Orthodox theories of crime in the Third World and in regions of uneven economic development offer a unilinear explanation of the relationship between economic development and increased crime rates. Simply stated, this Durkheimian position views the transition from traditional to modern society as being associated with the weakening of mechanical forms of solidarity and the emergence of secular and impersonal role structures based on a complex division of labor. Universalistic and achievement criteria replace ascriptive and particularistic values, and deviance-derived social control models based on formalized coercive sanctions substitute for traditional and community-based forms of control. Anomic behavior, frustration of expectations, and norm violation are considered an expected, if transitory, outcome of social change, and are explained on the basis of a clash between modern and traditional value systems.

The status of women in Arab society, and in other developing areas, is an important subject in which interest is growing. Not only has heightened awareness of feminist issues fostered a general concern for women's emancipation for greater independence and equality with men, but it is also increasingly recognized that the circumstances of women bear a significant relationship to the potential of a society to achieve broader developmental objectives. Relevant considerations include a need for women to enter the salaried labor force, which will increase the productive capacity of the nation; the fact that educated and employed women tend to have fewer children, which is also a major policy objective in many developing countries; and a need to assure that women's critical role in child rearing and early socialization is exercised by individuals who are educated, socially active, and high in self-esteem, which will increase the likelihood of positive personal and civic orientations being inculcated among the young.

The oil price increases in the 1970s caused a transfer of wealth from importers to exporters and resulted in three major consequences. It led to a series of shocks in the economies of the industrial countries. It reduced further the slow pace of growth in the non-OPEC LDCs, and it distorted the sectoral growth in OPEC itself. Such unwarranted results have attracted the attention of both scholars and decision makers.

Periods of cultural florescence seem to coincide with times of political decline far too regularly in the history of medieval Iran and Central Asia for the link between them to be merely incidental. One of the most outstanding examples is the period of the rule of the Turko-Mongol Timurid dynasty in the 9th/15th century, which has been dubbed a “Timurid renaissance” by Western scholars. Another is the period of the political domination of the Buyid dynasty of Dailamite origin in the 4th–5th/10th–11th centuries, which Adam Mez popularized as the “renaissance of Islam.” Still another is the period of the Muzaffarid, Jalayirid, Sarbadarid, and Kartid kingdoms which arose in the 8th/14th century after the fall of the Mongol Ilkhanid empire. Although the appropriateness of the term “renaissance” as applied to the Timurid case in particular has raised reservations among scholars, it does underscore the point that his period was characterized by an extraordinary surge of activity in all areas of cultural and intellectual endeavor, something already noted by its contemporaries.

The Sahel of Tunisia is part of the arid zone that extends from Morocco to Afghanistan. People in this region profess the religion of Islam. Their views on the links between divine power, human actions, and rain are based on the Quran and are expressed in the rain prayers (salat a1-isrisqa') prescribed by the Prophet and therefore common to all of them. This article refers to North Africa, centering on the village of Sidi Ameur in the Sahel of Tunisia.

The great revolution was a technological revolution by which the West made its fortune, got the better of all the other living civilizations, and forcibly united them into a single society of literally worldwide range. The revolutionary Western invention was the substitution of the Ocean for the Steppe as the principal medium of world-communication. This use of the Ocean, first by sailing ships and then by steamships, enabled the West to unify the whole inhabited and habitable world.