Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East [Hardcover]

An original and empirically grounded analysis of the Gulf monarchies and their role in shaping the political economy of the Middle East.Bridging debates across political economy, critical geography, and Middle East studies, this original perspective on the Gulf monarchies and their pivotal role in the Middle East will provide essential insights to anyone interested in understanding the contemporary region.Bridging debates across political economy, critical geography, and Middle East studies, this original perspective on the Gulf monarchies and their pivotal role in the Middle East will provide essential insights to anyone interested in understanding the contemporary region.Framed by a critical analysis of global capitalism, this book examines how the six states of the Gulf Cooperation Council are powerfully shaping the political economy of the wider Middle East. Through unprecedented and fine-grained empirical research - encompassing sectors such as agribusiness, real estate, finance, retail, telecommunications, and urban utilities - Adam Hanieh lays out the pivotal role of the Gulf in the affairs of other Arab states. This vital but little recognised feature of the Middle East's political economy is essential to understanding contemporary regional dynamics, not least of which is the emergence of significant internal tensions within the Gulf itself. Bringing fresh insights and a novel interdisciplinary approach to debates across political economy, critical geography, and Middle East studies, this book fills an important gap in how we understand the region and its place in the global order.Acknowledgements; 1. Framing the Gulf: space, scale, and the global; 2. Gulf financial surpluses and the international order; 3. Boundaries of state and capital: mapping the Gulf's business conglomerates; 4. From farm to shelf: Gulf agro-commodity circuits and the Middle East; 5. The Arab built environment, accumulation, and the Gulf; 6. Spaces of financialisation in the Middle Easls&