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After the Spring: Thoughts on Cultural Production and the Selling Power of Change

2 Nov 15 2011 by Naira Antoun and Aimee Shalan

[Image from the Royal Court Theatre website.]

“After the Spring: New Short Plays from the Arab World.” Performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, August 2011. As part of their international “Rough Cuts” project, the Royal Court Theatre specially commissioned a series of four short plays from the Arab world in a program entitled “After the Spring,” in response to the uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa. All four writers had previously participated in the Royal Court project when it was first established in 2007 and their first plays for “Rough Cuts,” which were staged as rehearsed readings at the Royal Court in 2008, have now been published in a collection edited by Elyse Dodgson, entitled Plays ...

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On Racial Literacy: "A White Side of Black Britain"

0 Sep 15 2011 by Erik Love

France Winddance Twine, A White Side of Black Britain: Interracial Intimacy and Racial Literacy. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Despite the central role they play in our lives, the intimate spaces of family life have unfortunately remained beyond the reach of most sociological research. This empirical blind spot has led to a surprising lack of knowledge around how people, in their private spaces shared with loved ones, think and act about social issues. There are some perfectly understandable reasons why this enormous gap in sociological knowledge exists, even given the unquestionable importance and value of research into how people really manage issues like race, ...

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Emergency, Governmentality, and the Arab Spring

0 Aug 10 2011 by John Reynolds

[Image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/salamanderr/4715355178/in/photostream/]

With states of emergency proving salient to the unfolding of the “Arab Spring” and continuing to permeate the political landscape—through opposition to long-standing emergencies as well as proclamations of new ones—it is worth reflecting on the genesis and underlying essence of emergency law. The ostensible premise of the doctrine of emergency is one of a last resort mechanism to be implemented for the common good, with the temporary suspension of certain freedoms necessary to facilitate an expedient return to normalcy and the full restoration of human rights. Historical experience, however, from European colonialism to Arab dictatorship, suggests that reality is ...

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More Than a "Personal Error of Judgment": Seif Gaddafi and the London School of Economics

2 Mar 15 2011 by Hannes Baumann

[Seif Gaddafi. Image by Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters]

“Seif is committed to resolving contentious international and domestic issues through dialogue, debate, and peaceful negotiations.” These were the words with which Professor David Held introduced a public lecture by Seif al-Islam al-Gaddafi at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 2009. Last week, British media revelled in replaying Held’s words, before cutting to Seif Gaddafi’s February 21, 2011, speech on Libyan state TV in which he predicted "rivers of blood" and vowed: "We'll fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet.” Another Youtube video shows Gaddafi wielding an assault rifle and rallying his supporters with promises to arm them. ...

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Breaking News: "Black Gold" Actually (Dark) Blue Ink

1 Oct 23 2010 by Nadya Sbaiti

Entire economies run on these (Source: BP)

“What we always thought was oil is actually the same stuff you find in a Bic pen,” shocked analysts say. An emergency G7 meeting was called last night in response to the earth shattering news that what has been thought for over a century to be oil – petroleum – is in fact nothing more than the viscous ink used in certain ballpoint pens.

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Call for Papers: Gulf Charities in the ‘Age of Terror’ and the ‘Arab Awakening’ Workshop (University of Cambridge, 11-14 July, 2012])

0 Nov 09 2011 by Jadaliyya Reports

3rd Gulf Research Meeting Workshop: 'Gulf charities in the "Age of Terror" and the "Arab Awakening" University of Cambridge, 11-14 July 2012 Workshop Directors: Robert Lacey 115a Ebury Street London SW1W 9QU United Kingdom Email: robert@robertlacey.com www.insidethekingdom.net Jonathan Benthall Honorary Research Fellow Department of Anthropology University College London United Kingdom Email: jonathanbenthall@hotmail.com Abstract Motivated by the ...

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The Arab-UK Spring

0 Aug 18 2011 by Khalil Bendib

Western nations have long snickered at the lack of democracy in most of the Middle East and North Africa and have offered ad nauseum free advice to Arab leaders on how to conduct their own affairs. But on occasion tables are turned, and the special wisdom and expertise of these oft-derided Middle Eastern leaders becomes very precious indeed for Western leaders who know a thing or two about bombing foreign civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, yet are at a loss when it comes to taming their own ...

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Entry Denied: Revolution in North Africa and the Continued Centrality of Migration to European Responses

1 May 29 2011 by Polly Pallister-Wilkins

The recent revolutions in Tunisia and Libya have brought the issue of trans-Mediterranean migration to the forefront of popular discussions about Europe’s relationship with its immediate neighbors in the Middle East and North Africa. It was on the back of hyperbolic and cataclysmic predictions of Europe being “swamped” by migrants that the case for intervention in Libya was partly made and following this, a number of EU member states have agreed on a temporary suspension of the Schengen Agreement. ...

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Lordy, Lordy, I Declare! Big Brother Is in My Underwear

2 Nov 22 2010 by Lisa Hajjar

If you are traveling by air in the United States, your “junk” will be inspected visually or manually by agents working for the Transportation Security Agency. Junk is hipster code for your butt, although it doesn’t discriminate against your balls and/or breasts. Non-hipsters learned the term when a traveler named John Tyner used his cell phone to record his own physical pat-down, during which he balked at the professional groping and said, “If you touch my junk, I’m going to have you arrested.” Tyner’s ...

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