Follow Us
From the Editors
Jadaliyya Launches DARS Page: Daily Acts of Resistance and Subversion
Tadween Publishing Blog is here! Check it out
Jadaliyya's first book is now available! Click here.
Want to find out about new books? Visit our expanding NEWTON page. Click here.
Interested in writing a Review for Jadaliyya? Visit our Call for Reviews here.
الآن . . . القسم العربي بحلة جديدة
Jadaliyya Launches Photography Page (click here!)
Call for Photos: Become a Contributing Photographer at Jadaliyya
Economics
Defining the Terrain of Struggle in Taksim
![[Police confront protesters in Istanbul, 1 June. Photo by Carole Woodall.]](/content_images/3/sm_carole_sokak.jpg "[Police confront protesters in Istanbul, 1 June. Photo by Carole Woodall.]")
In the past weeks, the Gezi Park occupation has weathered a ferocious police deployment accompanied by an almost ceaseless barrage of tear gas, plastic bullets, and water cannons directed at the peaceful congregration at the heart of Taksim. According to the latest report of the Turkish Medical Association, as of 17 June, 7,882 people have been hospitalized; four are confirmed dead while another fifty-nine have severe injuries and nine are in critical condition. For many first-time protesters, the Turkish state’s ruthless response to the demonstrations across the country has shattered the illusion that those who are subjected to the harsh treatment of the state are ...
Keep Reading »The Right to the City Movement and the Turkish Summer
![[A protestor and police in Gezi Park. 31 May 2013. From Yücel Tunca via Nar Photos.]](/content_images/3/sm_fdfkksdkf.jpg "[A protestor and police in Gezi Park. 31 May 2013. From Yücel Tunca via Nar Photos.]")
As I write this, Istanbul is under siege. The might of Istanbul's entire police force—the largest city police force in Europe—is violently cracking down on peaceful occupiers in Gezi Park. The protest, which began on 27 May, is ostensibly over a planned shopping center to be built over a park in Istanbul's central Taksim Square. Nevertheless, massive popular movements like this do not emerge out of nowhere. Typically, they are the result of the tireless groundwork of activists over the course of an extended period. And then, something happens: a spark sets off the lighter fluid accumulating unnoticed at everyone's feet. The protests began with approximately seventy ...
Keep Reading »Youth Unemployment in Lebanon: Skilled and Jobless
![[Lebanese Center for Policy Studies logo. Image from lcps-lebanon.org]](/content_images/3/sm_Image-Lebanon_Center_for_Policy_Studies-Logo.jpg "[Lebanese Center for Policy Studies logo. Image from lcps-lebanon.org]"){kind=logo}
[The following report was issued by the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies on 10 May 2013.] Youth Unemployment in Lebanon: Skilled and Jobless Executive Summary Lebanon suffers from a high youth unemployment rate of 24%. This rate hinders economic growth and needs to be addressed in order to create a more prosperous economy and inclusive society. Two major culprits of youth unemployment are typically the educational system that affects labor supply on the one hand, and economic policies that affect labor demand on the other. With respect to the former, although the learning outcomes of Lebanese students are, on average, relatively ...
Keep Reading »The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South
Vijay Prashad. The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Forward by Boutros Boutros-Ghali. London and New York: Verso, 2012. Correct ideas are never sufficient; they are not believed or enacted simply because they are right. They become the ideas of the time only when they are wielded by those who have a united belief in their own power, using it in ideological and institutional struggles that, in turn, consolidate their social authority. - Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations On 15 November 1975, the leaders of the newly formed G7 met at Chateau de Rambouillet, the French President’s summer residence located thirty miles southwest of Paris. The G7 had ...
Keep Reading »Algeria Between “la Boulitique” and la Politique: A Tale of Two Youths
![[An image from the Mouloudia Club d’Alger versus Union Sportive Médina d'Alger match. Image taken from oumma.com.]](/content_images/3/sm_ScreenShot2013-05-05at4.15.28PM.png "[An image from the Mouloudia Club d’Alger versus Union Sportive Médina d'Alger match. Image taken from oumma.com.]")
La politique est une réflexion sur la manière de servir le peuple. La «boulitique» est une somme de hurlements et de gesticulations pour se servir du peuple. La politique is a reflection on the manner to serve the people. La boulitique is an accumulation of screams and gestures (invoked) in order to use the people. - Malek Benabi Rarely is the noise in Algiers as deafening, or the traffic as disorderly. If young Algerians are often depicted as hittistes, hanging out in public spaces with no visible sense of purpose, this week they have been whizzing around in cars, blaring horns, and singing while waving flags. The flags were not signs of patriotic allegiance, ...
