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Asef Bayat, ‘Living in Revolution: The Everyday of the Arab Spring’

Event information>

Dates

This is a past event
Price

Free

Time
18.30 – 20.00 (CET)
Location

Online

Event type

Debate

Drawing on the Arab Spring revolutions, Asef Bayat examines the relationship between everyday life as the realm of the ordinary, the mundane, and the routine, and revolutions as the domain of the extraordinary, the monumental, and rupture.

The University of London Institute in Paris is pleased to host Professor Asef Bayat for an online talk in which he will discuss his recent work on the everyday politics of the Arab Spring. This talk forms part of the Theory in Crisis series which platforms dynamic new work in contemporary theory. 

Abstract 

How to read the story of revolution? The conventional approach focuses largely on the elites, the state, regime, and international relations. I like to suggest that the story of revolution is not just what happened at the top. It is also about what went on at the base of the society among the grassroots—in farms, factories, families, and schools; in social relations governed by old hierarchies; in people’s subjectivities. Drawing on the Arab spring revolutions focusing on Tunisia and Egypt, I suggest that this approach can help us understand the relationship between everyday life as the realm of the ordinary, the mundane, and the routine, and revolutions as the domain of the extraordinary, the monumental, and rupture. 

Speaker Bio 

Asef Bayat is Professor of Sociology and Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring, Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East.

Respondent Bio

Myriam Catusse is a sociologist and political scientist. Senior research fellow at the CNRS, she heads the Institut français du Proche Orient (Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine and Syria).

Her recent research focuses on the comparative analysis of a social issue specific to contemporary neoliberalism. She addresses the casualisation of social protection not at the margins, but in the core of public institutions for the socialisation of various risks. Analysing material claims, she questions the way protection and precariousness shape each other.

This page was last updated on 2 April 2024