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unions. Also, the massive extension of state employment in education, health, social and administrative services modernized the country and served to create an extensive web of government patronage (Eckstein 1977). Part of the program of social incorporation was the movement known as Indígenismo, which was founded by the anthropologist Manuel Gamio ([1935] 1987). Though the movement sought to protect the indigenous population, its final objective was to incorporate them into the dominant mestízo culture through education, health campaigns, and local development programs sponsored by specialized government agencies. By 1940, the indigenous population, defined in terms of those who speak an lndian language, had declined according to the census of that year to just over 14 percent of the population. In general, the indigenous population remained poorer than the mestízo peasant population.

Economically, the PRI was nationalist, protecting local industries and restricting foreign investment. The state intervened in the economy, managing industries in sectors which were considered vital to the national interest, such as the oil industry, railroads, certain branches of transport, and telephones. However, it tolerated and, at times, promoted private ownership in many industrial sectors, by including entrepreneurs in the corporate alliances through which the PRI governed. For Mexico, the 1940–1970 decades were the ‘‘golden years’’ of development, when annual rates of gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 6 percent and more were common (Leopoldo Solis, 1970). It was also a period in which a strong political nationalism accompanied economic nationalism. Under various presidents, Mexico made clear its independence from U.S. political and economic influence, as in the nationalization of oil and as in its continuing relations with Castro’s Cuba.

The understanding of these processes was aided by the development of social sciences in Mexico, stimulated by an interest in issues of national identity and culture in face of rapid modernization. Anthropology developed under the auspices of official nationalism in the National Institute of Anthropology and History and the National Indigenist Institute, promoting the restoration and preservation of the pre-Hispanic archeological patrimony as symbols of Mexican nationaiity (Vazquez 1995). Gamio’s ([1931] 1969) interest in national identity led him to document

the living and working conditions of Mexican labor migrants in the United States. He and the American anthropologist Paul Taylor (1928–1934) demonstrated that the experiences of these migrants would often reinforce Mexican nationalism through ill treatment, prejudice, and summary deportations.

Within Mexico, anthropologists undertook empirical studies of acculturation and cultural integration, viewed as irreversible trnds (Aguirre Beltrán 1957). By the 1970s, sociologists and political scientists working at the National University and at El Colegio de México were questioning the Mexican style of development, focusing on issues of class and ethnic inequality (Stavenhagen 1969; Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales 1970–1973; Benítez Zenteno 1977). Some openly questioned the institutional authoritarianism of the political system and the vertical control that the government exercised over the peasantry and industrial workers through the PRI’s corporatist structure (González Casanova, 1972). The critical tone of Mexican social science increased after the student movements of 1968 and their repression by the government.

The anthropologists and economists who concentrated on the rural sector showed that, despite the propeasant rhetoric of the Mexican Revolution and of its successor governments, the lot of the small, subsistence-oriented farmer—the peasant farmer—did not significantly improve (Bartra 1974; Esteva 1983; Warman 1980; Hewitt de Alcantara 1976). Mexican and foreign social scientists demonstrated that agrarian reform had only limited success in creating employment opportunities in agriculture, in diversifying the rural economy, and in stimulating development of rural market and service centers. The expense of producing efficiently for high-risk markets deterred many members of the ejido from continuing in agriculture (de la Peña 1981). The deterrence increased with the advent of new technological packages that offered substantially improved yields, but which indebted the small producer and created dependence on state bureaucracy or on private sector agro-industries (Barkin 1990). Agricultural modernization in Mexico meant the displacement of the peasant farmer and the increasing importance of commercial cultivation, often linked to agroindustry (Arroyo 1989; Sanderson 1986).

One major factor that changed the pattern of political incorporation was the extension of government bureaucracy from the 1960s onward (Grindle 1977). In agriculture, this resulted in a considerable increase in government personnel administering various programs of rural development, credit, and technical advice. Direct contacts with government officials enabled peasants to bypass local power brokers, thus weakening the broker’s position; but it created a new issue, the interface between bureaucracy and the peasant. Bureaucratic officials implemented central government policy but pursued their own career goals, and both objectives often came into conflict with the strategies of peasant farmers.

