A Social View of Socotra Island - People, Culture, Heritage

This book focuses on Socotra Island, geographically based in Yemen, and aims to explore the island from the social sciences point of view. This book focuses on people indigenous to Socotra, Socotri cultures, heritage and also offers contributions from business, tourism, linguistic, communication, and anthropology. While a lot has been published in natural science about Socotra's endemic species, biodiversity, and nature in general, social scientific research of the island is very limited. This book addresses therefore addresses this gap and explores various topics of tourism, behaviours, cultures, and language.

This book focuses on a clear social science approach of Socotra. The purpose of this book is to publish research about the people, behaviors, heritage, and potential tourism of Socotra. The Socotra Archipelago has long been a land of mystery. It is unknown as a tourism destination for many, however, is a popular destination for adventurers, photographers and travelers who like to travel to remote and undeveloped places. This book explains how Socotra has limited resources of electricity, which is provided by diesel generators, Internet is very slow and limited to certain points on the island. There are no shopping malls or five-star hotels. Roads, schools, and hospitals have been built only recently. This book shoes how these island people do not know the development as we do, which makes it principally interesting to research. 

Previous interviewers of Socotri people about tourism development in the island have faced many challenges such as language barriers, lack of understanding the meanings and interviewing content, lack of support for the anticipated research results. This book successfully undertakes this challenge as not only in understanding the language, but understanding phenomena like e.g. tourism. Whilst acknowledging the ways in which indigenous island people have never travelled or seen a developed city. Thus, words like 'developed', 'tourism destination' or 'washing machine' may be unfamiliar terms for them. Therefore, new and innovative research methods that are sensitive to Socotra people were implemented in the creation of this book. 

Dr. Nataša Slak Valek is an Associate Professor at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. Before that, she worked at I-Shou University in Taiwan. She also worked for ten years at the National Tourism Office in Slovenia (Slovenian Tourist Board) first as a Professional researcher, and later as a Marketing Manager. Her research focus on tourism management, art tourism, heritage tourism, cultural tourism. Her most recent publications appear in international peer reviewed academic journals such as Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, Event Management, Tourism Management Perspectives, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Changes and Journal of International Consumer Marketing.

She recently published an edited book titled Women in Tourism in Asian Muslim Countries, Springer (2021)

Dr. Ahmad Abdelmoneim Zedan is the Vice president of Socotra University. He led the internal assessment and provided consultations on the fields of comprehensive quality management and ongoing improvement. He also participated in setting up legal drafting and contract drafting courses at the Egyptian training centers. He has participated in establishing and preparing a training program for teachers and trainers to qualify them to teach Arabic for non-Arabic speakers at the AUC. 

For over 12 years, he has taught legal and contract drafting at the AUC, and he worked as a Project Manager at the Arabic and Translation Studies Division at the University. Furthermore, he taught legal and contract drafting at several institutions like Cairo University, Ain Shams University, Sadat Academy for Management Sciences, State Information Service (SIS), Egyptian Tax Authority, Ahram Regional Institute for Journalism (AHRIJ), and Radio and Television Institute. 

He Translated the World Bank's World Development Indicators in 2013, and was one of the translators of Reengineering Management Operations. He Coauthored the Arabic book Together to Study Arabic Syntax and Morphology, Nahdet Masr Publishing House, 2008. He Reviewed Terror Presidency, Nahdet Masr Publishing House, 2009 and Reviewed September 11 Events, Nahdet Masr Publishing House, 2009.