Charity in Saudi Arabia: Civil Society under Authoritarianism

 

This event will be a discussion around Dr Nora Derbal's latest book Charity in Saudi Arabia: Civil Society under Authoritarianism published by Cambridge University Press.

In this study of everyday charity practices in Jeddah, Nora Derbal employs a 'bottom-up' approach to challenge dominant narratives about state-society relations in Saudi Arabia. Exploring charity organizations in Jeddah, this book both offers an ethnography of associational life and counters Riyadh-centric studies which focus on oil, the royal family, and the religious establishment.

It closely follows those who work on the ground to provide charity to the local poor and needy, documenting their achievements, struggles and daily negotiations. The lens of charity offers rare insights into the religiosity of ordinary Saudis, showing that Islam offers Saudi activists a language, a moral frame, and a worldly guide to confronting inequality. With a view to the many forms of local community activism in Saudi Arabia, this book examines perspectives that are too often ignored or neglected, opening new theoretical debates about civil society and civic activism in the Gulf.

To receive 20% off the book, please follow this link.

Nora Derbal is a postdoc at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the American University in Cairo and worked as a research associate for the Orient-Institut Beirut. In Saudi Arabia, she held visiting positions at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh as well as Effat University and King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz University in Jeddah. She received her doctorate in 2017 in Islamic Studies from Freie Universitaet in Berlin. Her research interests center on Islamic charity and civil society, knowledge production and Islam, and Gulf-Palestine relations.

Hanaa Almoaibed is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and a Research Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. Her research explores the influence of social dynamics on attitudes toward work, education and career choices and youth transitions in the GCC, with a particular emphasis on vocational education in Saudi Arabia. She has worked with several private, public and not-for-profit entities, managing multi-stakeholder research projects related to youth, careers entrepreneurship and education. She has over 15 years of experience consulting for different academic institutes, businesses, think tanks and consultancies such as Chatham House, SOAS, UCL Consultants and various entities within the Middle East.

Steffen Hertog is Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics. He was previously Kuwait Professor at Sciences Po in Paris, lecturer in Middle East political economy at Durham University and a post-doc at Princeton University. Steffen’s main interest lies in Gulf and Middle East political economy, with a specific focus on the political economy of public sectors, state-business relations and labour markets. He has a subsidiary interest in issues in the socio-economic and psychological roots of highly asymmetric political violence ("terrorism").

Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEMiddleEast