- Stanford, California
Joel Beinin
Stanford University, History, Faculty Member
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shared their memories, papers, and hearts with me in the course of my research for this book. Without their assistance, this book would have been an entirely different and inferior product. Their names are listed in the Bibliography. Many... more
shared their memories, papers, and hearts with me in the course of my research for this book. Without their assistance, this book would have been an entirely different and inferior product. Their names are listed in the Bibliography. Many Egyptian Jews as well as other friends and colleagues saved clippings from the Israeli and Egyptian press for me, allowed me to copy personal papers, or gave me books, magazines, and other materials that were invaluable sources for this book. Among them were
Page 1. The RISE of EGYPTIAN COMMUNISM, j'.'Vi 1939-1970 -*tC*£ V1 > ;# . Selma Botman Page 2. I 1 EGYPTIAN The Rise of COMMUNISM 1939-1970 Selma Botman Selma... more
Page 1. The RISE of EGYPTIAN COMMUNISM, j'.'Vi 1939-1970 -*tC*£ V1 > ;# . Selma Botman Page 2. I 1 EGYPTIAN The Rise of COMMUNISM 1939-1970 Selma Botman Selma Botman examines the virtually un-known ...
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The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) was founded in 1971 as a project of the American New Left in solidarity with and drawing inspiration from the Beirut-centered Arab New Left and anti-imperialist struggles for... more
The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) was founded in 1971 as a project of the American New Left in solidarity with and drawing inspiration from the Beirut-centered Arab New Left and anti-imperialist struggles for national liberation in the Middle East and North Africa. The question of Palestine was a central, but certainly not exclusive, concern. From its origins MERIP was committed to political economy as a key method to understanding the Middle East and North Africa. It highlighted the importance of oil in the regional power structure and to the emergent U.S. empire. Many of its articles featured analyses of the social relationships of class and capital. MERIP was wary of “Arab socialism” and pan-Arab nationalism as official state ideologies. Its analysis of the 1979 Iranian revolution won MERIP and its emphasis on the importance of political economy a respected place in Anglo-American academia. Political economy never disappeared from MERIP's orientation, a...
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Workers' movements contributed substantially to the 2011 popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Bahrain. Comparing the role of workers before, during and after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrates that the... more
Workers' movements contributed substantially to the 2011 popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Bahrain. 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. Tunisian workers could compel the Tunisian General Federation of Labor (UGTT), despite the wishes of its pro-Ben Ali national leadership, to join them and the rest of the Tunisian people in a struggle against autocracy. Egyptian workers, on the other hand, were not able to force the Egyptian Trade Union Federation(ETUF) to support the uprising and had no national organisations and only weak links to intellectuals.
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Western policymakers, scholars, and foundations share a broad consensus that a dynamic civil society, often reduced to the presence of NGOs, is the essential ingredient of democracy. Although the concept of civil society is imprecisely... more
Western policymakers, scholars, and foundations share a broad consensus that a dynamic civil society, often reduced to the presence of NGOs, is the essential ingredient of democracy. Although the concept of civil society is imprecisely and ubiquitously deployed, rendering it of dubious analytical utility, it has been widely applied to the Arab region. Despite the proliferation of Arab NGOs and other forms of association, authoritarian Arab regimes were fairly effective in blocking the emergence of truly independent associations of any sort. In fact, “civil society organizations” played only a small role in mobilizing the demonstrations and occupations of public space that were the emblematic expressions of the 2011 Arab uprisings. The Egyptian and other Arab popular uprisings were not the result of proliferating NGOs or “building civil society.” Rather, they were the consequence of converging vectors of diverse social protest movements over the previous decades involving urban intel...
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... But to understand the specific characteristics of the Egyptian workers' movement we must consider not only the accumu? ... with European workers, as this excerpt from al-Liwa shows: Your cause is not only the cause of the tramway... more
... But to understand the specific characteristics of the Egyptian workers' movement we must consider not only the accumu? ... with European workers, as this excerpt from al-Liwa shows: Your cause is not only the cause of the tramway workers but the cause of all Egyptian workers. ...
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... Nazih N. Ayubi, Overstating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (New York: LB. Tauris, 1996) $19.95. ... Walid Khalidi, Islam, the West, and Jerusalem (Washington: Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab... more
... Nazih N. Ayubi, Overstating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (New York: LB. Tauris, 1996) $19.95. ... Walid Khalidi, Islam, the West, and Jerusalem (Washington: Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Occasional Paper, 1996). ...
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Theory, practice, and space—there is a substantial bibliog raphy of writings across the humanities and social sciences theorizing social complexity through geographic and architectural metaphors.1 Eyal Weizman uses a balance of the three... more
Theory, practice, and space—there is a substantial bibliog raphy of writings across the humanities and social sciences theorizing social complexity through geographic and architectural metaphors.1 Eyal Weizman uses a balance of the three to shape Hollow Land, a study of Israeli architecture after the 1967 occupation. But his work goes far beyond this metaphor. Weizman immediately opens the reader’s understanding of architecture as not only the physical structures that sustain the Occupation but also “a conceptual way of understanding political issues as constructed realities” (6). From this position, Israeli generals and settlers may be counted as builders, just as one would expect planners and architects to be. Hollow Land is a study of the extension of Israeli power, not through the classical language of politics but in seemingly mundane spatial regimes as well as the explicit structures of control in the Occupied Territories. When discussing the politics of archaeology, we often turn to the ideology of the nation state as our entry point. This is for good reason. Historic monuments find their significance in their power to represent and codify a narrative of the past. These ideologies are even more crucial in the Occupied Territories, where archaeology provides a materiality to Biblical traditions, and in turn bolsters the claims of nationalists and settlers over contested land.2 To quote Setany Shami, it may be that our academic disciplines “work together to define, explain, enhance, and anchor the notion of modernity,”3 but it is our monuments that make these ideas tangible.4 (Upon visiting the Parthenon in 1903, Sigmund Freud wrote to his friend Romain Rolland in great excitement that “all this really does exist, just as we learnt at school.”) Whether to give an ancient pedigree to new settlements or to drive the aesthetic of architectural and urban design, the use of heritage as a means to authenticate or legitimize is evident at various points in Hollow Land.)5 But there is also a particular instrumentality to heritage conservation and interpretation that Weizman documents with great clarity. For this reason alone the work is of interest to heritage conservators, but this is simply one point of entry to his encyclopedic work.
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THE Palestinian intifada (uprising) began on December 9, 1987, as a series of confrontations between Israeli soldiers and crowds of angry Palestinians. To the amazement of almost everyone, these clashes led to the most prolonged episode... more
THE Palestinian intifada (uprising) began on December 9, 1987, as a series of confrontations between Israeli soldiers and crowds of angry Palestinians. To the amazement of almost everyone, these clashes led to the most prolonged episode of militant Palestinian oppositionism in the hundred-year history of Zionist-Arab relations in Palestine/the Land of Israel. Indeed, almost five years later, in October 1992, the Israeli chief of staff warned his countrymen that the uprising had still not ended.
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Johan Franzén's account of the most significant political movement in modern Iraq, and “arguably the most important political organization in the Middle East never to have attained state power”(p. 245), complements Tareq Y.... more
Johan Franzén's account of the most significant political movement in modern Iraq, and “arguably the most important political organization in the Middle East never to have attained state power”(p. 245), complements Tareq Y. Ismael's The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Iraq (2008). Franzén traces the creation of the Iraq Communist Party (ICP) and shows that it was not simply an attempt to transfer European communism to the Middle East. Rather it was an authentic Iraqi party involved in the life and struggles of its people.
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Social movement theory has rarely ventured beyond the terrain of the USA and Europe or narrow understandings of the “political” based on case studies drawn from the global North. Consequently, it often misunderstands activism in the... more
Social movement theory has rarely ventured beyond the terrain of the USA and Europe or narrow understandings of the “political” based on case studies drawn from the global North. Consequently, it often misunderstands activism in the South, which sometimes occurs as silent resistances, bypassing of authority, day-to-day forms of resistance or evading practices of power. Social movement studies are commonly framed by disciplines other than political science, which tends to minimize or obscure the political meanings of those movements.
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Page 1. JOEL BEII Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. Page 5. Was the Red Flag Flying There? This One CW1F-JU6-EGRR Page 6. Page 7. Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel ...
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The Arab popular uprisings of 2011 caught nearly every scholar, journalist, and foreign policy think tanker by surprise. The literature about them is already prodigious. Despite their failure to democratize the region (with the partial... more
The Arab popular uprisings of 2011 caught nearly every scholar, journalist, and foreign policy think tanker by surprise. The literature about them is already prodigious. Despite their failure to democratize the region (with the partial exception of Tunisia) or promote more equitable economic policies, the political and economic crises that impelled the uprisings and the processes of change they initiated are still underway and are unlikely to be resolved for some time. Consequently, most historians would argue that we cannot now have enough perspective or primary documentary evidence to support a nuanced analysis of the multiple intersections of structure and agency that informed the uprisings, the behind-the-scenes forces (including U.S., French, and Saudi interventions to contain or roll back the revolutionary impulses) that influenced short and medium-term outcomes, and the long-term meanings and consequences of the events for the participants and their societies. I am emphatical...
