Research | ST McNeil

Combating declensionism and gauging coastalization

16 November 2012 by ST McNeil

People do not fit into neat categories, individuals defy stereotypes, and lines in the sand have proved both destructive and inane. Boundaries and borders wreak havoc. Yet, most importantly, we have seen systems of power transcend time, continually adapting to conditions on the ground and the sea by drawing political, economic, social and cultural borders in their interests alone. What classes profited from the enclaves and capitalist entrepôts like the vineyards of Pera or other Eschelles? What class is dispossessed [...]

Categories: Africa, Africa North, Middle East, Research, Tunisia • Tags: borders, coastalization, declensionism, desertification, Tunis

Beyond yet bound to history

21 October 2012 by ST McNeil

Beyond yet bound to history: Illicit people on the move, fou furieux, and other myths of transnational capital Readings: Mediterraneans “Making a Living: The Sea, Contraband, and Other Illicit Activities” and “From Protection to Protectorate”; Empire is the Enemy of Love; The Many worlds of ‘Abud Yasin; Protected Persons?; and Expulsion as an Issue of World History.” Where there is a border there are icons of control: the destructive illusion of order and domination of previously decentralized resources. The when [...]

Categories: Africa, Africa North, Middle East, Research • Tags: 'Abud Yasin, Benjamin Z. Kedar, Customs and Border Patrol, Cyrus Schayegh, Edith Noor, Greater Syria, Julia Clancy-Smith, Laura Tabili, Mount Lebanon, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Silas Aaron Hardoon

Guilds, private military contractors, and metropole circulations

4 October 2012 by ST McNeil

Readings: Sailing through Suez from the South; Mediterraneans Chapters 3-4; Tourism and Empire; A Profile of the Labor Force in Early 19th-Century Istanbul; The Role of Women in the Urban Economy in Istanbul Finding Work in a Port-City, in the Mediterranean and Beyond: Guilds, private military contractors, and metropole circulations History is a tool used by empires and zealots, but it can undermine dominant narratives and recover buried voices straining for the dignity of recognition. Our readings focused on a [...]

Categories: Africa, Africa North, Middle East, Research, Tunisia • Tags: coastalization, Julia Clancy-Smith, Kirli, Levant, marginalization, Phillip Mansel, Thomas Cook, Zarinebaf-Shahr

The People Between

4 October 2012 by ST McNeil

Readings: Mediterraneans, chapters 1-2;”Mediterranean Historical Migrations: An Overview”; “Work, Refuge, Transit”; “East of Enlightenment”; “From ‘House’ to Goddess of the House”; “Feminizing the Chain Migration Thesis”. Seen in the light of Lapmedusa, or the headlines of rising xenophobia and nativism in Europe and the U.S., emigration and immigration are wholly defined by the poles of power – a Mexican or Congolese is breaking into Fortress America or Fortress Europe, respectively, but a foreign (Western) correspondent or energy trader has legitimate [...]

Categories: Africa, Africa North, Middle East, Research, Tunisia • Tags: Akram Khater, chain migration, Lapmedusa, Orientalism, Philippe Fargues, Sarah Gualtieri

Saguaro Symposium speech

1 October 2012 by ST McNeil

Adapting to Climate Change: How the Pentagon is preparing to make the Best of the Worst on Prezi This is a transcript of a talk I gave at the first Saguaro Symposium held at the University of Arizona. Adapting to Climate Change: How the Pentagon is preparing for the worst Saguaro Symposium, University of Arizona September 28, 2012 Hello everyone, good afternoon colleagues and friends. My name is Sam McNeil and I am a dual MA candidate in the Middle East and [...]

Categories: Americas, Climate, Research, USA • Tags: climate change, DOD, Institute of the Environment, Pentagon, SERDP, University of Arizona

Racinos: can a casino-racetrack hybrid save Arizona’s dog racing?

3 January 2012 by ST McNeil

Old starting boxes rust near the last greyhound track West of the Missouri River, in Tucson, Ariz. 17 September, 2011 (Photo by ST McNeil) SOUTH TUCSON, Ariz. – Planks and pipes litter the floor under dusty betting stalls in the former clubhouse of the Tucson Greyhound Park. Floodlights bathe the track outside and pour through large windows into the empty hall’s shadows. The bar is closed, but the dogs still run. The mechanical rabbit silently flashes past, followed a [...]

Categories: Research, USA • Tags: Arizona, casinos, documentary, greyhound, greyhound racing, racinos, slot machines, stmcneil, Tucson, Tucson Greyhound Park, video

Not another Twitter Revolution

23 September 2011 by ST McNeil

The Jasmine Revolution and the January 25 Revolution are not Twitter revolutions…sorry, but sometimes you just need to beat a dead horse. Only 131,204 Egyptians used Twitter as hundreds of thousands massed in Cairo earlier this year. Just 35,746 Tunisians tweeted along Avenue Habib Bourguiba and Le Kef during the days of rage and tear gas. Barely two percent of Egyptians and five percent of Tunisians log onto Facebook (nine million together), no doubt socializing with the Arab world’s other [...]

Categories: Africa North, Egypt, Middle East, Research, Tunisia • Tags: Cairo, Digital Evangelism, Malcolm Gladwell, Mark Zuckerberg, Moammar Gaddafi, Net Delusion, SISMEC, social media, Tahrir Square, Tunis, Tunisia, Zen El Abdine Ben Ali

Piss Pride Porcelain

22 June 2011 by ST McNeil

From Seattle to Jerusalem, I’ve pissed in hundreds of urinals. One has time to think in those sixty to six hundred-second leaks: aim, pressure, splash radius, urinal cake odor. If us men are lucky, we get to power-melt leftover ice from the hotel bar. Sometimes these recepticals of our fluid waste are simple troughs of cheap metal. Other times stately affairs of crafted porcelain accomodate our urine streams. On top of most urinals, though, is a clue to American foreign [...]

Categories: Research • Tags: American exceptionalism, American Standard, Cairo, Dahab, Egypt, Gaza, Ideal Standard, Libya, lion fight, palestine, Sinai, toilet philosophy, Tunis, Tunisia, urinals

Graduate Counsel

8 April 2011 by ST McNeil

Dear family and friends, I write to you today burdened by the weight of many good choices. From my editor’s desk in Ramallah, I am pouring over the literature, numbers and photos from graduate schools across the US: Los Angeles, Tucson, Ann Arbor, Austin and DC. I am weighing my options, trying to use my desktop as a crystal ball through which to plan the next two or three years of my life. My great hope is that at the [...]

Categories: Research

Bosphorus Catastophe

27 September 2008 by ST McNeil

There is no place in the world like the Bosphorus Strait. It divides two continents. Dolphins and 33 other marine species migrate down its biological corridor. Three millennia of battles and civilizations have erupted on its shores. A fifth of Turkey’s gross national product comes out of its waters. Five times the amount of ships pass through the Bosphorus than the Panama Canal ever year, and two million people commute across it every day. (Oral, Ece 94) The Bosphorus’ uniqueness [...]