Fida Adely

• PhD
• Associate Professor at Georgetown University

Development discourse frames youth in the Arab world as lacking in the skills needed for employment and educational institutions as failing. The “skills mismatch” is offered as both the reason for unemployment, and evidence of the poor quality of education in the region. This paper undertakes a genealogy of the skills mismatch discourse, tracing ho...

Jordanian families today face an educational edifice significantly changed by privatization, increased costs, and market-driven logics. While some students resist these structures through protests, we highlight the everyday ways in which Jordanians negotiate these changes and try to make the system work for them. Specifically, we analyze the educat...

The study of religion has long been central to scholarly efforts to understand diverse cultures, human practice, and meaning making. This issue highlights recent anthropological research on religious education in a multitude of spaces and within a range of faith experiences. Through rich ethnographic explorations, authors illuminate the engagement...

The article examines the emergence of a new labor movement in Jordan. Although Jordan may appear little affected by the Arab uprisings, as early as January 2011 Jordanians were in the streets for the same reasons Tunisians and Egyptians were: protesting against economic conditions and privatization of state resources, demanding the resignation of t...

Outside the formal and intended curriculum in Jordanian schools, the efforts of students and instructors to teach about religion and living piously as Muslim women span a myriad of spaces and approaches. At the al‐Khatwa Secondary School for Girls, tensions surrounding religious authority were enmeshed with struggles outside school, specifically wi...

Rap Refugees is an engaging film that centers on a girls’ secondary school in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, Syria. The film profiles the lives of several students—Shaza and Rahaf, who are two aspiring rap musicians; Sa’fa, who is an athlete; and Tulin, a member of the Palestinian Children’s Orchestra—and their family and friends. Rap Refuge...

IntroductionThe State of the FieldThe Moral Edification of YouthState Schooling and the Struggle for Moral AuthorityConclusion References

I was raised in the United States (New York) by parents who had recently emigrated from Jordan. Like many immigrants they intended to return home but never did. My parents eventually decided that we were better off in the United States, particularly because of the educational opportunities. Whether we were better off in the United States is a futil...

DoumatoEleanor Abdella and StarrettGregory, eds., Teaching Islam: Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2007). Pp. 273. $55.00 cloth. - Volume 41 Issue 3 - Fida Adely

For most of the last century, within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region youth have been addressed and engaged as a particular category of citizens. In this vein youth were viewed as important targets of nationalist projects and as critical national resources in an era of national development. In more recent years, however, the concern w...

In the 1980s, after a decades-long emphasis on economic growth as the primary engine for development, a number of prominent economists and development practitioners heralded a new era in the conceptualization of development as primarily a human endeavor with improved life chances and quality of life as the proper end. Thus was coined the term "huma...

The Arab Human Development Report 2005: Towards the Rise of Women in the Arab World (AHDR 2005), published in Arabic with English and French translations, was launched at the end of 2006. With a title carefully crafted to avoid Western development buzzwords like "empowerment" and to signal the inclusion of all women living in the region, it is the...

The Arab Human Development Report 2005, the fourth in a series that has received much acclaim and stirred much controversy, takes up the issue of women's development in the Arab world. Through a careful reading and analysis of sections of the report that address education and economic participation, this paper offers a critique of the human capabil...

Purpose This research explores the importance of extracurricular activities, specifically music performances of a high school music group in Jordan, for the education of adolescent girls about patriotism, the proper way to live their faith, and their role as young women in contemporary Jordan. Setting Article is based on research in a high school...