This event forms part of the Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA event series.
In this seminar, Abdulhadi Khalaf revisits the Bahraini trajectory of the Arab Spring. He presents his paper, in which he examines the consequences of competition between moderate opposition networks and their diverse radical flanks. The discussion rests on the prevailing assumptions within social movement theories that radical flanks play both positive and negative roles.
The paper argues that the positive roles of the radical flanks include developing new political opportunities and attracting new participants to join the movement. These, in the case of Bahrain, have outweighed the commonly cited negative outcomes, such fragmenting the movement and/or exposing it to manipulation by one or more of the protagonists in the ongoing contention.
Event Details
Speaker: Professor Abdulhadi Khalaf, Lund University
Chair: Dr John Chalcraft, LSE
Date: Tuesday 08 December 2015
Time: 17.15-19.15
Location: Room 9.05, Tower 2, Clement's Inn, LSE
Event Hashtag: #LSEKhalaf
Attendance: Registration for this event is now closed.
Admission is on a first-come-first-served basis even after registration. Not everyone who registers attends our events, so to ensure a full house, we allow more registrations than there are places. Our events are very well attended, so please make sure you arrive early. We cannot guarantee entry.
Speaker
Abdulhadi Khalaf is a Bahraini politician and scholar on labor, state-building, and political participation. He is a professor of sociology at Sweden’s University of Lund. He writes regularly on political and labor issues, among others, for a variety of publications including the Beirut-based Assafir newspaper.