Is There A Youth Politics?

What is the nature of 'youth politics', if any? This article proposes an analytical lens which may help us consider ‘youth’ as a useful category, and 'youth politics' in terms of the conflicts and negotiations over claiming or defending youthfulness. Understood in this fashion, youth politics is mediated by the position of the young in class, gender, racial, sexual and other involved social structures. It concludes that the political outlook of a young person may be shaped not just by the exclusive preoccupation with 'youthfulness', but also by his/her position in society as citizen, poor, female, or a member of a sexual minority

Urban Egypt: Towards a Post-Metropolization Era?

The second of two issues, this volume covers aspects of Egyptian society. Contributors include: Donald Cole, Soraya Altorki, Asef Bayat, Eric Denis, Enid Hill, Ziad Bahaeddin, Malak Rouchdy, Linda Herrera, Jim Napoli, Hussein Amin, Mahmoud al-Lozy, Cynthia Nelson, and Shahnaz Rouse.https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_book_chapters/1983/thumbnail.jp

'Divided they stand, divided they fail': opposition politics in Morocco

The literature on democratization emphasises how authoritarian constraints usually lead genuine opposition parties and movements to form alliances in order to make demands for reform to the authoritarian regime. There is significant empirical evidence to support this theoretical point. While this trend is partly visible in the Middle East and North Africa, such coalitions are usually short-lived and limited to a single issue, never reaching the stage of formal and organic alliances. This article, using the case of Morocco, seeks to explain this puzzle by focusing on ideological and strategic differences that exist between the Islamist and the secular/liberal sectors of civil society, where significant opposition politics occurs. In addition, this article also aims to explain how pro-democracy strategies of the European Union further widen this divide, functioning as a key obstacle to democratic reforms

Seeing revolution non-linearly: www.filmingrevolution.org

Filming Revolution, launched in 2015, is an online interactive data base documentary tracing the strands and strains of independent (mostly) documentary filmmaking in Egypt since the revolution. Consisting of edited interviews with 30 filmmakers, archivists, activists, and artists based in Egypt, the website is organised by the themes that emerged from the material, allowing the viewer to engage in an unlimited set of “curated dialogues” about issues related to filmmaking in Egypt since 2011. With its constellatory interactive design, Filming Revolution creates as much as documents a community of makers, as it attempts to grapple with approaches to filmmaking in the wake of such momentous historical events. The non-hierarchical polysemous structure of the project is meant to echo the rhizomatic, open-ended aspect of the revolution and its aftermath, in yet another affirmation and instantiation of contemporary civil revolution as a non-linear, ever-unfolding, on-going, event

Life as Politics : How Ordinary People Change the Middle East

Asef Bayat laat zien dat gewone mensen ondanks de dominantie van de autoritaire staat in staat zijn om via alternatieve wegen zich te laten gelden. Politieke en maatschappelijke veranderingen komen niet van revoluties en massaprotesten; de belangrijkste motoren van verandering zijn de 'non-movements', de verbrokkelde gemeenschappen van armen, vrouwen of jongeren die gezamenlijk optrekken. Life as Politics biedt een nieuw perspectief op het maatschappelijk activisme en de dynamiek van verandering in het islamitische Midden-Oosten

Non-Movements and the Power of the Ordinary

This talk explores what ordinary people (in the Middle East) do to get around and resist the severe constraints the authoritarian polity, neo-liberal economics, and moral authorities impose on their civil and economic rights. Bayat discusses the diverse ways in which subaltern groups – men, women, and the young – seek to affect the contours of change in their societies by refusing to exit from the social and political stage controlled by authoritarian regimes and by discovering or generating spaces within which they can assert their rights and enhance their life chances. He conceptualizes these everyday and dispersed practices as &#8216;non-movements&#8217;, and discusses how by establishing alternative norms in society they become the matrix of broader social change in society, and how they may or may not evolve into larger societal movements. Asef Bayat, the Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the Department of Sociology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, before which he taught at the American University in Cairo for 16 years, and served as the director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), holding the Chair of Society and Culture of the Modern Middle East at Leiden University. His research ranges from social movements and social change, to religion-politics-everyday life, Islam and the modern world, and urban space and politics. His recent books include Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (2007); (with Linda Herrera) Being Young and Muslim: Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (2010); and Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (2010), Leben als Politik. Wie ganz normale Leute den Nahen Osten verändern (2012). The revised and extended edition of Life as Politics will be published in May 2013, and so will Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam.Asef Bayat, Non-Movements and the Power of the Ordinary, lecture, ICI Berlin, 27 May 2013 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e130527

Islamism and Empire: The Incongruous Nature of Islamist Anti-Imperialism

An animated debate is under way within the Left, the Right, and among Islamists themselves about the status of current Islamist movements vis-à-vis neoliberal imperialism. Rightist circles are clear that Islamism is a regressive, anti-modern and violent movement that poses the greatest threat to the 'free world'. Islamism represents, in their view, a 'totalitarian ideology', a 'cousin of fascism and communism', which stands opposed to modernity and to the enlightenment values enshrined in the capitalist free world. In a sense, the idea of a 'clash of civilizations' captures the 'objective contradictions' of Islam and Islamism with Western modernity and its universalizing mission. Leftist groups, however, seem to be divided. While some groups see Islamist movements as 'analogues to fascism', so that the best socialists can hope for is to break individuals away from the Islamist ranks and lure them into progressive camps, others consider Islamism as an anti-imperialist force with which the Left can find some common ground. What then is the relationship of the current Islamist movements to neoliberal imperialism? Do they pose a genuine challenge, or are they no more than reactions which offer unfortunate justifications for neoliberal hegemony? I suggest that the fundamental question is not whether Islamists pose resistance to empire, nor whether they are anti-imperialist or fascist. The relevant question rather is what does Islamist anti-imperialism entail vis-à-vis the mass of Muslim humanity