Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction. The methodological and ethical challenges of conducting research in the Middle East and North Africa / Janine A. Clark and Francesco Cavatorta -- part 1. Context. -- Encountering the mukhabarat state / Jillian Schwedler and Janine A. Clark -- What is so special about field research in Iran? Doing fieldwork in religiously charged authoritarian settings / Paola Rivetti and Shirin Saeidi -- Authoritarianism, gender and socio-politics : Saudi Arabia / Gwenn Okruhlik -- Researching in and on the Palestinian occupied territories / Benoit Challand -- Seeing beyond the spectacle : research on and adjacent to violence / Sarah E. Parkinson -- Doing research during times of revolution and counter-revolution / Atef Said -- Researching the countryside : farmers, farming and social transformation in a time of economic liberalisation / Ray Bush -- part 2. Methods. -- Interviewing : lessons learned / Janine A. Clark -- Interviewing Salafis : negotiating access and ethics / Massimo Ramaioli -- Interviewing Salafis and overcoming mistrust in Middle Eastern and European contexts / Zoltan Pall and Mohamed Ali Adraoui -- Interviewing and gender / Emanuela Dalmasso -- Process tracing and the political economy of development in the Middle East / David Waldner -- Ethnography is an option. Learning to learn in Yemen / Stacey Philbrick Yadav -- Coding in qualitative research / Mohammed Yaghi -- Quantitative research in MENA political science / Miquel Pellicer and Eva Wegner -- Of promise and pitfalls : population-based experimental research in the Middle East / Steven Brooke -- Online media as research topic and research tool : fact, fiction and Facebook / Elizabeth Monier -- Researching Twitter / Geoff Martin -- part 3. Ethics. -- Blurred lines of inclusion and exclusion : research ethics for sympathisers / Irene Weipert-Fenner -- Playing with positionality? Reflections on 'outsider'/'insider' status in the context of fieldwork in Lebanon's deeply divided polity / Paul Kingston -- Sleeping with the enemy? The ethics and politics of being a 'negative fieldworker' in Israel/Palestine / Sigrid Vertommen -- Intersectionality theory and working with 'both sides' / Lihi ben Shitrit -- The (ambiguous) fieldwork experiences of a German Moroccan in Jordan / Malika Bouziane.

"Political Research in the Middle East and North Africa focuses specifically on doing research in one of the most important regions in contemporary world politics. It is also one of the most difficult areas to do research in given the current high levels of violence, political instability, and authoritarianism that plague the region. Gathering together a large and diverse group of researchers who study the region, Janine Clark and Francesco Cavatorta's volume will serve as a foundational methods guide for young academics on how to conceive and carry out their research projects. At the same time the topics in the book provide a useful refresher to more established scholars so that their methodological training and ethical considerations keep pace with novel approaches and changing obstacles in the field. What makes this volume especially useful is its focus on methodological 'lessons learned' from the contributors' first hand experiences. Each chapter deals with the challenges of implementing qualitative and quantitative methods in the field, the real-life obstacles encountered and the possible solutions to overcoming them. It will therefore be an invaluable companion book to more standard methods books, which focus on the 'how to' of methods but are often devoid of any real discussion of the challenges of on-the-ground fieldwork."--Publisher's summary.