Bob is at work on a book-length project called “Culture and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa.” It will examine the multiple definitions of culture and the complicated ways in which national, subnational, and supranational cultures affect and are affected by national cohesion, the prospects for economic and political development, the understanding of human rights, and the delineation of foreign policy. General argument: if culture matters, it matters in ways that are much more complicated than usually thought.