You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
What explains the enduring rule of authoritarian regimes in the Arab world? Nicola Pratt offers an innovative approach to this recurring question, shedding light on the failure of democratization by examining both the broad dynamics of authoritarianism in the region and the particular role of civil society. Pratt appraises the part that civil society actors played in the normalization of authoritarianism in the Middle East, the challenges that new organized groups now pose to entrenched Arab regimes, and the varying ways in which those regimes are responding. She also explores the diversity of conceptions of democracy among nonstate actors. Arguing against the idea that Arab culture is inherently incompatible with democracy--the concept of Middle East "exceptionalism"--she assesses the realistic potential for democratization in the region.
Representing a departure from studies of Middle East politics and democratisation, this book employs theories and concepts to the study of democracy and authoritarianism in the Arab world. It examines the role of non-state actors, civil society, in the maintenance of or resistance to the discourse that underpins authoritarian politics.
"There is something to learn, literally, on every page here."--Cynthia Enloe, from the foreword "This is a fluent and highly informed account of the women of Iraq during a time of ever increasing political turmoil, economic disaster and foreign invasion. It gives a fascinating insight into the way Iraqi society really works and is far superior in quality to most of what has been written about Iraq in war and peace."--Patrick Cockburn, author of Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq
Women and War in the Middle East provides a critical examination of the relationship between gender and transnationalism in the context of war, peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction in the Middle East. Critically examining the ways in which the actions of various local and transnational groups - including women's movements, diaspora communities, national governments, non-governmental actors and multilateral bodies - interact to both intentionally and inadvertantly shape the experiences of women in conflict situations, and determine the possibilities for women's participation in peace-building and (post)-conflict reconstruction, as well as the longer-term prospects for peace and sec...
This book looks with hindsight at the Arab Spring and sheds light on the debates it triggered within North African societies and the alarming developments in women’s rights. Although women played a key role in the success of the uprisings that wiped out long ruling oligarchies across the region, they remain excluded from decision-making circles and the formal political and electoral apparatus. Women's rights are written off constitution drafts, and issues of gender equality are hardly addressed. The chapters that compose this volume present research and reflections from different perspectives to help the reader get a better picture of the profound turmoil that beset this part of the so-cal...
When women took to the streets during the mass protests of the Arab Spring, the subject of feminism in the Middle East and North Africa returned to the international spotlight. In the subsequent years, countless commentators treated the region’s gender inequality as a consequence of fundamentally cultural or religious problems. In so doing, they overlooked the specifically political nature of these women’s activism. Moving beyond such culturalist accounts, this book turns to the relations of power in regional and international politics to understand women’s struggles for their rights. Based on over a hundred extensive personal narratives from women of different generations in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, Nicola Pratt traces women’s activism from national independence through to the Arab uprisings, arguing that activist women are critical geopolitical actors. Weaving together these personal accounts with the ongoing legacies of colonialism, Embodying Geopolitics demonstrates how the production and regulation of gender is integrally bound up with the exercise and organization of geopolitical power, with consequences for women’s activism and its effects.
For more than half a century, the Socialist Register has brought together some of the sharpest thinkers from around the globe to address the pressing issues of our time. Founded by Ralph Miliband and John Saville in London in 1964, SR continues their commitment to independent and thought-provoking analysis, free of dogma or sectarian positions. Transforming Classes is a compendium of socialist thought today and a clarifying account of class struggle in the early twenty-first-century, from China to the United States.
None
CUSTOMERS IN NORTH AMERICA: COPIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM WWW.SEVENSTORIES.COM Women's rights have progressed significantly in the last two decades, but major challenges remain in order to end global gender discrimination. The unfinished revolution: Voices from the global fight for women's rights outlines the recent history of the battle to secure basic rights for women and girls, including in the Middle East where the hopes raised by the Arab Spring are yet to be fulfilled. This anthology opens with a foreword by Christiane Amanpour and features essays by more than 30 writers, activists, policymakers and human rights experts, including Nobel laureates Shirin Ebadi and Jody Williams. Most import...
White feminists performing to maintain privilege Mean girl feminism encourages girls and women to be sassy, sarcastic, and ironic as feminist performance. Yet it coopts its affect, form, and content from racial oppression and protest while aiming meanness toward people in marginalized groups. Kim Hong Nguyen’s feminist media study examines four types of white mean girl feminism prominent in North American popular culture: the bitch, the mean girl, the power couple, and the global mother. White feminists mime the anger, disempowerment, and resistance felt by people of color and other marginalized groups. Their performance allows them to pursue and claim a special place within established power structures, present as intellectually superior, substitute nonpolitical playacting for a politics of solidarity and community, and position themselves as better, more enlightened masters than patriarchy. But, as Nguyen shows, the racialized meanness found across pop culture opens possibilities for building an intersectional feminist politics that rejects performative civility in favor of turning anger into liberation.