Publications

Political Economy and Social Movement Theory Perspectives on the Tunisian and Egyptian Popular Uprisings in 2011
Joel Beinin, January 2016

Comparing the role of workers before, during and after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrates that the relatively successful installation of a procedural democracy in Tunisia owes a great deal to the movements of workers and the unemployed in the uprisings and to their organisational structure and political horizon. 

Battlefields of the Republic: The Struggle for Public Space in Tunisia
Charles Tripp, December 2015

This paper argues that the Tunisian revolutionary moment of 2011 and its aftermath have opened up spaces that are capable of providing a framework for the agonistic politics associated with democratic possibility. Insurgent public space, an emerging plural public, as well as adversarial contests over the constitution of the republic display features that may help to build ‘conflictual consensus’ as part of a democratic future.

Will the Real Palestinian Peasantry Please Sit Down? Towards a New History of British Rule in Palestine, 1917-1936
Charles Anderson, November 2015

This paper surveys the history of peasant and rural resistance to colonial rule, policies, and law in British Palestine before 1936. Although the Arab countryside and its inhabitants have often received minimal or dismissive treatment in much of the scholarly literature, the study argues that rural Arab struggles against political, social and economic dispossession were integral to the history of British Palestine. 

Social Movements and the Question of Organisation: Egypt and Everywhere
Maha Abdelrahman, September 2015

This paper considers the nature of activism and revolutionary process in the 21st century by examining some of the dilemmas involved in the case of Egypt. It argues that the characteristics of horizontal networks of activism, especially the absence of centralised organisational structures, although well suited to the phase of mass protests in the lead-up to the ousting of Mubarak, can pose a challenge to the prospects of long-term revolutionary projects.