Keep Reading »Among the Thugs
![[Image by Taslima Akhter.]](/content_images/3/sm_Taslima-Akhter.jpg "[Image by Taslima Akhter.]")
Delhi. “We are mere coolies working at the machines in these terrible times. We are mere dupes and fools to discover the diamond and to make a gift of it to the king, to adorn his crown.” – Nazrul Islam. Sohel Rana is a well-known figure in South Asia. He is the guy who, in my youth, would stand at the street-corner, holding court with a bunch of toughs, and offering his threatening ways as protection or intimidation for payment. As South Asian countries entered the pact of globalisation, the Sohel Ranas of the street-corner opened an office. They put up a signboard that said something like Property Dealer or Import-Export, they lost their cheap clothes for ...
Keep Reading »Liberal Illusions
![[A passerby in East Alexandria gives money to a beggar under the sign of freedom. Photo by Amro Ali]](/content_images/3/sm_Amro26.png "[A passerby in East Alexandria gives money to a beggar under the sign of freedom. Photo by Amro Ali]")
With the deepening of a political stalemate between the government and the opposition in Egypt and the marked deterioration of economic conditions, critics of the January 25 Revolution continue to highlight what they view as the revolution’s failure to bring about a stable political order that can live up to the many political and economic challenges Egypt confronts today. In his always-illustrious column in Al-Masry Al-Youm, Abdel Moneim Saeed eloquently articulated this consensus over successive pieces in the course of the past month. He reflects on the inability of the “new” political elite that emerged in the wake of the revolution to move beyond the opportunism ...
Keep Reading »Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula Roundtable: Knowledge In the Time of Oil
[This is one of seven contributions in Jadaliyya's electronic roundtable on the symbolic and material practices of knowledge production on the Arabian Peninsula. Moderated by Rosie Bsheer and John Warner, it features Toby Jones, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Adam Hanieh, Neha Vora, Nathalie Peutz, John Willis, and Ahmed Kanna.] (1) Historically, what have the dominant analytical approaches to the study of the Arabian Peninsula been? How have the difficulties of carrying out research in the Arabian Peninsula shaped the ways in which knowledge is produced for the particular country/ies in which you have worked, and in the field more generally? Before the oil boom of the ...
Keep Reading »Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula Roundtable: Unpacking Knowledge Production and Consumption
[This is one of seven contributions in Jadaliyya's electronic roundtable on the symbolic and material practices of knowledge production on the Arabian Peninsula. Moderated by Rosie Bsheer and John Warner, it features Toby Jones, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Adam Hanieh, Neha Vora, Nathalie Peutz, John Willis, and Ahmed Kanna.] (1) Historically, what have the dominant analytical approaches to the study of the Arabian Peninsula been? How have the difficulties of carrying out research in the Arabian Peninsula shaped the ways in which knowledge is produced for the particular country/ies in which you have worked, and in the field more generally? Some of the dominant ...
Keep Reading »Seeing How the Natives Live: On the Pitfalls and Potential of Alternative Tourism
![[Crop of image of sign marking Area A. Photo by Yuval Ben-Ami.]](/content_images/3/sm_roadisraelschmelz.jpg "[Crop of image of sign marking Area A. Photo by Yuval Ben-Ami.]")
People tuned into news from Palestine are often surprised to hear that one of the occupied West Bank’s main industries is tourism. Tourism has provided livelihoods for people in many cities in historic Palestine for centuries; there was even a tour guide’s guild in early Ottoman Jerusalem. Palestine has long been a destination for religious pilgrims, and particularly Christian tourists have continued making pilgrimages, constituting the vast majority of the tourists entering Israel and the West Bank every year. Despite the prominence of pilgrimage tours, recent decades have seen a rise in other forms of tourism to the West Bank. While alternative forms attract smaller ...
Keep Reading »Protests in Ouargla: Focusing on Job Creation in Algeria
![[Image of a shopkeeper in Algeria. Image by Ademe Amine/Magharebia.]](/content_images/3/sm_ScreenShot2013-04-01at9.19.17PM.png "[Image of a shopkeeper in Algeria. Image by Ademe Amine/Magharebia.]")
[The National Committee for the Rights of the Unemployed (Comité national pour la défense des droits des chômeurs, CNDDC) made a call for protests that brought together thousands (more than ten thousand, according to some) of people in Ouargla, in the south of Algeria, on 14 March 2013. Despite the regime’s accusations that Tahar Belabbès (national coordinator of the CNDDC) was "plotting against the integrity of his country" with assistance from Qatar and other foreign powers, Belabbès stressed the "national and peaceful character" of the protests, which called for increased employment and development of the southern regions of the country. ...
