arabia: family life, education, the impact of new media, the labour market, religion and politics. The authors draw extensively on their interviews with 25-35 year olds, selected so as to represent the life chances of males and females who grow up in different socio-economic strata, and typically face different futures. The book presents an account of the ways in which family life, education, religion, employment and the housing regimes interlock, and how and why this interlocking is subject to increasing stresses. The chapters, which are built on documentary research, official published statistics and the authors’ original evidence, provide invaluable insights into Saudi youth, which has never before been examined in such depth. Youth in Saudi Arabia will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including Sociology, Politics and Middle East Studies.




Changed Identities


Book Description

An examination of the forces affecting the attitudes, motivation and aspirations of the new generation in Saudi Arabia, structured around the themes of identity and change. It explores the tension between perceptions of tradition and modernity.




Culture and Customs of Saudi Arabia


Book Description

Saudi Arabia is a young nation with an ancient history. It is one of the most conservative traditional societies in the world grappling with the impact of modernization wrought by the influx of great oil wealth beginning only in the mid twentieth century. Saudi culture is in constant flux, and the culture gap between the West and Saudi Islamic culture is wide. Culture and Customs of Saudi Arabia is the first cultural overview of country and provides timely, authoritative insight into a major Middle Eastern power. The Saudis are a proud people with a closed society, but circumstances have caused them to play an important role in current world affairs. The author has lived and worked in Saudi Arabia and has extensively used his contacts there to provide up-to-date material. Saudi culture developed through age-old interactions between the Arabian peoples and their harsh desert environment. Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam, and the basic Islamic values of Saudi culture have remained to this day. The themes of an ancient desert society infused with Islam values on a collision course with modernity are interplayed throughout chapters on the land, people, and history, traditional Islamic culture and modernization, the extended family and gender roles, cuisine and dress, social customs, rites of passage, and holidays, communication and mass media, and artistic expression. Color photos and a map, chronology, and glossary round out the narrative.




On Saudi Arabia


Book Description

With over thirty years of experience writing about Saudi Arabia, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and former publisher of The Wall Street Journal Karen Elliott House has an unprecedented knowledge of life inside this shrouded kingdom. Through anecdotes, observation, analysis, and extensive interviews, she navigates the maze in which Saudi citizens find themselves trapped and reveals the sometimes contradictory nature of the nation that is simultaneously a final bulwark against revolution in the Middle East and a wellspring of Islamic terrorists. Saudi Arabia finds itself threatened by fissures and forces on all sides, and On Saudi Arabia explores in depth what this portends for the country’s future—and our own.




On Saudi Arabia


Book Description

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter who has spent the last thirty years writing about Saudi Arabia—as diplomatic correspondent, foreign editor, and then publisher of The Wall Street Journal—an important and timely book that explores all facets of life in this shrouded Kingdom: its tribal past, its complicated present, its precarious future. Through observation, anecdote, extensive interviews, and analysis Karen Elliot House navigates the maze in which Saudi citizens find themselves trapped and reveals the mysterious nation that is the world’s largest exporter of oil, critical to global stability, and a source of Islamic terrorists. In her probing and sharp-eyed portrait, we see Saudi Arabia, one of the last absolute monarchies in the world, considered to be the final bulwark against revolution in the region, as threatened by multiple fissures and forces, its levers of power controlled by a handful of elderly Al Saud princes with an average age of 77 years and an extended family of some 7,000 princes. Yet at least 60 percent of the increasingly restive population they rule is under the age of 20. The author writes that oil-rich Saudi Arabia has become a rundown welfare state. The public pays no taxes; gets free education and health care; and receives subsidized water, electricity, and energy (a gallon of gasoline is cheaper in the Kingdom than a bottle of water), with its petrodollars buying less and less loyalty. House makes clear that the royal family also uses Islam’s requirement of obedience to Allah—and by extension to earthly rulers—to perpetuate Al Saud rule. Behind the Saudi facade of order and obedience, today’s Saudi youth, frustrated by social conformity, are reaching out to one another and to a wider world beyond their cloistered country. Some 50 percent of Saudi youth is on the Internet; 5.1 million Saudis are on Facebook. To write this book, the author interviewed most of the key members of the very private royal family. She writes about King Abdullah’s modest efforts to relax some of the kingdom’s most oppressive social restrictions; women are now allowed to acquire photo ID cards, finally giving them an identity independent from their male guardians, and are newly able to register their own businesses but are still forbidden to drive and are barred from most jobs. With extraordinary access to Saudis—from key religious leaders and dissident imams to women at university and impoverished widows, from government officials and political dissidents to young successful Saudis and those who chose the path of terrorism—House argues that most Saudis do not want democracy but seek change nevertheless; they want a government that provides basic services without subjecting citizens to the indignity of begging princes for handouts; a government less corrupt and more transparent in how it spends hundreds of billions of annual oil revenue; a kingdom ruled by law, not royal whim. In House’s assessment of Saudi Arabia’s future, she compares the country today to the Soviet Union before Mikhail Gorbachev arrived with reform policies that proved too little too late after decades of stagnation under one aged and infirm Soviet leader after another. She discusses what the next generation of royal princes might bring and the choices the kingdom faces: continued economic and social stultification with growing risk of instability, or an opening of society to individual initiative and enterprise with the risk that this, too, undermines the Al Saud hold on power. A riveting book—informed, authoritative, illuminating—about a country that could well be on the brink, and an in-depth examination of what all this portends for Saudi Arabia’s future, and for our own.