Demographic factors also conditioned the processes of social change, geographical mobility, and concentration of wealth. The Mexican population has had high rates of growth as a result of significant declines in mortality without offsetting declines in fertility (Alba and Potter 1982). High rates of population growth combined with the lack of economic opportunities in the countryside result in substantial rural-urban and international migration (Massey et al. 1987; Arroyo 1986). The urban growth rate of Mexico between 1940 and 1980 averaged 4.7 percent a year, with approximately a third of urban growth due to migration from rural areas. This rapid increase and the high urban primacy that resulted in Mexico City having a population six times larger than the next-largest city, Guadalajara, attracted the attention of many researchers, often in collaboration with U.S. or European social scientists. Led by Luis Unikel (1977), researchers at the Colegio de Mexico focused on the ‘‘urban bias’ of Mexican development policies in which subsidies encouraged urban concentration. Garza (1985) showed that without these subsidies the profitability of Mexico City enterprises would have been less than that of enterprises in smaller cities. Other researchers focused on rural-urban migration showing the high social mobility of rural migrants in the urban labor markets, despite the importance of the informal economy (Balán et al. 1973; Muñoz et al. 1977; Escobar 1986). However, other studies looked at the social and political implications of this rapid urban growth in the spread of squatter settlements, the aggravation of poverty, and the beginnings of urban social movements in demand for

basic services (Montaño 1976; Lomnitz 1977; Alonso 1980; Cornelius 1985; Ward 1998).

The last period is that following the debt crises of the early 1980s. These crises reflected the exhaustion of the import-substituting model of development in Mexico. The national industries were not competitive internationally and Mexico desperately needed foreign investment to continue its modernization. From the mid-1980s onward, under strong pressure from international agencies and the United States, the Mexican government adopted a free market approach to development, marked by its accession to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1985 and its joining with the United States and Canada in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993. Commercial interests in Mexico saw ejídal property rights as discouraging foreign and national investment in agriculture and in the cities where ejídal land hemmed in city boundaries. In 1992, laws were passed that permitted the private sale of ejídal land, thus effectively dismantling the agrarian reform system (de Janvry et al. 1997).

Accompanying these economic policies was a political liberalization, which included electoral reform and a greater role for opposition parties. The regime’s new economic policies undermined much of its corporate political support. The abolition of the ejido effectively weakened the power of PRI’s National Peasant Confederation in the countryside. Deregulation, particularly of labor markets, weakened the main industrial unions. The political challenge to the PRI became greater in this period because economic liberalization also created economic instability (Otero 1996). lncome inequality grew and employment became unstable, as indicated by the growth of the urban informal economy.

The growth of the urban population continued, but less rapidly than earlier as a result of declines in fertility and in a diminishing pool of rural migrants (Demos 1997). According to the population count of 1995, 63 percent of Mexico’s 91 million inhabitants live in places of more than 10,000 people. The fastest growing cities in the period 1990–1995 (3.1 percent growth annually) were the ones that began the period with between 100,000 and 1 million inhabitants (Solís 1997). An important component of the new population dynamic is a gradual change in the pattern of internal

migration in Mexico. From a predominantly ruralurban migration focusing mainly on Mexico City, Mexican migration patterns have become increasingiy interurban, with a movement of population from the center and south of the country toward the cities of the north (Lozano et al. 1997).

The changes in migration patterns reflect the changing economic geography of Mexico resulting from the development of export-oriented manufacturing mainly in the north of the country along or close to the U.S. border. By 1999, the in bond industry (maquiladora) sector generated over a million jobs, mainly in the cities of the north. In contrast, in the 1980s manufacturing lost jobs in the old industrial regions of the center of the country, although industrial restructuring in the Federal District of Mexico in the 1990s has reasserted Mexico City’s importance in industrial production. The industrial transformation is a complex one. There are assembly-line operations that use cheap, mainly female labor (Fernández-Kelly 1983; Young and Fort 1994). There are also plants with high levels of technology that require workers with high levels of qualification and that are prepared to offer attractive conditions of work. The Mexican car industry has shifted to northern Mexico as part of an integrated North American production system, with Mexico shipping cars as well as parts to the U.S. market (Carrillo 1989). These processes are creating a distinct border region straddling the frontier, neither fully Mexican nor fully American (Bustamante 1981; Tamayo and Fernandez 1983).