Keep Reading »Les manifestations à Ouargla : le besoin d’une stratégie de développement axée sur la création d’emplois en Algérie
![[Des jeunes manifestent en Algérie. Image par Fidet Mansour/Magharebia.]](/content_images/3/sm_ScreenShot2013-03-28at11.10.40AM.png "[Des jeunes manifestent en Algérie. Image par Fidet Mansour/Magharebia.]")
[Un appel du Comité national pour la défense des droits des chômeurs (CNDDC) a rassemblé des milliers (plus de dix mille personnes, selon certains) de personnes sur la place de la mairie dans le centre de Ouargla, dans le sud de l’Algérie le 14 Mars 2013. Malgré les accusations du régime selon lesquelles Tahar Belabbès (le coordinateur national du CNDDC ) a “comploté contre l’intégrité de son pays” avec l’aide du Qatar et des autres pouvoirs étrangers, Belabbès a insisté sur le « caractère national et pacifique » des revendications des chômeurs, lesquels demandent des emplois et le développement égal des régions du sud du pays. Cette manifestation ...
Keep Reading »The Season of Rebellion in Turkey: Interviews with Cihan Tugal and Erdem Yoruk
A small scale protest which was meant to stop the destruction of what has been described as an oasis in the heart of Istanbul, replacing it with an Ottoman era-themed shopping complex, has led to more than 235 protests in sixty-seven cities in Turkey. According to the latest news reports, more than 1,700 people have been arrested. On 1 June, Amnesty International said the use of tear gas had caused an unknown number of injuries, including serious head injuries when the tear gas canisters had hit ...
Keep Reading »Everywhere is Taksim, Resistance Everywhere
Taking a page out of the playbook of dictators from Damascus to Algiers, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has thus far refused any serious engagement with the thousands protesting the destruction of Gezi Park in Istanbul. His supporters have attempted to paint the protests—currently in their fifth day, and gathering momentum—as the work of fringe anarchists, atheists, foreign instigators, and government detractors. They have cited ‘ulterior motives’ and alluded to secularist conspirators ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Louise Cainkar, Global Arab World Migrations and Diasporas
Louise Cainkar, “Global Arab World Migrations and Diasporas.” Arab Studies Journal Vol. XXI No. 1 (Spring 2013). Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article? Louise Cainkar (LC): This article was developed from a keynote speech I delivered at the Conference on Arab World Migrations and Diasporas, organized by Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. When contemplating the keynote, I considered deeply what my particular contribution would be to a room full of multi-disciplinary ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Wendy Pearlman, Emigration and the Resilience of Politics in Lebanon
Wendy Pearlman, “Emigration and the Resilience of Politics in Lebanon.” Arab Studies Journal Vol. XXI No. 1 (Spring 2013). Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article? Wendy Pearlman (WP): Five years ago I began to read widely about Lebanon in preparation for a trip there. While there are so many fascinating things about the country, I was most intrigued by its one hundred and fifty-year history with international emigration. There is hardly a corner of the globe in which Lebanese have not settled, ...
Keep Reading »Cyprus, Divided and Financially Broke: An Interview with Rebecca Bryant
The economic crisis in Cyprus has put the eastern Mediterranean island nation in the lime light. Cyprus has been divided for more than four decades between the Turkish north and majority Greek south. While for Greek Cypriots, the history of Cyprus starts with ancient Greece and Hellenistic culture, the Turkish Cypriot community tend to find the Ottoman invasion of 1571 as the defining moment in the history of the island. What is the history of Cyprus and what led to it's recent ecnomic crisis? VOMENA's ...
Keep Reading »The Terror of Capitalism
Delhi. On Wednesday, 24 April, a day after Bangladeshi authorities asked the owners to evacuate their garment factory that employed almost three thousand workers, the building collapsed. The building, Rana Plaza, located in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, produced garments for the commodity chain that stretches from the cotton fields of South Asia through Bangladesh’s machines and workers to the retail houses in the Atlantic world. Famous name brands were stitched here, as are clothes that hang on the ...
Keep Reading »Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula Roundtable: Thinking Globally About Arabia
[This is one of seven contributions in Jadaliyya's electronic roundtable on the symbolic and material practices of knowledge production on the Arabian Peninsula. Moderated by Rosie Bsheer and John Warner, it features Toby Jones, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Adam Hanieh, Neha Vora, Nathalie Peutz, John Willis, and Ahmed Kanna.] (1) Historically, what have the dominant analytical approaches to the study of the Arabian Peninsula been? How have the difficulties of carrying out research in the Arabian Peninsula ...