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... Contents Acknowledgments i. Introduction The Jews of Egypt Authenticity and Cosmopolitanism Interdisciplinary Renegotiation of History, Diaspora, and Memory The Neo-Lachrymose Conception of Jewish-Arab History Alternatives to... more
... Contents Acknowledgments i. Introduction The Jews of Egypt Authenticity and Cosmopolitanism Interdisciplinary Renegotiation of History, Diaspora, and Memory The Neo-Lachrymose Conception of Jewish-Arab History Alternatives to Neo-Lachrymosity Operation Susannah ...
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... Contents Acknowledgments i. Introduction The Jews of Egypt Authenticity and Cosmopolitanism Interdisciplinary Renegotiation of History, Diaspora, and Memory The Neo-Lachrymose Conception of Jewish-Arab History Alternatives to... more
... Contents Acknowledgments i. Introduction The Jews of Egypt Authenticity and Cosmopolitanism Interdisciplinary Renegotiation of History, Diaspora, and Memory The Neo-Lachrymose Conception of Jewish-Arab History Alternatives to Neo-Lachrymosity Operation Susannah ...
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... chapters of Khalid Medani and Sondra Hale), Turkey (see the chapter of Ronnie Margulies and ...Hasan al-Banna (19o6-49), an Egyptian schoolteacher working in Isma-'iliyya, the headquarters of the ... a highly Europe-anized site,... more
... chapters of Khalid Medani and Sondra Hale), Turkey (see the chapter of Ronnie Margulies and ...Hasan al-Banna (19o6-49), an Egyptian schoolteacher working in Isma-'iliyya, the headquarters of the ... a highly Europe-anized site, was one of those influenced by Rashid Rida and ...
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The office of MESA president is mainly honorific; the associated duties are normally not particularly onerous. The very capable staff of the secretariat does most of the hard work involved in running this organization. None of you could... more
The office of MESA president is mainly honorific; the associated duties are normally not particularly onerous. The very capable staff of the secretariat does most of the hard work involved in running this organization. None of you could have known at the time of the MESA elections in the summer and early fall of 2000 that you would be giving me the opportunity to serve as your president in the post-September 11, 2001 era, when public interest in the Middle East, demands on those with expertise in the region, and incongruously, attacks on MESA, university-based programs in Middle East Studies, and more than a few individual MESA members have reached unprecedented levels. Serving as your president in this period has been a more exciting ride than it would have been at almost any other time I can imagine; I thank you all for making it possible. I would also like to acknowledge my wife Miriam, who also received a fuller plate than she could have imagined as a result of my serving as MES...
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Before the 2011 uprisings, the Middle East and North Africa were frequently seen as a uniquely undemocratic region with little civic activism. The first edition of this volume, published at the start of the Arab Spring, challenged these... more
Before the 2011 uprisings, the Middle East and North Africa were frequently seen as a uniquely undemocratic region with little civic activism. The first edition of this volume, published at the start of the Arab Spring, challenged these views by revealing a region rich with social and political mobilizations. This fully revised second edition extends the earlier explorations of Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and adds new case studies on the uprisings in Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen.
The case studies are inspired by social movement theory, but they also critique and expand the horizons of the theory's classical concepts of political opportunity structures, collective action frames, mobilization structures, and repertoires of contention based on intensive fieldwork. This strong empirical base allows for a nuanced understanding of contexts, culturally conditioned rationality, the strengths and weaknesses of local networks, and innovation in contentious action to give the reader a substantive understanding of events in the Arab world before and since 2011.
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=23271
The case studies are inspired by social movement theory, but they also critique and expand the horizons of the theory's classical concepts of political opportunity structures, collective action frames, mobilization structures, and repertoires of contention based on intensive fieldwork. This strong empirical base allows for a nuanced understanding of contexts, culturally conditioned rationality, the strengths and weaknesses of local networks, and innovation in contentious action to give the reader a substantive understanding of events in the Arab world before and since 2011.
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=23271
Research Interests: Political Sociology, Social Movements, Comparative Politics, Middle East Studies, Political Science, and 9 moreSocial movements and revolution, Middle East Politics, Islamism, Authoritarianism, Contentious Politics, Egyptian Politics, Arab Spring (Arab Revolts), Repression, and Tunisian Revolution-Arab Spring
Review of Gilles Perrault, A Man Apart
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Drawn from presentations at the Political Economy Project’s founding workshop, the authors in this issue seek to define and interrogate the field of political economy and address how they actually “do” political economy. While authors... more
Drawn from presentations at the Political Economy Project’s founding workshop, the authors in this issue seek to define and interrogate the field of political economy and address how they actually “do” political economy. While authors agree on the interdisciplinary study of political economy as well as the basic tenets of the Marxist tradition, they nevertheless present various perspectives. Also included in this issue is a vast and evolving annotated bibliography of recommended texts in political economy.