The Mexican economy is not only highly regionalized and predominantly urban, but is increasingly based on service employment (García 1988). By 1995, the majority of employment (53 percent) was in services and commerce, with manufacturing and construction contributing 21 percent and agriculture 25 percent (Pacheco 1997). The same source shows that these shifts in sectoral employment have also been accompanied by increasing rates of female economic participation, growing from 21.5 percent in 1979 to 34.5 percent in 1995. Also, after 1979, the employment categories associated with the urban informal econo- my—seif-employed and unpaid family workers— increase from 33.7 percent to 38.3 percent of employment, whereas employees decline from 62.9 percent to 57.2 percent (Pacheko 1997).

New intellectual tendencies are emerging in face of these realities. There is now less emphasis on rural studies than in the past, although there is a growing focus on the consequences for rural areas of economic integration with the United States, including international migration (Cornelius and Myhre 1998). Mexican and U.S. scholars are studying the impact of the U.S. market on production and commercialization in Mexico with respect to crops such as avocados, mangos, and tomatoes (González Chávez 1991). Particular focuses are the difficulties faced by small-scale farmers, given the capital and technology needed to compete in the U.S. market. Also, there is a greater concern with environmental issues than in the past as market development puts greater competitive pressures on local agriculture or creates incentives to develop ecologically fragile areas for tourism (Tudela 1989; Moreno 1992; Toledo 1994).

Studies of international migration have become increasingly numerous, showing how migration to the United States has become the major means by which poor rural households complement inadequate incomes, attracting even the skilled and better educated (Massey et al. 1994). The existence of large Mexican-origin communities in cities throughout the United States, but particularly in Los Angeles and other cities of the Southwest, provides bridgeheads facilitating immigration. The importance of the U.S. migration experience has led scholars to document extensively the life histories of migrants, sometimes explicitly comparing their experiences with those recorded by Gamio and Taylor in the 1930s (Durand 1996). Mexican and U.S. researchers have also focused on the significance for U.S.-Mexico relations of transnational migrant communities where migrants settled in the U.S. maintain active links with their Mexican communities of origin, even to the extent of participating in local politics and development projects (Roberts et al. 1999).

In the realm of urban research, there is now considerable attention given to studies of family, gender and female economic participation (Benería and Roldán 1987; García and Oliveira 1997). These studies began with an emphasis on household coping strategies in face of poverty, particularly the pooling of resources and placing more members in the labor market (González de la Rocha

1994; Chant 1991; de la Peña et al. 1990; Selby et al. 1990; Roberts 1989). They have increasingly taken up issues of the changing role of women within the household as they gain a certain economic independence. The researchers question assumptions about the strength of the Mexican family and its ability to cope on its own with the fragmenting pressures coming from economic adjustment and migration. Domestic violence has become an important topic of research. In contrast with these demythifying visions of the Mexican family, other studies that focus on elites and entrepreneurial groups show that family cooperation and hierarchy are crucial for upper-class social mobility and business success, particularly among foreign immigrants and innovators willing to take risks (Lomnitz and Pérez Lizaur 1987; Ramírez 1994; Padilla Dieste 1997).

There has also been considerable research on the impact of international economic integration and ‘‘neoliberal’’ policies on two phenomena: poverty and political participation. The new faces of poverty and inequality have been examined through the analysis of representative surveys and case studies, but also from the perspective of the state’s retreat from welfare and social services (González de la Rocha and Escobar 1991; Cortés and Rubalcava 1991; Boltvinik 1994; Brachet-Márquez 1996; Escobar 1986). The changing political scene has been studied particularly through electoral studies and the analysis of emerging political cultures. Widespread social discontent from the magnitude of fraud in the 1988 elections, as well as the government’s search for international legitimacy in the context of economic globalization, led to the strengthening of opposition parties and the reform of electoral legislation (Molinar 1989, 1992; Azíz and Peschard 1993; Crespo 1993). The process of Mexican democratization is also related to the decline of clientelistic practices, which nowadays proves to be ineffective for handling demands in both urban and rural situations (Middlebrook 1995). The political awakening of an increasingly active civil society is reflected in new social movements that in addition to their demands for services and social justice nowadays challenge the official party and focus on issues of citizenship (Krotz 1996). Middleclass actors, whose standard of living is also declining rapidly, have a considerable presence in such movements (Sergio Tamayo 1994).