Keep Reading »Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula Roundtable: Capital and Labor in the Gulf States: Bringing the Region Back In
[This is one of seven contributions in Jadaliyya's electronic roundtable on the symbolic and material practices of knowledge production on the Arabian Peninsula. Moderated by Rosie Bsheer and John Warner, it features Toby Jones, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Adam Hanieh, Neha Vora, Nathalie Peutz, John Willis, and Ahmed Kanna.] (1) Historically, what have the dominant analytical approaches to the study of the Arabian Peninsula been? How have the difficulties of carrying out research in the Arabian Peninsula ...
Keep Reading »Theorizing the Arabian Peninsula Roundtable: Towards a Critical Cartography of the Political in the Arabian Peninsula
[This is one of seven contributions in Jadaliyya's electronic roundtable on the symbolic and material practices of knowledge production on the Arabian Peninsula. Moderated by Rosie Bsheer and John Warner, it features Toby Jones, Madawi Al-Rasheed, Adam Hanieh, Neha Vora, Nathalie Peutz, John Willis, and Ahmed Kanna.] (1) Historically, what have the dominant analytical approaches to the study of the Arabian Peninsula been? How have the difficulties of carrying out research in the Arabian Peninsula ...
Keep Reading »World Social Forum Highlights Shock Doctrine in Tunisia
An estimated fifty thousand people from five thousand organizations in 127 countries spanning five continents participated in the World Social Forum (WSF) in Tunisia over the past week. By choosing to come together in Tunis, this year’s Forum evoked the sprit of the 2011 revolt that inspired uprisings around the world. The WSF also focused attention on the complicated status of that revolt, which in Tunisia has not brought the political or economic changes many hoped for. Conversations with local ...
Keep Reading »A qui profite la récupération des biens de Ben Ali ?
Pour marquer la fin de 2012, une année plutôt chaotique pour une Tunisie en pleine transition politique, le ministre des Finances tunisien a organisé un événement spectaculaire : une vente aux enchères publique des biens de l'ancien président Ben Ali provenant de son palais privé à Sidi Dhrif, une somptueuse demeure surplombant la baie de Tunis et la cité balnéaire de Sidi Bou Said. Cette manifestation baptisée sobrement Confiscation, a été largement médiatisée en Tunisie. Un site Internet a ...
Keep Reading »The Mirage of Foreign Investment
Almost all political forces are waiting for it: the Muslim Brotherhood, ElBaradei, Amr Moussa. All economic plans seek it and are built on it. In fact, politics itself is tailored for the sake of foreign investment: reconciling with figures from the former regime to boost the confidence of foreign investors; mega projects and plans for the Suez Canal to attract them to invest their money with us; and a quick draft law to issue Islamic bonds (sukuk), as a step on the road to receiving $200 billion as ...
Keep Reading »Hot on Facebook
“The revolution” is no longer a signifier of a bygone era. It is a lived experience, a reality, and the present. The “revolution” has compelled many to claim and imitate it.click | email | tweet
.jpg){kind=small}
From Jadaliyya Reports
Top Jadaliyya Tags
Jadalicious / جدلشس
Noteworthy
Twitter Updates
Jadaliyya Features
.jpg)
Latest Entries
View All Entries »- Defining the Terrain of Struggle in Taksim
- Egypt Media Roundup (June 17)
- حديثي مع الشيطان
- New Texts Out Now: Markus Dressler, Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam
- Arabian Peninsula Media Roundup (June 18)
- فرانكشتاين في بغداد
- O.I.L. Media Roundup (17 June)
- هل يمكن تطوير الجدل حول المثلية الجنسية؟
- Resisting Tear Gas Together
- معتقلو موريتانيا في غوانتانامو
- Last Week on Jadaliyya (June 10-16)
- Will the Presidential Elections “Cure the Pain” of the Iranian People?
- الانترنت والعولمة الثقافية
- #resistankara: Notes of a Woman Resisting
- It Is About the Park: A Struggle for Turkey’s Cities
- 'Ottomanalgia' and the Protests in Turkey
- إصلاح بروتوكول باريس في عامه العشرين: أسئلة وأجوبة لإرضاء الإصلاحي العنيد
- Report from Istanbul: Koray Caliskan on Democracy Now
- Syria Media Roundup (June 13)
- Maghreb Media Roundup (June 14)
Pages/Sections
Archive
©2010-2013 by the Arab Studies Institute. All Rights Reserved. info@jadaliyya.com
site by concepcion design