WIPSS/MSA Joint Seminar: 'in collaboration with the Department of Sociology
Work in Progress in the Social Studies (WIPSS): 2017/8
21st Year
27 June: Special event
WIPSS/Malta Sociological Association Joint Seminar: 'in collaboration with the Department of Sociology
'Making Sense of the Arab Spring'
Prof. Asef Bayat, University of Illinois
Chair: Professor Peter Mayo
On Wednesday 27 June, the WIPSS seminar and MSA are privileged to jointly host one of the world’s truly distinguished scholars of the Middle East, Prof. Asef Bayat, who will give a seminar entitled Making Sense of the Arab Spring.
Prof. Bayat writes:
‘Seven years ago, the outbreak of the Arab uprisings created an unprecedented optimism about the future of democracy in the Arab world. But today, a strong sense of pessimism and despair surrounds the trajectory of these uprisings. Why did the Arab revolutions experience such trajectories? How do we understand the nature of the Arab Spring? My presentation attempts to historicize the Arab revolutions comparing them with those of the 1970s notably the Iranian revolution of 1979. I suggest that what transpired in Tunisia, Egypt or Yemen in 2011 was not revolution in the sense of their 20th Century counterparts, but ‘refo-lution’, that is, revolutionary movements that emerged to compel the incumbent regimes to reform themselves. I discuss why this was so, and what it meant for the outcome of these revolutions.’
Asef Bayat, the Catherine & Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies, teaches Sociology and the Middle East at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining the University of Illinois, he taught at the American University in Cairo for many 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, The Netherlands.
His research areas range from social movements and social change, to religion and public life, Islam and modernity, urban space and politics, and the contemporary Middle East. His recent books include Being Young and Muslim: Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (with Linda Herrera) (Oxford University Press, 2010); Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam (Oxford University Press, 2013); Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2013. 2nd edition), and Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring (Stanford University Press, 2017).
Wednesday 27 June, 18:00-19:00, followed by discussion. in Gateway Building Hall E (ground floor on the right viewed from university entrance). Students are encouraged to attend. The public is cordially welcome.
Paul Clough, Peter Mayo, and Michael Briguglio, and for MSA, Valerie Visanich