The quest for democracy and citizenship is crucial for the understanding of ethnic movements in Mexico. Their importance was dramatically highlighted by the eruption of the Chiapas rebellion on January 1, 1994—the very date of the formal enactment of NAFTA—but urgent ethnic demands have been put forward by dozens of nonviolent indigenous organizations since the 1970s (Campbell 1994; Zárate 1993). Such organizations criticized official Indigenista policies because of their ineffectiveness in eradicating poverty but also because of their assimilationist practices and their blatant disregard for the cultural and political rights of the indigenous population (Arizpe 1978). This critique was reinforced by a new anthropological literature emphasizing persisting ethnicity and cultural resistence instead of acculturation and national homogeneization (Bonfil 1981; Boege 1988). A radical statement of this position argues for the existence of an Indian ‘‘deep Mexi- co’’—the real Mexico that has been artificially covered and repressed by authoritarianism and a spurious imitation of European modernity (Bonfil 1996). Even the National Indigenist Institute adopted a discourse of cultural plurality, and the Ministry of Education reinforced its programs of bilingual education (Instituto Nacional Indigenista 1988). In 1991, the National Congress surprisingly passed a constitutional reform that recognized multiculturalism as an essential component of the Mexican nation. If this reform may be explained as related to the government’s search for international legitimacy when NAFTA was being negotiated, it nevertheless opened the way to new indigenous demands and to a widespread discussion of the issue of autonomy for autochtonous peoples, where the participation of Indian representatives and authors is as important as that of non-Indian scholars (Warman and Argueta 1993; Díaz-Polanco 1997; Villoro 1998).

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MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

In the closing decades of the twentieth century, successive crises and cataclysmic events in the Middle East, though obviously not unique to this region, have been widely publicized by the American mass media. The 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the subsequent oil crisis, the civil war in Lebanon, the Iranian revolution of 1978–1979 and the ensuing hostage crisis, the Iraq-Iran War of 1980–1988, the Intifadah in the West Bank and Gaza, the Gulf War, the continued bombing of Iraq, the Oslo Agreement between Palestinians and Israelis, and the World Trade Center bombing have increased Americans’ awareness of the Middle East but not necessarily their understanding of its culture and society. Unfortunately, the ways in which the media describe and interpret these events have created negative stereotypes about this region which are reinforced by movies such as The Siege. On the other hand, extensive research by anthropologists, historians, and political scientists has provided many insights into Middle Eastern societies and cultures that help counteract these stereotypes. What has been the contribution of sociologists?

More than twenty years ago, a review of a few sociological journals led me to conclude that ‘‘with the possible exception of demographers, the scholarly output of American sociologists on the Middle East is still very modest’’ (Sabagh 1976, p. 523). For the period 1963–1973, of the twelve articles on the Middle East published in the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology, eight were on Israel, three on Egypt, and one on Turkey. For the same period Sociology and Social Research had even fewer articles on the Middle East, but they were more evenly distributed (two on Israel, two on Turkey, two on Iraq, and one on Israel and Jordan).

One interpretation of this situation, which is still valid today, is that ‘‘as long as the research

findings tend to be area-oriented rather than hy- pothesis-oriented they are not likely to be published in American sociological journals’’ (Sabagh 1976, p. 523). Is the state of Middle Eastern studies in sociology today any better than in the early 1970s? The objective of this review is to assess the changes that have occurred since the mid-1970s, more particularly in the 1980s and the 1990s. Four topics will be considered: (1) an overview of the salient socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of Middle Eastern countries and their implications for sociological analysis, (2) trends and distributions in the number of sociologists in the United States specializing in the Middle East,

(3) a brief review of the main substantive or methodological concerns of these sociologists, and (4) some of their theoretical contributions studies to American sociology. Contributions to the sociological study of Islam will not be reviewed here since they are extensively discussed in the article ‘‘Sociology of Islam.’’

SOCIOECONOMIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East includes Iran, Israel, Turkey, and the Arab countries of North Africa and southwest Asia. As shown in Table 1, countries in this vast region vary greatly, not only in population but also in levels of income, education, urbanization, and stages of demographic transition. The most telling differences are those between rich and poor countries, unmatched by the experience of any other Third World region. The range in gross national product (GNP) per capita in 1997 was from $169 for Somalia to $17,360 for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and to $22,110 for Kuwait, which approaches the figure for the United States. This gap was even greater before the decline in oil prices in the mid-1980s. The least-populated countries (Kuwait, UAE, and Qatar) have the highest incomes, exceeding $10,000, and two of the most populous countries (Egypt and Iran) have lower incomes, in the range $1,000–$2,000 This income differential is in part responsible for a massive labor migration from the poor Arab countries, particularly Egypt and Yemen, to the rich Arab countries (Amin and Awny 1985; Owen 1989). One measure of the importance of this migration is provided by the figures on the share of workers’ remittances in the

GNP of labor-exporting countries. In 1992, net workers’ remittances constituted 19.5 and 16.5 percent of the GNP of Jordan and Egypt, respectively. Estimates of the size of the Arab labor migration streams vary widely (Amin and Awny 1985; Ibrahim 1982), but it increased rapidly in the 1970s and was substantial in 1980. For Egypt alone, one estimate places the number of workers abroad at over one million in 1980, compared with around 400,000 in 1975 (Amin and Awny 1985; Fergany 1987). There was also a considerable migration from the poor countries of southern Asia and eastern Asia to Gulf countries, with an estimated 700,000 contract workers migrating in 1987 (Stahl and Asam 1990). Prior to the Iraq-Kuwait War in 1990, there were an estimated 2.6 millions migrants in these two countries, but at least 1 million of them left within two months after the outbreak of this war (United Nations, 1996, p. 209). In addition, there was a massive exodus of Yemenis from Saudi Arabia, leading to a sharp drop of net worker remittances for Yemen within a fairly short period. There is no doubt that this massive exodus of labor migrants from Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia created new economic problems for Arab labor-exporting countries.

The characteristics and implications of the massive labor migration of Middle Easterners and Asians to the rich Arab oil-producing countries have been analyzed by a few American demographers and sociologists (Arnold and Shah 1984; Sabagh 1993; Sell 1988). These and other studies (Amin and Awny 1985; Fergany 1987) have contributed to the analysis of (1) the process of migrant settlement in countries with stringent legislation against settlement, (2) the impact of this migration on social mobility, and (3) the consequences of labor migration on countries of origin.

While a few North Africans and Turks emigrated to the Gulf, most were attracted by expanding economic opportunities in the European community. In 1996, there was an estimated 2.6 million Turks, 1.1 million Moroccans, and about 1 million Algerians and Tunisians in Europe (OECD 1998, p. 34). Most of the Turks were in Germany, and most of the Algerians and Tunisians and half of the Moroccans resided in France.

Migration streams from the Middle East to the United States go back to the 1980s, but political

upheavals such as the Iranian revolution, the ArabIsraeli wars of 1967 and 1973, and the Lebanese civil war as well as changes in American immigration legislation in the 1960s have led to substantial and more recent immigration to the United States. Thus, of the 1.3 million persons of Middle Eastern origin (including those of Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, Iranians, Israelis, and Turkish origins) in the United States in 1990, half were immigrants and 325,000 were very ‘‘new’’ immigrants who had arrived between 1990 and 1990. (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1993). As indicated by Bozorgmehr (1998, p. 5) ‘‘The Iranian revolution and its aftermath have contributed to the growth of the Iranian diaspora worldwide,’’ so that by 1990 the United States had

285,000 Iranians ‘‘defined as persons born in Iran or Iranian ancestry.’’ This represents a substantial growth from ‘‘small beginning of perhaps no more than 15,000 individuals in 1965’’ (Bozorgmehr and Sabagh 1988, p. 32).