The Son King


Book Description

In 2018, journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi regime operatives, shocking the international community and tarnishing the reputation of Muhammad bin Salman, the kingdom's young, reformist crown prince. Domestically, bin Salman's reforms have proven divisive, and his adoption of populist nationalism and fierce repression of diverse critical voices--religious scholars, feminists and dissident youth--have failed to silence a vibrant and well-connected Saudi society. Madawi Al-Rasheed lays bare the world of repression behind the crown prince's reforms. She dissects the Saudi regime's propaganda and progressive new image, while also dismissing Orientalist views that despotism is the only pathway to stable governance in the Middle East. Charting old and new challenges to the fragile Saudi nation from the kingdom's very inception, this blistering book exposes the dangerous contradictions at the heart of the Son King's Saudi Arabia.




Business and Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia


Book Description

An investor's crucial guide to the changing face of Saudi Arabian business Business and Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia is an essential reference guide, informing investors on the key issues that define how business will be done as the nation's family-owned businesses change hands. Supported by the U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council, this book introduces the reader to the new Saudi entrepreneur and explains why Saudi Arabia's boom deserves more of the world's attention. As the heads of family-owned businesses age and corporate boards are reshaped, business practices will be influenced by the ascension of the country's young leaders. Interviews with young Saudi entrepreneurs describe the challenges, triumphs, failed attempts, and successful endeavors they experience every day as time-tested traditional models bump up against more modern, innovative ideas and methods. The book's companion website features a variety of useful tools and documents that help readers implement the concepts presented, and the firsthand information provides deep insight into the future of these companies. Saudi Arabia is profoundly influencing the technological advances of multiple industries through increasing collaboration and in-country partnerships with communities around the world. The evolution of the Kingdom's family-owned businesses is becoming more important to investors as young Saudis claim their legacies, and this book provides an insightful understanding of the changing nature of Saudi business. Meet the emerging entrepreneur class of Saudi Arabia Learn how the Saudi boom affects global business Discover what investors need to know about the Saudi economy Examine how time and technology is reshaping the way business is done Gain useful insight into the direction management of the Kingdom's growth will take over the next five years The Saudi economy constitutes thirty percent of the Arab world's GDP, and sixty percent of the population is under the age of thirty. Business and Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia provides essential information investors need to navigate the changing tide of doing business in Saudi Arabia.




CHINA AND THE MIDDLE EAST


Book Description

This manuscript examines relations between China and the Middle East in historical context. It highlights some of the most important events that characterize the ties between China and the Middle East, and examines their relationship in key areas that include energy, trade, arms sales, culture and politics. The centre of China’s relations with Israel is arms sales and advanced technology, while the core of Sino-Saudi relations is oil. Iran and China are tied with deep historical, civilizational, cultural and political relations, but China’s current interests in Iran centre on oil. Relations between China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) centre on trade. The UAE serve as a primary hub for Chinese business corporations not only in the Gulf or the wider Middle East, but also in Africa and the world. China’s relations with Algeria have been based on political co-ordination since the early days of the Algerian War of Independence and the early days of the People’s Republic of China. China provided Algeria with political, diplomatic and military support to accomplish its national liberation from France. Since then, their partnership has developed. Finally, the book develops a tridimensional approach in which China’s ties with Middle Eastern countries are viewed as an outcome of interaction between three actors in each situation. The book reaches the conclusion that China’s national interests in the Middle East are only increasing, and it is anticipated that Sino-Middle Eastern relations and strategic partnerships will be enhanced in the near future, provided that China is not perceived as undermining the Arab Spring. Key Features Offers an in-depth analysis of Chinese-Middle Eastern relations Assists students and scholars in understanding the uniqueness of the Chinese model of engagement in the Middle East Explains why most Middle Easterners prefer China’s engagement to Western engagement Explores the future of Sino-Middle Eastern relations