Exploring identity-based organizations, welfare, and civil society<BR><BR>"Does an outstanding job of showing the effects on the mass of Jordanian and Lebanese people of the liberalizing economic policies of the 1990s. . Full of novel and important information and offering an innovative argument."---Marc Lynch, George Washington University<BR><BR>Anne Marie Baylouny examines previously undocumented effects of neoliberal economic reforms on middle classes in the Middle East. As the state's safety network has been withdrawn, kin-based mutual aid associations have taken its place, organized around new definitions of kinship and identity and geared to contemporary market and labor needs. Such organizations provide a measure of social and economic security for their members, and have come to dominate civil society in Jordan and Lebanon. Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews with members, nonmembers, and policy makers, Privatizing Welfare in the Middle East provides compelling new insights into democratization, liberalization, and civil society.