In almost all Middle Eastern countries, rates of population growth of urban areas are higher, and in some cases much higher, than total population growth. This means that rural-urban migration constitutes an important feature of both rich and poor Middle Eastern societies. This rural exodus is most marked in some of the poorest countries but tends to be lower in poor countries with substantial international labor migration.

Differences in secondary school enrollment levels are as wide as income differences. Enrollment ratios in secondary schools in 1996 varied between a minimum of 6 for males and 4 for females in Somalia to a maximum 91 for males and 98 for females in Bahrain, almost equal to the United States (Table 1). While Bahraini’s high enrollment ratios could be partly attributed to its relatively high income, wealth is no guarantee of higher education. For Kuwait, which has the highest income level, male secondary enrollment is noticeably lower (65) than it is for Egypt (80) and the Islamic Republic of Iran (79), which have much lower income. The ratios for females are about the same for these three countries, but the femalemale gap is greater in Egypt and Iran. It should be noted that in 15 of the 25 Middle Eastern countries in Table 1, the female-male gap in secondary enrollment ratios is10 percent or less. In Bahrain and Lebanon, females have a higher secondary school enrollment. These findings suggest gender equalization in education. Nevertheless, in some countries, notably Somalia, Yemen, and, surprisingly, Turkey, the gender gap is substantial. Since educational opportunities are fewer in rural areas, particularly for women, this gap could partly reflect the greater importance of these areas. Even in Middle Eastern countries where the educational gender gap is almost nil, women are still much less likely to have gainful employment outside the home than men. Nationwide data on women’s employment, however, have to be interpreted carefully, since they include rural areas and also reflect different definitions of employment. Women in Israel, Turkey, and Morocco are the most likely to be employed, but even in these countries the ratio of women’s to men’s employment is in the range 50–60 percent (Table 1). The ratios between 40 percent and 50 percent in Kuwait, Tunisia, and Mauritania and between 30 percent and 40 percent in seven other Middle Eastern countries. By contrast, with the noticeable exception of Kuwait, in the rich Arab oil-exporting countries with little or no gender inequality in access to education, the ratio is much lower and is mainly around 15 percent. Increasing gender equality in education combined with continued gender inequality in employment in the Middle East have many consequences for women’s roles and have been the subject of many analyses (Hatem 1994; Moghadam 1995; Obermeyer 1996). These analyses reveal the complex ways in which family structure, religious

tradition, economic development, and state policies affect the education and employment of women.

It should be noted that even in countries with high labor-force participation by women, there is a glaring gender gap in earned income. Thus, in the United States, while there are 82 gainfully employed women for every 100 gainfully employed men, these women receive only 40 percent of men’s earnings. The comparable figures are 50 women and 22 percent for Israel, 57 women and 35 percent for Turkey, and 53 women and 28 percent for Morocco. Surprisingly, this lag in working women’s income is less marked in some Middle Eastern countries than in the United States (for sources, see Table 1).

During the last twenty years, fertility and mortality trend in the Middle East indicate that parts of in this region have experienced a rapid demographic transition. In 1980, all countries in this region, except Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey, had total fertility rates (TFR) of 5 or more children per women, often reaching a level above 6 children. Mortality had already declined but was still relatively high. By the end of the twentieth century, life expectancy for males had increased to about 63 years at birth and, even higher, to 74–75 years in Kuwait, Israel, and the UAE, equal to that of the United States (Table 1). There was a similar trend among females, most of whom outlive men by as much as 6 years. In nine Middle Eastern countries there was a marked decline in TFR to fewer than 3.5 children per woman, reaching as low as 2.5–2.7 in Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey in 1997 (Table 1). This is only slightly higher than the TFR for the United States. Clearly some Middle Eastern countries are rapidly undergoing a demographic transition to noticeably lower fertility and mortality, but in some other countries, even though mortality is low, fertility remains high. This is a challenge to the demographic transition theory and has been extensively analyzed by demographers and sociologists (Obermeyer 1992 and 1995).

Clearly, the Middle East is a region worthy of consideration in any analysis of the social and demographic impact of economic modernization and rising levels of income. The sudden increase in the wealth of some Arab countries is part of what Ibrahim (1982) has called the ‘‘new Arab social order,’’ which involves the appearance of new social forces, new values, and new behavior